2023 Year in Travel Wrap Up

Looking back on the year, I noticed I’ve traveled a lot. For some it may not be that much, but for me this year was the most travel I have ever done in a year, and more than I have done up to this point in my life. There are some highlights and lowlights, so with further ado, here is the list of some of my favorite and least favorite experiences from 2023.

Favorite Hotels

                Apollo Hotel Amsterdam
               AC Hotel Tokyo Ginza
               Renaissance Inn and Suites, Brussels

This is a three-way tie for best hotel of the year. Each hotel had something unique. For the Apollo Hotel Amsterdam, it was the beautiful view from the hotel window of the Amsterdam canals, and an incredible room in general. The AC Hotel Tokyo Ginza was a standard AC Hotel with features that were uniquely Japanese. Everything in the hotel was placed perfectly, was beautiful and functional. The Renaissance Inn in Brussels upgraded me to one of the largest suites I’ve ever stayed in while still maintaining the charm of the city.

The view from my room at the Apollo Hotel, Amsterdam.

View from the top of the AC Hotel, Tokyo.

Worst Hotel I Actually Slept In

Excalibur, Las Vegas

This isn’t even close. My hotel room was disgusting. It hadn’t been updated in at least 20 years and smelled like tobacco smoke. The sheets, blankets, everything smelled terrible and had a yellowish stain. I would have opened the window, but I was on the first floor directly above the casino ceiling near the ventilation ducts. These ducts pushed tobacco smoke from the casino nicely into my room. I actually paid to get out of this room a day early. It was worth every cent. Yuck.

Best Italian Food

Brussels

A big thanks to my friends for taking me to this fancy restaurant when I met up with them in Brussels. I cannot remember the name or the location, only the site and tastes of the delicious Italian meal that we enjoyed. The menu was in French, so again thanks to my friends for translating and having a truly memorable evening.

Best Tacos

Agave & Rye, Lexington, Kentucky

I don’t associate Kentucky with delicious vegetarian tacos, but here it is. This place had surprisingly good food and was a great change of pace from hotel restaurants. The tacos were made beautifully, with a lot of vegetarian options. The shirts and decor are also something special.

Best South American Cuisine

Mayan Café, Louisville, Kentucky

I’ve written about this place previously. It was one of the best meals I’ve enjoyed all year. The food was delicious, gorgeous and memorable. I think it was also at least somewhat healthy as well. The black bean empanadas were rich and flavorful, and the salbutes were equally incredible.

Best Waffles

Brussels – seriously, anywhere in Brussels

The waffles in Belgium are next-level good. They are sweet, crispy, and can be topped with Belgian chocolate, strawberries and whipped cream. My mouth is watering thinking about these waffles. Although I had these first on vacation, I got them again when I had to change trains in Brussels on my way to and from Paris for the Paris Air Show.

Best Frites

Amsterdam

The Dutch are known for their frites, and the random place a couple of friends found one night was fantastic. I’m not sure I could ever find this place again, but I have had great frites nearly everywhere I’ve tried them in Amsterdam.

Best Indonesian

Delft, The Netherlands

I haven’t had much Indonesian cuisine, but The Netherlands is a great place to enjoy it. The Dutch colonized Indonesia and therefore have a rich – if decidedly upsetting – history with the country and culture. The tofu-egg-peanut dish I had was delicious. Again, I wouldn’t be able to find the restaurant again if I tried, but it was very good.

Worst Train Ride

Brussels to Mainz

Imagine a train that is packed with people, not being able to find any seat, standing in the aisle for a couple of hours on a train and desperately trying to find anywhere to sit without insulting someone. This was the train ride from Brussels to Mainz. The track was bumpy and it was often difficult to understand where my stop was.

Scariest Gondola Ride

Cur, Switzerland

Cur is a really cool small city in Switzerland at the bottom of a valley. On either side are steep hillsides that go up into the Alps. The gondola is used to reach the top of these hillsides so mountain bikers can take the plunge down at high speeds. There is a second gondola that goes up to a restaurant and hiking trails that overlook the city. The first, large gondola swayed in the wind. There is that moment where you look down and realize the ground is hundreds of feet below. And then you look up and realize that you are suspended by a steel cable that isn’t that thick. The second, small gondola, was something more akin to what you would find at many ski resorts. In my case the gondola was steel and had a few rusty holes in the floor where I could look through and see the ground quickly moving past many feet below. I’m not sure I’ve ever been so happy to be on the ground again.

Really trying not to be scared! Taking selfies was better than looking through the holes in the rusty gondola floor.

Looking down toward Cur from the surrounding hillsides.

Scariest Flight

Frankfurt to Friedrichshafen

I take small commuter jets frequently and they are normally fine. In this case we had to take a bus out to the airplane on the tarmac, and we were then unable to leave the bus for about half an hour or so. There was a bomb threat on the plane’s previous flight and the ground staff were searching for any explosives. We were offered alternative transportation down to Friedrichshafen if we wished, but they “did not believe there was a bomb on the aircraft”. I took the flight anyway. I’ve never seen anyone, let alone everyone, reading the emergency evacuation card on any flight before this.

The plane after landing in Friedrichshafen. The ground felt good.

Worst Flight

Haneda to San Francisco

I took a chance on an ANA flight from Haneda back to San Francisco for my return leg from Japan. I tried to order a vegetarian meal and pay for an upgraded seat, but I didn’t have any luck. Upon boarding the plane, after being flagged for extra security checks, I sat in my coach seat and noticed it was a bit hard. Then the two crying babies came on board. The babies were remarkably generous and alternated screaming for most of the 11-hour flight. There was a mask mandate on the plane as well – one of the last airlines to require them. They didn’t have any vegetarian meals, as I hadn’t preordered it. I had rice crackers, water and green tea. My headphones didn’t work with the airplane’s seat-back entertainment system, and that hard seat didn’t get any softer. I finished the flight with a three-hour wait in a windowless room in customs to get my Global Entry interview completed. It was a fun 15 hours. I still got back home before I left Tokyo, so technically it was 15 hours that I shouldn’t have had anyway due to time changes.

Best Museums

                Guttenberg Museum, Mainz
               Royal Naval Observatory, Greenwich, England
               Royal Maritime Museum, Greenwich, England

I really like museums, and these are a few of my favorites. The Guttenberg Museum is a lesser-known museum and had remarkably few people visiting when I was there. Mainz is where Guttenberg invented the printing press, which for the first time made large volumes of knowledge accessible to the masses. This museum has original prints from Guttenberg, along with two complete bibles. It is one of the most amazing museums that few people ever visit.

Some of the first ever books made with a printing press.

The Royal Naval Observatory, the Royal Maritime Museum and the Cutty Sark are all in Greenwich and a short walk from one another. The Royal Naval Observatory houses John Harrison’s clocks. These clocks were the first to provide a true and consistent solution for finding longitude at sea. This is also where astronomers battled with Harrison about the best way to find longitude, preferring a solution that was ultimately unsuccessful. Today, we use Harrison’s method for calculating longitude with clocks being central to all matters of computing, communication and navigation. The Royal Observatory is also home to the Prime Meridian. This is the zero line for longitude.

The Royal Maritime Museum is also impressive. Growing up I was fascinated by Ernest Shackleton and the story of the Endurance where an Antarctic expedition goes horribly wrong, but all of the crew survived. This museum has many of the artifacts on display from this expedition. It also has artifacts from Lord Nelson, including the jacket he was wearing when he was shot in battle. It is incredible to see so many historic items in one place.

Royal Maritime Museum, as seen from the Royal Naval Observatory.

Note that the British Museum is not on this list. I didn’t visit this museum this year. I also don’t believe many of the artifacts in the museum belong to Britain, as most were taken during the time of the British Empire. The artifacts listed in the museums above have stronger connections to their current homes.

Best Castles and Earthworks

                Ehrenbreitstein Fortress, Koblenz, Germany
               Marksburg Castle, Braubach, Germany
               Muiderslot, Muiden, The Netherlands
               Halle Gate, Brussels, Belgium
               Tower of London, London, England

I really like castles and museums, so this is a hard list to narrow down. Ehrenbreitstein Fortress is the oldest on this list, with a history dating back to around 1000 BCE. Modern emplacements were added later in the 17th century. It was used through World War I as a military headquarters and in World War II housed important cultural artifacts. Getting to the site is also fun, with a gondola ride over the Rhine from downtown Koblenz up to the site.

This place is massive! This a view down one of the corridors. There were many more like this.

Marksburg Castle was an interesting experience. The castle is isolated on the top of a hill overlooking the Rhine and is well preserved. It is also one of the few castles never to have been breached. The castle can only be explored at set times through tours. To make the timing work, I took a tour that was led in German. The guide would briefly provide an explanation and redo his jokes in English. The castle itself is beautifully preserved and is fascinating.

The Muiderslot Castle is a classic waterfront castle in the Netherlands. I went to see Pampus, an island about 1.5 miles from the shore in the Markermeer Lake. The ferry to the Pampus island passed by the Muiderslot Castle, and I knew I had to visit the unique structure. The castle is the most beautifully preserved of any that I visited (including the Tower of London). It has a rich history and most of the buildings are open and accessible. The audio tour was also not overbearing and was full of interesting facts. It is a bit away from the bustle of Amsterdam, providing some relief from the city. This is one of my favorite places in The Netherlands.

Muiderslot Castle, as seen from a berm outside the moat. Now this is a castle!

Halle Gate in Brussels was a cool find on a rainy day in Brussels. It was a short walk from the Brussels train station. The site is part of the old wall and fortifications around the city of Brussels. The site has been beautifully restored. The tour is centered around a central, spiral staircase with rooms extending out from each floor. At the top is a beautiful view of the city. The artifacts are well preserved and it was fascinating to see such an historic site that had been so well preserved in the middle of the city with so few visitors. The pub across the street is also fun, with delicious Belgian beer.

Looking up the central spiral staircase of Halle Gate.

The Tower of London is by far the most popular on this list. It is a place known for its large crowds of people wanting to see the crown jewels that are kept in the castle. The castle has multiple sections to it and was used as a royal residence, a jail and execution area, and a fortification for collecting taxes along the river Thames. I found the audio guide to be very helpful and provided greater insight into the site’s rich history. The site dates back to the Romans and its Middle Ages history has been well documented. Although it is a popular tourist spot, I still found the visit to be worthwhile.

Best Ship Tour

Cutty Sark, Greenwich, England

The Cutty Sark had to make an appearance somewhere on this list. The ship has been permanently drydocked and the museum has been built around it. Venturing into the museum involves going down, below the keel of the ship and seeing it from a unique perspective. The ship has been beautifully preserved, both inside and out. After enjoying the beauty of the hull, stairs take you up into the inside of the ship before reaching the decks. Again, everything has been beautifully preserved and the ship has been turned into a working, interactive museum that explores the last days of sail.

The view upon entering the Cutty Sark museum.

Strangely Developed Historical Landmarks

Original Globe Theater

Boston Massacre Site

Kamp Vught

Historical sites are a fascinating look into how we remember the past. Do we preserve these sites with reverence? Do we bury our history with new development? These sites all have history that has been buried or otherwise neglected in ways that seem strange to me.

Original Globe Theatre site. The Globe Theatre’s place in the history of the English language and theater is difficult to understate. This is the home of the Bard, where William Shakespear’s plays were first performed and where audiences experienced the tragedies of Othello, Ceasar and the Henry’s. It is where someone got really trippy and first performed A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Today, the site is a parking lot and apartments. The apartments are simple and rather ugly. It is nothing befitting the legacy of the greatest playwright in the English language.

The Boston Massacre is one of the key places where the Revolutionary War started. British troops opened fire on a riotous crowd of revolutionaries, with 11 men shot and four killed. John Adams, himself a revolutionary, defended the British soldiers in court in a demonstration of the importance of liberty and justice. Today the site is between several roads and is home to a monument built into stone pavers in a small plaza. The sense of reverence is missing. It simply is part of the cityscape.

Kamp Vught is the strangest site on this list. I can’t say it is disappointing per se, but I do find the museum to be in odd bedfellows with the current uses for the site. Kamp Vught, as detailed in a previous post, is the site of a Nazi concentration camp. While I will not dive into the details here, it is a place that I found deeply moving. The original camp was large, and it is natural for parts of it to be converted to other uses following the war. It is these specific uses I find challenging. On one part of the site is the only Dutch maximum-security prison. Its walls cast a literal shadow over the crematorium on the site. It seems strange that the site is still used for internment after the ruthlessness of its previous occupiers. On the other side of the grounds is a military base for the Dutch Army. And yet another part, between the museum, the military base and the prison is a series of hiking and mountain bike trails that trace some of the same grounds the prisoners of Kamp Vught would have walked. Among these trails is the site of some of the executions that took place during the Nazi rule. It seems like a very strange collection of uses for the site where so many suffered and lost their lives.

The prison (left building) is right next to the Kamp Vught museum (right building)

Worst Taxi or Uber Ride

Paris, France

France has never been my favorite place to visit. They have great food, fascinating history and some of the most incredible art, along with the most important bike race in the world. All of this cool. Driving, however, is really scary! I took an Uber from my hotel near the airport to a pickup point for buses going to the Paris Airshow. It is best in a Paris cab to close your eyes and hope you don’t die, or if you do that it will be quick and painless. Turn signals are optional. Horns are mandatory. There is no “three-second rule” for following distances. The drivers are fearless – probably because those who had any fear are now dead. I took the train back to the hotel and was happy to pay a bit more and take longer for the experience.

Best Place to See the Hauge

De Haagse Toren*

The Hague Tower is an old church tower that can be visited with a guided tour. The tours are typically in Dutch, so I was fortunate to be with enough people who spoke English and a guide who could do the tour in three languages for the tour to be given in two languages. The tower is in the central part of the city and has working bells (these can be understandably loud when taking the tour!). The climb is steep and narrow in parts, so the tour is nice because it limits the size of groups at any given time. I’ve never seen bells that big before, or been able to see the inner-workings of the clocks and bell towers. From the top, the views are some of the best in the city – perhaps not the same as when the tower was originally built, but still great nonetheless.

Looking out to the North Sea from the top of the bell tower.

Biggest Museum Disappointments

National Air and Space Museum, Virginia
Dutch Maritime Museum, Amsterdam

The National Air and Space Museum in Virginia is the companion to the museum on the National Mall in Washington, DC. It has all of the stuff that the National Mall location didn’t have space for, including a space shuttle and many aircraft. The museum’s collection is among the best in the world, if not the absolute best. I find the best museums put the artifacts on display in context so they can be understood and appreciated. This museum is packed with so much stuff that is all really cool that it lacks the necessary context to appreciate each item in the collection, or even some of the most historically important. The SR-71 Blackbird, the Space Shuttle Discovery and Concorde are all very impressive. The Enola Gay B-29 Superfortress also occupies an important place in the museum. Seeing all of these items together, without all of the context, detracts from the impact of each piece. The Enola Gay requires context to understand its importance as the aircraft that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

The Enola Gay (center) and an Air France Concorde (right) at the National Air and Space Museum in Virginia. There are so many aircraft in this building and none are placed in the context to understand the significance of each artifact.

Space Shuttle Atlantis at the National Air & Space Museum in Virginia. Gemini capsules are hanging to the left of the Space Shuttle.

The Dutch Maritime Museum in Amsterdam was a disappointment for the opposite reason. The building is massive, but the collection was sparse and didn’t have many artifacts. The boat outside was cool to see and tour, but again was sparse on details. The Cutty Sark in Greenwich, England is a different type of sailing vessel but is presented in a more compelling way. It is a bit hard to add much more to this review other than disappointment that the museum didn’t have more to offer.

Random Thing

Atomium, Brussels

The Atomium in Brussels is one of those sites you just need to see to believe. Prepared for the World’s Fair in 1958, the Atomium is a giant replica of the atom structure of the iron crystal. By giant, I’m not kidding. This thing is 335 feet tall and is approximately 165,000,000,000 times larger than the molecule it is based on. Something so small that it would take an electron microscope to see is suddenly so big it requires a panoramic camara to capture. Venturing inside, a series of escalators moves you from one atom to the next in the crystal structure. This is basically one of those mini molecules that your teacher used in high school chemistry to explain how atoms connect to one another, blown up so large that each connection has an escalator inside and each atom has a different exhibit. Venturing through the structure is fascinating, and asks important question like “why would someone build such a giant thing?” and “Did this guy’s chemistry teacher really have that big an impact?” Ultimately, I’m glad we have artists and architects who are curious about the world to make giant molecule models that you can travel through.

Coolest Place Visited

Theodul Glacier, Zermatt, Switzerland*

This glacier is accessed via the Matterhorn Glacier Paradise gondola ticket. The gondola starts in downtown Zermatt with smaller gondolas before reaching a central hub on the glacier with a restaurant, viewing decks and the option to take a gondola down to Italy or up to Glacier Palace. At Glacier Palace, the gondola docks at a building built into the mountain rock. There is an opportunity to travel up to an observation deck where you can see the surrounding mountains with nothing blocking the view, or you can go down an elevator into the glacier itself. In the glacier, you can look up from the bottom of crevasses and venture through the ice tunnels. The ice tunnels have small rooms with various ice sculptures. It is an incredible sight. It is by far the coolest place I visited this year.

It can get slippery inside the glacier. Rubber mats helped.

Looking up from the bottom of a crevasse.

Worst Trip Overall

Palm Beach, Florida

This trip was set to be exciting. I was going to be attending a conference in Florida that I was really looking forward to. Unfortunately, what I thought was allergies turned into a nasty virus and I was unable to leave my hotel room for several days aside from a brief trip to urgent care. The Florida urgent care was exactly what you would expect: old people who were nearly dying and young people getting drug tested for new jobs. Also, apparently EMTs can write prescriptions in Florida? I was seen by an EMT who promptly wrote a prescription for something to which I am allergic. I finished the trip a day early, never making it to the conference but feeling better enough to fly home and sleep. Chills, body aches, runny nose, it was really no fun.

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