Brandon O'Brien

Sunday, September 4, 2022 @ 7:52 PM in 2022 Germany and France

Day 11

The only thing on the agenda for today was visiting the Château du Haut-Kœnigsbourg and then doing a little walk in the woods around there. We left the Airbnb and grabbed some baguette sandwiches for lunch (one with tuna and lettuce and another with ham and cheese). We were cutting it really close timewise to make our 9:51 train and unfortunately didn't make it. With an extra hour to kill, we strolled to the train station and I figured I'd buy our bus ticket to get us from Sélestat to the Chateau. I was a little hesitant to buy the ticket since I couldn't find the exact one I wanted but I went ahead and bought the closest thing I could find.

We got on a busy train that took us the quick 21 minute trip down to Sélestat. We had ten minutes or so to get the bus and fortunately everything was on time and the station was extremely small. The bus was waiting outside the station and when we tried boarding, the guy said what I bought thinking was the bus ticket was actually a train ticket. I ended up having to buy the real tickets on the bus. They were only 10 euros round trip for both of us combined, but it still sucked to spend money when I didn't need to.

If anyone finds this and wants to take the Ligne 500 from Sélestat to the Château du Haut-Kœnigsbourg, just have 5 euros on hand per person round trip and buy your ticket on the bus itself. The Ligne 500 is a tourist bus that hits a Stork amusement park, a monkey sanctuary, an eagle reserve and finally the Château du Haut-Kœnigsbourg. It only takes about 30 minutes to get to the Chateau and the bus runs every hour, timed to hit the Strasbourg / Colmar train line.

On the ride up, we passed through a little town called Kintzheim (really cool little town by the way) and there were a ton of people there for a bunch of ultra trail races. The race actually went all the way up (at least in part) to the Chateau, ran through it and then back down to town. While on the bus, Dakotah had another big accident so the first thing we did when we got to the Chateau was to find somewhere to change him. It was kinda tough finding somewhere since there were a ton of people everywhere. We finally found a shaded area with a stone wall that we could change him.

With a clean baby, we went up toward the ticket counter and saw that they actually had nice changing rooms in the restrooms. Oh well, you live and learn. We bought our tickets, ate our tuna baguette in a courtyard in the castle and then walked through the Chateau. It was restored to look as close to the original as they could and was really neat to walk through. The original castle was started around the year 1100. We walked through some "obstacle course" style defenses with draw bridges, heavy metal gates, turrets where archers would be and other ways to keep invaders out.

From there we went by the well and through the cellar and kitchens. After that was up to the living quarters of some of the wealthier residents and then around to some more defenses with cannons and other guns. There were some really cool views of the valley below, which makes sense because the Chateau was built to monitor and tax the salt trade.

When we finished the tour, we did a walk on some of the trails around the Chateau (and saw a ton more of the ultra runners). The trail took us by another ruined castle just a little farther west of the main Chateau we toured. It was really lush and green with a lot of moss everywhere but it was fortunately not humid today. The trails around there seemed like a huge network and you could actually cover a lot of ground on them. It would have been a cool place to spend some real time hiking if we had the proper gear and didn't have a baby to carry around.

We caught the bus back to the train station, then took the train back to Strasbourg. Back at the Airbnb we started to organize our stuff to pack for our trip to Nice tomorrow, finished up the local wine, started laundry and ate dinner (more of the couscous mix from the other day plus the rest of our mushrooms and some sausages). Our train to Nice leaves tomorrow around 9am so we'll make sure to leave here with plenty of time to get our giant checked bag down the three flights of stairs and over to the train station. We have about 6 hours on trains tomorrow so we'll eat our second baguette from today for lunch tomorrow.

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Tags: france, chateau, europe

Posted from: France

Wednesday, September 4, 2013 @ 9:01 PM in 2013 Europe

Day 70

I had a horrible night's sleep last night because the guy in the bunk above me must have been having some issues and literally tossed, turned, coughed, sneezed and shook the entire freaking night. Each time one or a combo of those would happen, it would send vibrations down to my bunk, amplifying them along the way.

When I woke up, I had a couple cups of coffee to snap me out of the bad mood I was in from having the worst night's sleep I can remember in recent years. After breakfast I changed into my beach gear with the plan to get my travel to Belgium booked for next week and to try my hand at stand up paddle boarding.

First, I wanted to get my travel booked and get it out of the way. I went to the bus station but realized the ticket office was a few blocks away. When I got there, I had to wait in line for almost an hour with other people trying to book train, bus and coach tickets.

I already had the coach information I wanted written down, but upon talking to the ticket agent he told me I could take a train to London for half the price of the coach and get there twice as fast. I was sold. The coach from London to Brussels was still the best option so I also booked that.

Yesterday when I was walking along the beach I saw a company advertising an hour long paddleboard rental for £10. I made mental note of where it was and went back today. I've never tried paddleboarding before but it didn't seem like it should be that hard. It seemed like it was mostly a balance sport and if you could master that, you'd be fine.

I rented the board and got into the water. I realized right away that it wasn't going to be quite as easy as I though. For the first 15 minutes I just stayed on my knees paddling around. Eventually I stood up and paddled around for a while. The waves didn't seem too bad from shore but when you're on a 2 foot wide board trying to balance and paddle while not falling off, any disturbance in the water seems extreme.

My hour was coming to a close so I headed back to shore and officially made it without falling off! I was pretty proud of myself for that accomplishment. There was a group of people who took lessons and they went out a little after I did. I watched several of them fall in multiple times, so I felt like I at least did better than that, even without a minute of instruction!

I got back to the hostel, ate, showered and caught up on a few episodes of Dexter. Tomorrow I'll get up and run in the morning. It looks like it's the last hot day here for a while so I'll try to take advantage of it. I'm debating going to a digital art / electronic music show tomorrow night. I'll do a little more research and see if it looks worth it.

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Tags: daily journal, england, brighton

Posted from: England

Sunday, September 4, 2011 @ 7:00 PM in General Travel

We noticed we had some new neighbors next to us when we woke up. All the screaming and barking was from them. They must have got in after dark and set up their camp site. It was a mom and dad with their 2 year old girl and 2 small yappy dogs. The dad took more care of the dogs than the kid, and you could tell the wife wanted nothing to do with the whole situation because she just sat in the car wrapped in a sleeping bag. Whenever we saw them, you could cut the tension between the mom and dad with a knife. She did not want to be there and she was so annoyed at the dogs and kid. They had also killed their battery in their car during the course of the night, probably due to sitting in it with the heat on but without turning the car on. They had to ask the host to jump it for them.

After eating breakfast, we backtracked to Gunnison to fuel up, then headed west on US 50 to US 92. It was about 66 miles from the campground to north rim of Black Canyon. The ride was well worth the curves, but beware, there are spots without guard rails next to several hundred feet drops. So if you're afraid of heights, you might want to take the south rim drive instead.

The Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park North Rim is at an odd location. US 92 takes you toward Crawford and you're in the middle of farm lands, then you head on some side roads and all of a sudden you're looking down on 2,700 foot drops. Black Canyon is narrower and deeper than the grand canyon. The canyon drops 95 feet per mile. You don't really notice that when you're riding to the north rim, but on your way back you definitely notice the decent toward Gunnison. You should also beware of animals, as there were a bunch of chipmunks, squirrels and birds darting across the road. Whatever you do, don't try to dodge them or else you could fly off the mountain in a ball of flames. Also beware of rocks that have fallen into the road, as they're usually on the curves when you're least prepared to encounter them.

Make sure you take something to eat and have a full tank of gas before heading out to the Black Canyon. There isn't much around in case you run out of fuel or get really hungry. The Black Canyon North Rim isn't paved, but it's groomed gravel. Just keep this in mind when you're going out there. It's washboarded in some spots, but overall not bad. My SV650 handled it just fine. If you're looking for something less frightful and more tourist oriented, you can go to the South Rim of the Black Canyon where it's more developed.

After visiting the north rim, we ate lunch in Crawford, which is just a couple miles north on US 92. The restaurant we stopped at had a Sunday Brunch that was definitely not a diet menu. Roast beef, gravy, mashed potatoes, corn, bacon, sausage, eggs, etc. The town was really small. it was basically a liquor store, two restaurants, a church and a gas station. We were the first bikers into the restaurant, but soon after a bunch more showed up. After eating lunch there, we fueled up and headed back to the camp ground.

The ride back on 92 to Gunnison seemed to go pretty quick, but the views and curves were amazing. Ryan almost hit a baby hawk at about 65mph, but it shot up at the last second. I saw it fly out of control for about 10 seconds before finally flying off normally. On the way back we also decided to see if we could get down near the river to get some photos of the Blue Mesa dam, but unfortunately the good spot was gated off for dam workers only.

We got back to the camp site around 3:00pm and our tents were completely full of dust, as there are no trees and very little ground cover. Any wind just picks up dirt and dust and blows it around. Even the rainflies put all the way to the ground didn’t keep the dust out. We spent a little time trying to clean our sleeping bags and stuff, then decided to re-build our lake cooled refrigerator and put our liquor back in. We had to move it about 3 feet closer because the water receded a bit during the day. I also had to add a shade attachment to keep the beers from heating up in the sun. We waited about an hour for the liquor to cool and tried getting in the water ourselves, but it was a brisk 65 degrees, so that didn’t work out too well.

After finishing the beers we decided it would be a good idea to give some fish a new home. We weighed down the empty bottles with rocks and sand and threw them in. The only problem is one of mine didn't have enough weight in it to fully sink, so it floated around for a good hour or two. We tried smashing it by throwing rocks at it, but it got too far away for us to do any damage. After the beers we switched our focus to finishing off the vodka and coke. Note: crappy vodka does not taste good when it's not cold or without ice cubes.

We had set up our little cooler near the boat ram and the people camping to the other side of us (not the one with the 2 year old) were bringing their boat in. All the kids were on the front and one of them fell into the cold water and started crying. We saw them throw in a life jacket and one of the adults jumped in after them. It took about 5 minutes for the boat to loop back around and pick them up, meanwhile the kid is crying probably due to the freezing water.

About 7:00pm the booze really started to kick in because we thought it would be a great idea to gather as much driftwood as possible for our fire. We ended up getting a bunch of big logs and a lot of medium sized pieces. We started our fire and waited a bit to eat dinner because we weren't quite hungry yet due to the huge lunch. By now it was about 8:30pm and dark and our fire was huge and blazing. We noticed that everyone else had already gone to bed, which seemed weird because the night before they were all up until 11 or so. We ate dinner around 9 and then kept the fire going for a little longer then went to bed.

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Tags: motorcycle, labor day 2011

Posted from: United States

Saturday, September 4, 2010 @ 7:00 PM in General Travel

We woke up and ate and then started riding around 9:00am. We took 285 to 112 to 160 which lead us right to our campground (about a mile east of Pagosa Springs).

There was quite a bit of traffic the first half of the ride, but the scenery was amazing. We only almost got lost once (almost started heading east on 24 instead of staying on 285/24W).

We started getting really hungry but couldn't find any places that looked good to eat along the way, so we decided just to wait until we got to Pagosa. When we got into town we stopped at the first place we could find and got some burgers. This was about 2:30 and there must have been 2 waitresses working for the entire restaurant. That would have been fine any other day, but it just so happened there was a huge motorcycle rally about 40 miles away in Durango and there were a ton of people looking to eat here. We finally got our food and ate and went to check into our campsite around 3:45.

We got our campsite set up and then decided to go into town and relax in some of the hot springs after being on the bike all day. The hot springs were nice, but smelled like sulfur. The pools ranged from 89-109 degrees. We stayed in the 100 degree pool the whole time.

After drying off, we decided to hunt down a liquor store and buy some beers for the night. After riding back and forth along the main drag 3-4 times looking for a liquor store the iphone said existed, we finally stumbled upon one and bought some beers.

We got back to the campground and started a fire and ate (we just brought the freeze-dried backpacker meals and had those for breakfast and dinner).

After eating an when the fire died down, we decided to call it a night and went to sleep. It got down into the high 30's that night, but luckily our sleeping bags were good for temps well below that.

Total distance today: 275 miles

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Tags: motorcycle, labor day 2010

Posted from: United States

Thursday, September 4, 2008 @ 11:00 PM in 2008 Europe Wedding

We hit a lot more landmarks in our sightseeing adventure today. These included the Piazza del Popolo, Spanish Steps, the Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon, Piazza Navona, and the Monument of Vittorio Emanuele II

When we were in the Piazza Navona, there was some kind of filming for a movie going on. They had a bunch of people dressed as hippies protesting around the obelisk. I'm still not sure what that was for, but it was interesting to see. We walked from there to the Spanish Steps where people kept trying to get us to buy knickknacks and flowers. We didn't stay too long before walking past the Trevi fountain and taking a lot of pics.

The Pantheon is another favorite of mine. The architecture and the hole in the roof are really unique. We started walking around near the Pantheon and stumbled on Nice Ice Gelateria which blew our minds. They had more gelato flavors than we'd seen at any shop throughout the trip. I was partial to the Stracciatella (vanilla with some chocolate pieces in it) and had been trying that flavor whenever we stopped for gelato. (Unfortunately it seems like this place has closed down and isn't around anymore. That's a shame.)

After stuffing ourselves with gelato, we made our way to the Piazza Navona and then walked over to the Monument of Vittorio Emanuele II to round out our sightseeing for the day.

Note: This post was written about 13 years after I went on this trip. Unfortunately I didn't keep a journal so this is pieced together from our itinerary and photos.

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Tags: italy, rome, gelato

Posted from: Italy