Traveller

Photo courtesy of Mainichi Daily These are "shimekazari" -- traditional New Year's decorations made with sacred Shinto rope of rice straw and other ornaments -- in the shape of samurai topknots. When we lived in Japan you could find versions of these mounted on the sides of buildings and on someone's front door. I will never forget seeing the side of the Meiji-ya Grocery Store building in Hiroo.  Hiroo is a neighborhood filled with embassies and western families.  The Meiji-ya had both western Christmas decorations mixed in with the Japanese.  I love how uniquely Japanese these New Year's decorations are in their symbols.  Each section is specific in how it relates to the new year, prosperity, good health et al. What is a little sad is that the skill and knowledge on how to make something like this, is fading within the country. Akemashite omedetou gozaimasu Otoshi o yoroshiku onegaishimasu あけましておめでとうございます  

SWAGG is a free mobile app (download here) that lets you shop smarter using your mobile phone. Buy, send or swap SWAGG GIFTS and organize your old school plastic gift cards. For every download of the app between now and Dec. 31, 2010, SWAGG will donate $1 to Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C) , up to $125,000. Clever Girls Collective and SWAGG are sending a pair of movie fans to the Sundance Film Festival! Download the SWAGG app and then visit the Ultimate SWAGG Getaway Sweepstakes site to enter to win a trip for two to the Sundance Film Festival. Entry deadline is January 3, 2011, 11:59pm, PST. Giving Fearlessly: Cleo and the Song of the Sea We love taking our dog to the beach. On the edge of town, where the hang gliders soar off of wind swept cliffs, is a wonderful stretch of beach that allows off-leash play for dogs. Our big German Shepherd-Siberian Husky girl loves chasing shore birds and having loads of space to stretch her legs while running across the cool wet sand. One afternoon, ...

Recycling that is often condemned but rarely seen in daylight Here is one side of the green movement in San Francisco that you don't see very often, at least not in daylight.  Residential neighborhoods regularly get men and women walking the streets and plucking cans and bottles from public and private trash cans.  They carry their bags this way or if part of a larger crew, they will covertly meet up with a truck parked or idling further down the street.

Canine Cargo or Puppy Passenger?

My amazing grandmother My grandmother died exactly 35 years ago today.  I think of her often and wish we had time together now.   She had such stories to tell.  Her travels to Asia in the 1920s are only documented by a few photos.  As a young girl I recognized and appreciated her spirit of adventure and independence. She knew how to live in the moment and create her home wherever she lived.  Through her I learned to create a feeling of home anywhere I set my shoes. My great-aunt Molly wrote the following poem honoring her older sister, my grandmother. We drove to the marina and parked On a strange, a dream like day. The sky was a breath-taking blue, And a light breeze rippled the bay. Such beauty pierces the heart, And we had nothing to say - For Loretta loved the song of the sea, And Loretta died today.

This YouTube video is what I love about Japan and Japanese television. Talking helpful Poodle? Check. Detailed instructional show with a great name? Check! This video for Ebi Fry 海老フライ reminds me how I miss Japanese television and the delicious prepared foods I could buy at the Peacock or Seifu grocery stores.

I love the Amazing Race Season 17. From the start it is easy to see why it wins Emmy Awards. Each episode satisfies my love for travel and reminds me how it should be savored and not rushed. The team members cannot hide who has an intolerant nature. It is clear who among them has never ventured outside their city, let alone the country before. In some ways the show is a promotion for solo travel.  It seems clear who will be divorcing, breaking up or ending a friendship. I wonder who will travel more after the show ends?

This time of year is my favorite. I'm contemplating travel plans for the new year.  I'm culling large photo files.  There is a chill in the air and a fire in the fireplace.. It is also a time to update our address lists and start thinking about what photo we are going to use for our holiday card. Travel photos are my favorite style for Christmas cards. Exotic locale or big city rooftop, it doesn't matter as long as we've captured one great moment together during our trip – that is harder than it sounds! Kauai Santa - Christmas in Hawaii Besides one amazing photo out of hundreds from a trip, I need a beautiful card and holiday stamp to go with it. Each year one of the hardest decisions to make is where to get holiday cards and what design to choose. This year is different. This year not only are we starting the decision-making process weeks earlier than usual I’ve already got three great ideas from the new Shutterfly holiday cards . This year we can pick up prints ...

Our view of the Grand Canal from atop the Rialto Bridge - Venice, Italy We spent a week in Venice and I often thought about the slow sinking of this beautiful city while walking. It was hard to imagine it being gone completely. The streets are at times very close to the water line, even in the spring when I was there but to have the entire city submerged was beyond me. Winter months are when it seems one - or at least I as a tourist - would expect to have water overlap the streets. Do you remember the big December 2008 flood photos - with everyone wearing stylish hip-waders? That winter it was said to be the deepest flood in 22 years. I read in an old Evening Independent that in 1966 both Venice and Florence experienced the worst flooding since the Middles Ages! Even the mayor of Florence was quoted as saying that the Arno River did more damage to the city than the water.

Casa Gispert - Barcelona

Our warmer temperatures are finally here in San Francisco!  Granted it is Labor Day, as in September not June or July, but this is when our city warms up. September through October are some of the warmest months here. We hope you come visit our city and if you do, bring you dog. We have lots of parks and watering holes for you and your whole family to enjoy - starting with this one in the photo. Crissy Field in the Presidio of San Francisco is a great destination for first time visitors.

View from our driver's windshield - by Sharon Castellanos

A crunchy crab! San Francisco can be expensive to live in and to visit. However if you look around there are lots of opportunity to find fun things to do at little or no cost any day of the week. Sourdough Animals you can eat! A name synonymous with San Francisco is Boudin's Bakery .  Never heard of them? Have you heard of sourdough bread?  They basically invented it!  Yep, in 1849! Wild yeasts in the San Francisco air had imparted a unique tang to their traditional French bread, giving rise to “San Francisco sourdough French bread.” Today, the Boudin family's initial recipe lives on in the hands and hearts of our expert bakers, with a portion of the original mother dough still starting each and every sourdough loaf we make. And the cool thing is that besides their stores and cafes, they have a large main restaurant on Jefferson Street that includes a shop and bakery where you can watch them in action!  They are walking distance from the Argonaut Hotel .  It i...

Mural across the side of a school along Folsom Street in San Francisco What do you think of when you hear of or read about the San Francisco neighborhood called the Mission? Nowadays the stories are not as centered around the funky shops or even growing high-end rental property and live/work spaces. You don't see constant references to Dave Eggers , McSweeney's or his literacy project 826 Valencia with its Pirate supply store in tandem to each story about the Mission. This summer what I have been pleased to see on every excursion to the Mission, besides all the colorful people and food - I see beautiful unexpected murals. There are lots and lots of murals all over the Mission District. You can find them on the sides of huge buildings or covering a small transformer box. Look down an alley and see one or along the wall of a play ground you pass by. It impresses me that the people have the talent to create these large scale works of art. The murals tell a story, often a cultura...

Wow. Now when I look back on my time spent in Japan as an expatriate, I guess it was pretty ballsy.  It was ten years ago. The internet was still a baby, especially in Japan.  Granted we got NTT Dokomo 3G clamshell design "kick ass" cell phones for USD $30 ten years ago but they were only good within the ISLAND known as Japan. Good luck with that! However what stopped me short recently, was finding this directory [the image above]. Inside the cover, it tells you in English, what to say and where to call in an emergency.  The directions are in English but they still direct you to say as much as possible in Japanese.  Seriously, they tell you to speak slowly and clearly. If at all possible to speak Japanese using their indicated patterns.  If you cannot make yourself understood properly, do not hang up. Give your address the Japanese way: city, ward, street address and house or apartment number.   Give a nearby landmark for reference - train station or ...

My mother's side of the family comes from a long line of hardworking people who lived by the sea.  In 1890 my great great grandfather sailed his ship to Washington state and stayed to raise a family.  Go further back to the 1700s and they could be found in remote areas of Maine and on Orr's Island. [sketch from family book] My first job out of college was for the Oceanic Society here at Fort Mason, in San Francisco.  It didn't pay much but one of the benefits was practically unlimited sailing opportunities.  I love being on or near the water.  Early on I only knew of my Washington state family history but a few years ago I was introduced to my great great grandmother.  My great great grandmother wrote a journal for each of her two daughters, and my great aunt's daughter gave me a photocopy. I read a story of family that tells of hardship on the islands during the Revolutionary War to records of second marriages because of death by scarlet fever or because a...

My sister went to Europe and all I got was this sweet story.  Thanks goodness .  Truthfully my sister went to Europe and bought loads of souvenir t-shirts that said "My mother went to ____ and all I got was this lousy t-shirt".  However lucky me , they are for her kids and grand kids. Bullet, dodged. It has been a few days now that everyone returned from the big three week trip.  My ears are burning from all the stories and my brain is trying to keep track of the different versions and who said what.  Here are 10 short highlights: No one died No one broke any body part or needed paramedics or late night pharmacy run They had a great exchange rate for their dollars British Airways didn't stop them at the gate or turn the plane around because of their drinking Everyone took photos - but my mom never took her date stamp off the front of her pictures My sister spent the most money on souvenirs and gifts Except for a little inclement weather in Paris, they had fabulo...

Getting my mother a digital camera for her first trip to Europe was my good deed.  She got it early so she could practice shooting pictures and deleting the goofy or overexposed shots.  Being a very cautious lady she was concerned about running out of room on her memory stick.  Even though we went through an exercise of calculating the average size image and how many would fit on her memory stick, her verbal panic on the phone and general worry of space after being in Europe for three weeks convinced me to buy her a second memory stick.  Clearly she didn't need it but if it made her happy and cost me less than $20, it was a small price to help her focus more on her sight seeing. Recently I got a postcard from my sister describing her joy at being in Paris and how AWESOME it all was.  She made no mention of my mom or anyone else on the trip for that matter.  Now I have two postcards from my mother.  One is digital that my brother produced off of an iPho...

My older sister is already half way through her first trip to Europe. After her eye rolling when I saw her last, it was weighing on my mind that she might be not having as good a time as she expected and hoped. Fortunately for me, and you , I have hard evidence now that she is having an AWESOME time. If you can't read this scan, my sister is clearly EXCITED about Paris.  She climbed the the bell tower in the Notre Dame Cathedral and in Versailles.  She loved seeing the Louve, the Musee d'Orsay and Eiffel Tower. Her joy at being in Paris and in France period is palpable from this postcard.  I love that she sent this postcard so early in her trip too. She arrived only three days earlier so jet lag must not have been a problem for her. Want to know what made me really happy too?  She took my advice and printed labels for her postcards.  I knew her handwriting wasn't the most legible so it was a little selfish on my end - hey I wanted to be sure the handlers on tha...

How cute do they look? Here are my mom and my sister (cropped because I never asked them if they cared about my showing their faces) in my brother's living room. Want to know how excited they are? My sister asked me to take their photo and my mother smiled in the photo! I know! I wish I could have shared that rare smiling image but you'll have to believe me. At first I was surprised at these happy faces since my sister was rolling her eyes pretty hard when I arrived an hour earlier.  I wonder. So here is the first funny part - see the blue tote bag? The initials ZF.  Dig this, my mother - as a form of caution and identity theft I think - used one of our dogs initials!  Yes our dog! Who passed away 30 years ago.   His name was Zorro. Part of me thinks that she's brilliant, the other part of me thinks she is a little bit crazy - a 1950s, unspoken/suppressed, Cold War style of crazy.  That perspective should make for some interesting comments overheard in Nor...

My sister is like these daisies. Sweet and happy looking, with bright open faces.  With her first big trip out of the country almost here, we spent one more day together for final purchases. She has been told that she can take jeans now so she wants a new pair. I thought of steering her in the direction of those Not My Daughters Jeans at Nordstrom .  With her figure they might be the most flattering.  I want to minimize her "freshman traveler" look.  However she could not be convinced.  Instead she got two pairs of Style&Co jeans at Macys, a brand she currently was wearing. Fine, I gave up.  What I did convince her to buy was a pair of socks for the plane.  They are the therapeutic socks that will keep her blood from pooling in her ankles during the long flight.  She doesn't know where she is sitting so she could be stuck in the middle of a row for hours at a time. We also decided that she should get a neck pillow. REI had one for $20 that wa...

  Relaxing Home Retreats Staycations have become more popular as vacation savings shrink or dry up completely like so many have over the past few years. Granted for some of us travel that involves a plane ticket is a luxury any year.  The high price of gas might also mean this summer we stay even closer to home. One alternative to feeling like a prisoner is to choose how you spend your vacation.  You can put all the same time and attention to detail, as you would a trip to London.  My sister has maps and books galore to look through before her European trip with my brother and mother.  Why not apply the same excited attention to your staycation? Consider these tips: Decide on a theme: you go to Paris and your time there is all things French.  Maybe you want a spa vacation at home.  Prepare your home: you make a packing list for your suitcase, do the same at home. Plan what you want to have around you and clear out the clutter. Unplug!  When you ...

Riding the subways and trains in Tokyo can not only get you from point A to point B but they also provide you with time to learn.  The few years we spent living in Tokyo, we did everything but drive.  We walked, rode our bikes, Rollerbladed, took taxis, rode the bus, subway, train and Shinkansen. We also rode in other peoples cars as passengers. As you can see here, I collected many of the subway passes.  This one for about $10 was typical Japanese - cute and adorable image of a puppy. I can't tell you how many of these I brought home as keepsakes. Usually my time spent on a train was trying to read the posters and listening to the announcements. As I studied Japanese, one of my favorite study tools was to read the movie posters on the train. I learned that all foreign words are spelled in katakana.  Once I started to learn katakana it was fun to translate popular movie titles like Eyes Wide Shut. The worst time I had was with the movie poster for What Lies Beneath ....

Photo by Sharon Castellanos

One of my travel destinations that is near the top of my list is China, all of China. My Labor Day weekend spent in Hong Kong years ago only whet my appetite for more. Living in San Francisco, with our huge Chinatown and all of its people, restaurants and shops, keeps me thinking about planning a trip back too. Today I just found out that the International Expo in Shanghai has begun. The newspapers and internet have in-depth coverage of the city and the Expo 2010 . All I can is WOW, now I really need to plan a trip. I've always been interested in seeing Shanghai and its old neighborhoods. Remember the Spielberg movie, Empire of the Sun ? It was so dramatic and captured my imagination forever! It wasn't set in Shanghai but Bertolucci's The Last Emperor was the other huge movie (9 Oscars!) that made me want to know more about China and its history. There is a lot to learn about this city. I can see why it has been the setting for lots of well-known novels and movies. D...

I recently spent a day shopping with my sister. She has a long list of what she can take on her trip in June. Since it is my brother making the list, he has made sure to impress upon her that she should not deviate at all or face his wrath. For reals, whatever. He is older than her by a year, what is he going to do? She can take him anyway, at least I'd bet on that. Anyway this list has my sister in a tizzy and so we decided to get together and see what we can accomplish. This turned out to be a good thing because she easily got distracted and I tended to refocus her on sale items so she'd stay on budget. She has time and since she lives in a town that sells more Wrangler jeans than packable travel pants, I figured she should head to the big city of San Francisco. We started at Costco but struck out except for a box of Handi-wipes that she can take instead of liquid Purell which thrilled her. She just learned the 3-1-1 concept from TSA. Then we moved on to REI where we found ...

My 25 year old niece drove herself along with her surprise passenger, from Richmond Virginia along the southern route of the US before dropping her passenger off in Los Angeles. Since this sort of cross country trip is something that I have always wanted to try, I asked her to document her drive. Her surprise passenger was her brother. He surprised her and everyone else in the family when he took a few days off work and jumped on a plane to make the drive with her. It was sweet and we all were happy that he rode shotgun. I'm not sure if it is because I grew up in a law enforcement household or what, but I never would have considered taking that drive on my own. However I can tell you many friends of mine from the East Coast and Midwest have driven across country multiple times without any problems. One of these days though, my plan is to follow Route 66 at least from end to end and document it. Then I could stay at the WigWam Motel in Arizona! Our theme song could be Johnny ...

Trying to help my older sister decide what to pack on her first 3-week trip to Europe is tough. Her typical style of travel is getting in her Toyota Rav4 and driving somewhere. She packs whatever her car will hold. Imagine a messy lumpy jumble - sort of Tetris and the wooden block stacking game Jenga. I've seen her cram various sizes of tote bags, duffel bags and/or paper bags into the trunk and onto the floor of the car. For me, the worst part is her lack of planning and gasp , lack of a list. Why do my sister's messy car trips matter? Because they show me where I am starting from with my sister and what she probably still needs to know about travel and packing light. Because you know she will need room for souvenirs . I predict we will have multiple conversations before June about electronics, specifically related to her camera and mobile phone. My plan is to take her to people who I know can help with her questions. Since I've been a Mac and Apple person for years ...

My sister is coming to town tomorrow. We have decided to spend the day together trying to figure out what she needs to take with her on her trip to Europe in June, and what she should leave behind. My sister is much more familiar with driving as the mode of travel for her vacations. She can drive hours and hours without complaining. I bet she loved that road trip Oprah did with Gayle. My sister rarely flies and has never been out of the country before. On this trip she will be gone for more than two weeks. She already is worried about what to use for carrying her gear and what the difference is between an adapter and a converter. Her style and needs are such that I bet stores like Sports Basement, REI and Orvis will be more her speed than the trendy Flight 001 in Hayes Valley. Hopefully she will remember to bring her lists and her electronics. Unfortunately she is not an Apple person, which would make things easier for her but I am sure we can find the right converters and adap...

This time of year always makes me think of my long departed Aunt Dorothy. She lived across the San Francisco Bay in Sausalito since World War II until she passed away in the 1980s. My Aunt Dorothy was a great lady who loved, absolutely loved , people. She owned a shop in the Village Mayfair near the Sausalito Harbor. Her tiny shop sold all sorts of items made by local craftsmen. Most of her customers were tourists. Whenever I would visit with Aunt Dorothy, she loved to tell me about the people she met, where they were from and what they loved about her shop. Her shop was called The Shoestring. She named it that because it literally was the size of a shoe string. It was very narrow. She also ran it on a shoestring budget. Her father was an shipping executive who got his ten kids and family successfully through the Depression by running a tight household. I think she paid attention and learned from him. After I graduated college, she shared with me how much the building managemen...

Photo: Sharon Castellanos

Mediterranean Photo by Sharon Castellano s I've been telling you recently that I have a sister and mother who will be leaving the country for the first time and that their trip involves their first passport. My sister will be buying her first suitcase with wheels, her first TSA lock and she will exchange money for the first time. She will probably eat her real fish and chips and shepherd's pie, maybe even drink her first Guinness. My mother will be hearing French spoken around her for the first time. She will use a lift for the first time and hear a real Scottish Brogue, maybe even hear a lilt in someone's voice for the first time. I expect she might also have her first real fish and chips as well. Well since we are family, and I have been sharing their secrets I will contribute my own recent first. Back in November 2009, during a trip to Southern Spain not only did I go to the Rock of Gibraltar and Morocco, North Africa for the first time, I put my feet in the Mediterr...