Category Archives: Travel

Sunset at Ray’s

Traveling for work also means trying to find somewhere nice to eat. What a tough life, you may say, but being on the road a lot means trying to find good food without eating too much becomes a challenge. During the winter months, having a nice view is not too relevant since it is always dark before you get to dinner. However, now the evenings are longer, finding a good view can also help as long as the food is good.

A good combination in Seattle is Ray’s Boathouse. This is not a restaurant review. Instead, it is a chance to see a nice evening view out over the water of Puget Sound. The upstairs of the restaurant has a simpler (and cheaper) menu but it also has a deck outside. As the sun set, I was not the only person out grabbing photos. With very little cloud (I know, this is Seattle right?), the sky couldn’t really goo too red but it was still a very nice spot to end the day.

I also shot a wide panorama which you can see in more detail here.

What a Nice Roof

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Some of my travels take me to Oakland. There, I visit a building called the Rotunda. It is a quite striking building internally and I have grabbed a number of shots of it and played with 360 panoramas as well. However, this time I was just focused on looking straight up. Too often we put things in the context of our viewpoint so we see the areas leading up to the roof. This time I just looked straight up and cut out everything on the sides. Consequently, I found my eye did not wander but homed in on the glass roof itself. It really is very cool.

Point Reyes

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A trip across the hills from Napa and we made our way to Point Reyes. This is a place we have visited before and I find it very appealing. The shoreline is quite rugged and the sea pounded the cliffs or rolling in on the beaches is very nice. The lighthouse on the headland is a great place to visit. What we didn’t realize when heading over is that we were arriving when the visitor numbers are high. Apparently, gray whales migrate north at this time and, since the parking lot at the lighthouse normally only has to cope with less than 20 cars and can’t handle many more, they close off access and run a shuttle up. This upset our timings a little but we went with the flow.

Our expectations of seeing the whales was limited. We have not always had good luck seeing whales. However, low expectations seem to help as we saw several making their way around the headland. We also got to enjoy the rest of the scenery. Getting a photo of the whales is tricky. I didn’t have a very long lens but the first sign is when they spout upon surfacing before they dive back under. The spouting is the shot that you really need to make it clear what is happening and you can’t usually get the camera on them until they have already blown. However, this wasn’t the reason for the visit so I took the whale sightings as a happy bonus.

Yountville

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Our visit to the Napa Valley included a visit to Yountville. Not a big town, it is still well worth a visit. However, it does seem to be focused on food and shopping. It certainly is laid out to make it easy for you to spend your cash. The offerings available are worth it though so don’t avoid it just because of the commercialism. It is laid out in a very attractive way. I enjoyed looking around as well as sampling some of the baked goods from Bouchon Bakery. There may be more to the town than we saw but, on this trip, the visit was short but sweet (in more ways than one!).

Pre-Dawn Over Tahoe

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Some work commitments meant I was unable to get out of Sacramento on Friday evening as I had originally planned. Instead I had to come home on the Saturday morning. A direct flight was available at 6:30am which, while it meant an early start, did mean I had a good chunk of the day left when I got home. It was still dark when we took off and headed east. The route home takes you just south of Lake Tahoe.

As we flew by, the sun had still not come up on the lake. One of the features of being at altitude is that you get sunrise before the ground below you. However, we did have some pre-dawn light on the lake and I managed to get some shots of it. It wouldn’t have been too long before the hardier skiers were out and about no doubt!

Napa

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A weekend break took is to Napa in the California wine country. This wasn’t a trip about wine (although a few glasses may have been consumed while we were there). Instead it was a chance to look around the area and enjoy some temperatures a little above those in Chicago in March!

Napa is a pretty little town on the whole. We had a good chance to wander around and to see some older buildings and some very attractive houses. The markets had great food and there were plenty of places to dine. A nice place for a weekend away and probably somewhere we shall explore further at some point.

Century Link Field

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Just south of the station in Seattle is the pair of sports fields that house some of the cities franchises. Century Link Field is the home of the Seattle Seahawks and the Sounders MLS team. Beyond that is Safeco Field where the Mariners play. I had a quick look at Century Link Field while I was passing. Since the season was over, everything was very quiet. The field was gated so I couldn’t go in. There may have been tours available but I wasn’t there with enough time to look around properly.

The field was quite open next to a large parking lot so getting a full view of it was not tricky. The evening light was very directional with the harsh shadows but it was still not too bad. I also climbed up the steps to peer inside. You could see a good portion of the ground but the light was again quite harsh. Below I also include an aerial view taken when I was coming in to Seattle.

Seattle Union Station

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The main station in Seattle is King Street Station. It is served by the Coaster commuter trains and the Cascades service that runs from Oregon up to Vancouver in British Columbia. What I didn’t know is that there used to be another station nearby. Union Station ceased to have rail service many years ago and deteriorated over time. However, as part of a redevelopment program in the area, the building has been restored and now is part of a larger development area.

Inside the station is a main hall that is really quite impressive. It does not appear to be terribly busy. A few office workers would transit through but a bunch of other people seemed to be hanging out inside since it was warmer than outside! I couldn’t resist taking a few shots and also had a go at a 360 pano to boot.

Seattle From Above

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When the wind is coming from the south, the approach to Seatac airport between Seattle and Tacoma takes you almost directly over downtown Seattle. We actually could see Everett off in the distance with a lot of large airplanes parked up awaiting delivery but that was too far off to get a usable shot, particularly with the lens I had fitted. However, approaching Elliott Bay, we got a really nice view of the lakes and the downtown area.

Cities always look very different from above. What is large on the ground seems far more insignificant from above and what is a long journey on the surface is passed by in a heartbeat. That is part of the fun of being in the air. Of course, it does mean you have to grab the shot quickly!

Snowy Mountains

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One thing I don’t seem to give up on is the hope of getting a good shot out of the window of an airliner. My experience has been that it is hard to do. The quality of the windows is not great and the distance is sufficiently far that haze and other issues can result in something that just looks a bit washed out. Post processing to try and overcome that has limited results. Translating what you see into an image on the screen is rather tricky.

However, I don’t give up. Even if the shots are not the greatest, they do show a view that you don’t normally get and are worth having just for that recollection. Snowy mountains, however, do seem to translate better. Maybe it is because you are slightly closer to the peaks or maybe it is because they are almost a gray-scale anyway that color shifts are not a problem but they seem to reproduce better. I was flying across the Cascades recently and grabbed these shots as we went.