mydreamquest's VirtualTourist Home Page

Hey World,

**UPDATE: March 10, 2008**

What's been happening lately?

Has it been over a year since my last update? Time is really flying these days. I am still in Alameda but have been innundated with work and my new hobby: Marathon running. I love running marathons and recently completed the 2008 Napa Valley Marathon a week ago and the New York City Marathon last November 2007.

I really want to explore and miss traveling. This year, like 2007, may have me limited in my journies staying in the contiguous USA. I will probably have time to visit my father who is moving to Des Moines, Iowa. With that, I will probably run the Des Moines Marathon or Sioux City Marathon sometime in October 2008. Since I will be in the midwest, I will probably venture to see Mt. Rushmore in South Dakota. South Dakota's Black Hills offers many scenic places.

Dear Europe: I just want to say I truly miss you. If I do not run the Des Moines Marathon, I still have my eyes set on Dublin. I truly want to see that city and after watching the charming movie "Once", I want to go there even more.

Picture

Here I am earlier this month running the Napa Valley Marathon. I did better than last time finishing 35 minutes faster with a time of 4 hours, 6 minutes and 48 seconds. Believe me, those 48 seconds seemed like forever.

But what an experience! Running along the Silverado Trail from Calistoga to Napa is extremely scenic and as beautiful as any country trail in the world.

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Next on the Agenda

Not sure at the moment. If I suddenly find $100 million dollars on the ground, I'll probably visit everywhere starting with Paris, then Shanghai, then Dublin, then London, then the quite highlands and lowlands of Scotland, then Liverpool, then Vienna, then Liege, then Helsinki (to lay low at Zetors), then way down to Buenos Aires to visit my good friend Vic (the Traveler) and then Mexico City followed by Peru. I would also register to run the Antarctica Marathon which is on my list. I want to run a marathon in every continent before I die. That means, if I found $100 million, I'd probably want to run a marathon in Africa, more than likely Kenya.

How I Found VT

Why am I at VT? Initially I joined because I was researching apartment rental information for a trip to Buenos Aires and via a Yahoo search engine, I found myself here.

Realizing, how important traveling is to me, I've since developed my page and gradually try to add a new picture each day.

Tell Me About You

To all my friends here, where are you gong next?
Where have you been lately?
How much vacation time do you have each year?

Those places where the modern blend with the past always fascinate me. Tallinn, with it's old town next to their developing downtown leaves the mind with many possibilities both looking back in past and envisioning the future. Keep an eye on this growing city of charm.

I love how intoxicating this place was when I visited it just this September 2004.

Vienna is about the beauty of classical music and the secret delight of walking about District 1 at 6 am before the rest of the city awoke on below freezing slush-ice streets of a December winter morning.

When the snow falls at 6:30am, and you're just a short walk to the Stephansdom Cathedral, the morning wind gets muted by the parachuting of soft, lazily clumpy snow. Within minutes, the slushy grey dark streets of Vienna turn into a blanket of night bright white!

You feel the ghosts of past composers, Beethovens, Mozarts, and Schuberts walking beside you composing. Not just in thought, but in the gradual crescendo of snow flakes tingling the imagination as it falls down, thick, dry, slowly, making a freezing temperature warm with a morning white in the darkness of an unawake morning.

The food, the people the history, the inspiration will always live there.

Vienna is also a great city to study architecture and how history effects architecture. Baroque styles with "prisoners" holding up structures relates to the Turks; and of course the Onion shaped domes also from influences from the Turks. The modern/surreal architecture made famous by Hundertwasser. Anywhere in Vienna's District 1 is an architects dream walk.

The intense quiet of Vienna's "busy Districts" downtown is like an optical illusion. You really feel as if you are in a ghost town and then you enter a cafe and say to yourself: "so that's where all of Vienna's life fled to."

The cobblestone streets in old town; crepes in a breakfast house by the St. Lawrenece; the streets throughout this city.

I see myself living my final days in Quebec. The fortress overlooking the St. Lawrenece and the street musicians and makeshift art galleries stay safely nestled in my memory untainted.

I love cities in September where in the presence of warm weather feel the premonitions of the cold winter awaiting in arrears. Quebec (and Tallinn) above exemplify this feeling the greatest.

To me, my recent trip to Buenos Aires was an exploration into my soul and heart. There is so much love in this city and the word that always comes to mind when I look back on my experiences here is the word: "Passion." That is what Buenos Aires is About. The people are very beautiful, tough, friendly, charming, and wonderful conversationalists. I left that city with many new friends, all who have in one way or another given me a greater longing and love of life itself.

The many walks in Recoleta will always be clear as glass in my memory and I find myself visiting Buenos Aires many more times. I love the food, the style of the people, and the emotions that radiate in this city's humid air.

The London Underground and accessibility of this modern city is birthmarked by history. Oxford Street and the rush of London isn't as taxing as one would imagine.

The Tate Modern Museum's Entrance, a huge yellow eye staring at you in a voyeurism of calm in a dark cellar like reclining entrance with the feel of London fog; the diversity.

Possibly the world's most beautiful people live in London.

There is a loud intimacy of London that makes visiting this city a very personal experience.

The birth place of Mozart, this city is very intimate if you're located near the Salzach River. No place in the world is a better place to be, if you enjoy Classical Music and are in Salzburg during July-August when they have their annual 2 month long music festival featuring the greatest operas, symphonies, and performers in the entire world.

There are countless restaurants and stores with delicatessans where the meats (hungarian, austrian, polish, italian, and german) are whetting to the palette.

I suggest 5 days at least while in Salzburg to truly feel the splendor of this intimate city in the heart of Austria by a river.

Obviously, I love to travel. You'll find my pages more interesting if you have certain things in common with me. Some things I like to observe when I travel:

1. Places that have scenes from movies;
2. Places where important people of history were born, died, are buried, or had a significant event involving them (i.e. The High School Jerry Garcia studied at before he dropped out: Balboa High School on Cayuga Avenue in San Francisco's Excelsior District)
3. Types of Trees and Plant Life
4. The Different types of animals, birds, and insects
5. Watching People's dress styles and mannerisms
6. What is sold in supermarkets
7. The People
8. Areas where I can find a landscape view of the city I'm visiting
9. The signs, billboards, and advertisements
10. Any idiosyncracies of cities (like how, in San Francisco, there are myriad questions asked prior to ordering lunch so that the waiter/waitress are assured you are getting exactly what you want).

Miscellaneous things about me:

Music:

Mahler, Beethoven, The Chameleons, Ride, The Smiths, Smokey Robinson, Fishbone, Godspeed! You Black Emperor!, The Shins, Elliot Smith, The Swans, Idlewild.

My music: Here

Movies:

The Third Man, Amelie, The Godfather, Maria Full of Grace, Young Frankenstein, Blue Velvet, Day of the Jackal, 16 Candles, 39 Steps, and Hairspray.

Writers:

Bukowski, Borges, Vallejo, T.S. Eliot, Robert Anton Wilson, Henry Miller, and Oscar Wilde