Category: Travel
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France Excursion 2023 Part Five: Naps!
On Saturday the 24th we decided to take it easy. We slept about 11 hours, then I stashed the car in a garage for the day while Diane went out to find pastries for breakfast. We took our dirty laundry two blocks to the nearest laundromat: "Charlie et le Choco-Laverie," a hybrid cafe-laundry with wifi.…
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France Excursion 2023 Part Four: Up and Away!
On Friday the 23rd we got up very very early, about 4:30 a.m., and bundled into the car for a drive up the Cher river to the little town of Francueil where we sat outside a deserted winery in the pre-dawn darkness. A few other cars pulled up nearby, and then the caravan of white…
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France Excursion 2023 Part Three: Chambord, Ezia, and Magic
We got moving early on the 22nd. I got the car out of the underground garage, and we set out eastward on the Autoroute heading for Blois. From there we followed smaller roads to the great palace of Chambord. This was Francis I's personal dream house, and he poured treasure into the project — and…
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France Excursion 2023 Part Deux: Stones and Wine
On Wednesday the 21st we had a fabulous lunch at a restaurant chosen at random because we were hungry, then picked up our rental car at the Tours train station and drove out of the city to do some tourism on the north side of the Loire River. Our first stop was the Dolmen de…
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France Excursion 2023: Episode 1, The Beginning
The 27th annual meeting of the Society for Behavioral Neuroendocrinology was hosted this year by the University of Tours. When neurobiologist Dr. Diane A. Kelly decided to present a poster session at the conference, my response was, "I guess we're going to France, then!" So we did. The plan was to cross the Atlantic a…
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Boskone 60
This coming Friday I'll be at Boskone, the longest-running SF convention in New England, at the dear old Westin Seaport hotel in Boston. If you want to stop in and see me in person, my convention schedule is here: FRIDAY, February 17 4:00 p.m.: Serving Up a Tasty World — There's more to fictional dining than…
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My WorldCon Schedule
In two and a half weeks I'll be in Chicago for ChiCon 8, the 80th World Science Fiction Convention. I offered to participate in programming events, and they're really making me sing for my supper this time. Thursday, September 1 (all times are CDT) 2:30 P.M.: Writing and Story Development for Tabletop Games. This is…
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The Trip to Iceland, Day 7
And so we say farewell to scenic Iceland. On our final day we had a big breakfast at our hotel, made a few last-minute purchases, and then packed up the car and left the Hotel Borg. We drove south, back to the Reykjanes peninsula, and spent some of the time before our flight doing some…
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The Trip to Iceland, Day 6
My experience of travel to various places has taught me that one should always include a "slack day" in one's travel plans. There are a number of good reasons for having a day with few or no activities planned: you can re-visit someplace you really enjoyed, you can switch around if something is closed or…
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The Trip to Iceland, Day 5
We rose fairly early and had a substantial breakfast at the Hotel Borg's cafe, then dressed in our warmest clothes and headed down to the waterfront to board one of the Elding whale-watching tour boats for a three-hour cruise. We shared the boat with a tour group from Italy, who were having a swell time.…
The Cambias Digression 