anchored & adrift has temporarily relocated from Washington, DC to San Francisco for one month. In this Destination Deep Dive series I share what not to miss in SF from my after work and weekend adventures.
Sunshine, clear skies, and warm weather make for a good weekend. Add an all-terrain adventure and you’ve got a great one. Yesterday, I headed to East Bay to meet a friend and Oakland resident for an insider look at life on the other side of the Bay Bridge. Continue reading “Destination Deep Dive: SF – A Day in East Bay”→
Washington, DC, a top destination for foreign and domestic visitors alike, is consistently at the top of listings of the fittest cities in the US. While sticking to a workout plan while traveling can be tough, the proliferation of gyms and boutique fitness studios in the city can be can be an opportunity to try something new or attend a destination class.
The keywords to describe health in northwest DC are luxury, boutique, and niche. In addition to local, multilocation gyms like Balance and Vida, group fitness classes are the name of the game. From Zumba and cycling to Piloxing and Pound, DC has it all. For travelers, the great thing about these classes is you can often take a free first class or week, or buy just a single class or a small class package if you’re staying longer, instead of subscribing to a monthly membership. Continue reading “Sign Me Up: Where to Work Out During a Trip to the Fittest City in the US”→
From the title, it may seem like I have given myself an impossible task (the cold weather edition of visiting a city in Canada, really?), but in Toronto’s defense and from experience with many northern summers, the city is probably a very different place in the summer with an abundance of rooftop bars, open markets, outdoor events, a beautiful waterfront, and even a beach/dock fusion situation. So this fall/winter Toronto travel post focuses on what’s best for brief outdoor walks or activities with plenty of options to warm up inside. Continue reading “Toronto in 48 Hours: Cold Weather Edition”→
The streetcar track runs through the center of St. Charles Avenue, on a grassy strip of land between each direction of the road. Joggers run on the narrow area of grass that separates the two streetcar tracks, because the sidewalks are too uneven to safely exercise on. After all boarding passengers have inserted $1.25, the streetcar jerks to life and heads toward the next stop. While our elevated seats provide great views of stately mansions on St. Charles, and tourists snap photos of the streetcar as it goes by, the old world ride is only graceful on film. Our ride is rickety and slow, and as the driver winds a joystick back and forth, the engine and breaks shudder and groan as we continue toward the bustling French Quarter. The lights flicker on and off, and the stop requested signal interrupts any streetcar-induced reverie like a blaring alarm. This is New Orleans. Continue reading “A Big, Easy Weekend: While City Systems Fail, New Orleans Culture Is Wonderfully Alive”→
From left to right: the 2018 FIFA Stadium under construction, the Port of St. Petersburg, and new, privately-owned condominiums. [Click to enlarge]When you wake up and open the blinds in the Port of St. Petersburg, the view seems like it is constructed out of socio-economic satire. To my left, shiny new condominiums were recently finished or in the final stage of construction. Still further to my left was a developing soccer stadium, scheduled (and politically pressured) to be ready by the 2018 FIFA World Cup, Sochi-style, as St. Petersburg is one of the host cities. In contrast, directly ahead of me were dismal, rundown, seemingly Soviet-era apartments with external AC units. I later found out, they were in fact Soviet, state-owned apartments. They’re apparently still in operation.
A morning view of the Soviet-era apartments visible from the port.
If you read my post on my pre-trip reading, you know that I read Robert Massie’s Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman just before heading to my Baltic destinations, and found both Catherine and the clashes of European histories during that era to be absolutely intriguing. With two full days and one night in Russia, arriving via the port of St. Petersburg, we spent the first day touring the historic heart of the city, spying after onion domes throughout the former capital while focusing on two main sights: The Church of Our Savior on Spilled Blood and the Hermitage Museum. The second day we headed out of the city to take in a summer residence of the Russian tsars. Continue reading “A Catherine the Great-Inspired 36 Hours in St. Petersburg: Day 1”→
Despite a lifetime of taking the ferries back and forth between Stockholm and Helsinki, and forcibly becoming acquainted with Tallink, the Estonian ferry brand, after their acquisition of my beloved Silja Line, the Finnish cruiseferry brand, I had never headed south across the Gulf of Finland for a daytrip in Tallinn. Until I turned 23. Continue reading “Turning 23 in Tallinn, and a Tirade about Tallink”→
I have finally had the opportunity to start to take in Berlin in person, which I plan to do in a series of visits, and I still can’t wrap my mind around it. Berlin is the Hauptstadt of Europe’s economic powerhouse, a centuries-old city, but also a brand new city, reborn again and again through some of modern history’s worst clashes.
Copenhagen is a beautiful city, and with airline connections, mainly through SAS’s major hub at Kastrup Airport, becoming more convenient for visiting the Nordic capital, there’s all the more reason to visit. But with many travelers using it as a gateway for other northern European cities, or as a departure point for increasingly popular Baltic cruises, it sometimes gets overlooked for an extended stay. If you only have one day in Copenhagen, consider fitting the following activities into your day, and then make plans to come back again. Continue reading “One Day in Copenhagen: What Not to Miss”→
Hej! After a painless, nonstop flight from Dulles to Copenhagen, I arrived at the Copenhagen Marriott just in time for some breakfast before heading out for the day. On the agenda: a quick tour de Skåne, or the southern part of, Sweden for lunch and fika with family. So after flying in that morning, I took the train from Copenhagen H over the Öresund bridge to head north to Halmstad. After our rendezvous in Halmstad we drove back, taking the Scandic Line ferry from Helsingborg back to Denmark and then continuing into Copenhagen. Continue reading “København-Skåne by Air, Land, and Sea”→
anchored & adrift 