I feel like I’ve finally figured out the master strategy for Tzolk’in. Adam and I were playing a two player round of it at George’s on Wednesday and I got a score of 150. That is the highest I’ve gotten by far, but I did break 100 doing the same strategy before. The plan is to get as many workers as quickly as possible, and then figure out how to feed them. The investment in workers is definitely worth it. Adam had a bad game and only got a score of 53.
Steph and I joined my parents on a trip to Glacier National Park. We only really had one item planned out beforehand, a rafting float, but we still got to see plenty of the gorgeous landscape in and around the park. We took a ski lift up to the summit of Big Mountain outside the park. There was a trail leading from the summit to the bottom of the ski lift, so my mom, Steph, and I hiked down while my dad enjoyed the top. We ate a few of the huckleberries that were growing along the side of the trail, and they were pretty tasty.
My parents came to visit, and we spent most of the weekend together. They went down the coast for a bit, and then came back for another day of spending time together. We did dinner with the Lee’s, went to Hillsdale Mall, put together the Oru and spent a little time in the water, and put together an amazing table. The table is made from an extraordinary curly koa wood. The oil finish is gorgeous and the way the curl catches the light is magnificent.
I’ve been playing a good number of games lately and haven’t talked about them so I thought I point out a few highlights.
On the left is a strange game of Terraforming Mars we played with Yutong, Adam, Haru and myself. The game almost covered all of Mars, which is not usually the case. People were getting way behind on actually finishing the goals of the game. I had a good time, but didn’t do well on the points. Haru and Yutong got good point engines in cards, and with the game going on longer they ended up getting more points from that. I also didn’t do any cities despite putting down 17 greeneries.
In the center was a great start to a game of Castles of Mad King Ludwig. It was very compact with all of them hitting double slots. I was really happy with the look and feel of the castle in this game, but the points didn’t work out in the end.
On the right I was playing a round of Betrayal Legacy. The character I had was topping out on almost all stats. The game was mine to lose, and I made a critical mistake on the last turn and also got a bad roll. I could have won it if I had been a bit more meticulous, but It was still a lot of fun. Playing optimally on that scenario wouldn’t have been much fun for anyone.
We had a group head to SF to play one of the Palace Escape Games. We had done one previously that was great, the Houdini Room. This time we had a group for the Edison Room. We got there pretty early, as we were expecting much worse traffic from the SF Marathon. We first had brunch at Causwells, which was really tasty.
We headed over to the Palace of Fine Arts, which was nice to walk around, and then we got to the room. It was really well done. The touch sensitive floor was especially interesting. I didn’t like some of the more active game parts that weren’t puzzles. They still had their place. We only got a little stuck at one point on some combo locks, but eventually got past that part. We struggled with the active touch floor segments, and lost a lot of time there. Overall I was happy with our performance, and I think everyone had a good time. We made it out with a little over 20 minutes to spare. I look forward to doing the Rosevelt Room.
Steph and I had a good night dive on Monday. We headed to Breakwater in Monterey early in the day to avoid traffic. We found a really nice cafe, and I was able to get a decent amount of work done. We grabbed a bit of dinner on Fisherman’s Wharf before heading back for the start of the dive. I didn’t bring enough warm clothing so I got into my suit quickly to warm up. That worked really well, as did the full bladder once we got in the water. The water was a little murky, but still fine for a night dive. We swam out decently far along the wall then did a one hour out and back. The dive was nice and we saw a few nudibranchs, a few sheapshead crabs, and a large octopus. I say large, but it is more that it was large for that area. The octopus had a tennis ball sized head and was mainly bright red to say he was ready to fight. We also saw a strange creature that looked like it had a shell inside, but it was covered in tentacles / feelers and was moving with jets. I saw a tiny octopus about the size of a dime, and only really recognized it by the way it was trying to cover itself in sand. I’ve learned the motion that octopi/cuttlefish make when they are trying to hid in sand. It is adorable when they shuffle a bit down in the sand and then have two tentacles scoop up sand and bring it up and over their head. The whole time you can tell they are staring at you hoping you don’t see them or make a move to eat them. We got back home around midnight and had a quick clean up before crashing hard.
We started from Indian Basin Shoreline Park at Hunters Point and made it up to a public dock at Pier 1.5. The entire trip was around 7 miles and too about 3 hours.
The start was a bit rough as the tide was lower than previously experienced at this location. We were just a bit too late as the tide went out to really go for the entry. Adam sunk up to his waste in mud during the attempt. We decided to portage over to another spot and carried the kayaks for a quarter mile to another spot. We are counting it as a true portage as we were in the kayaks at the original put in spot. Once we were actually in the water everything we very smoothly. We made it under the bay bridge as the winds were really picking up and the tides were turning. With the longer than expected put in we weren’t on track to make it to the intended take out location, so we jumped on the first spot we ran across that would work and it turned out to be a public dock at Pier 1.5. There is a really nice Peruvian restaurant, La Mar, where we had brunch.
Tina made her amazing mochi waffles and we had some in Adam’s new tree design waffle iron. They were amazing. George made some egg sandwiches for everyone that were very tasty as well. Then we played four or five rounds of Pandemic Legacy Season 2.
After Barcelona we headed to Lisbon, Portugal as a part 2 to the Iberian trip. Ricardo and Irene headed to France, so we were on our own for this portion.
Sunday morning we got to the airport, got checked in and through security and sat down for a breakfast. Time went quickly and we almost missed our time for getting on the plane. They had closed the doors, but opened it back up for us and some others who had a late connection.
We got to Lisbon and had a nice pick up from the airport to take us to our Airbnb in the older part of the city, Alfama. We decided to try to bike to Belem, which would have been nice if we weren’t way up a hill that didn’t have straight streets or lots of room and was mostly stairs to get down to the boardwalk the quick way. We left the bikes and decided to walk. I enjoyed the walk, but Steph was starting to have her feet hurt by the time we made it to Belem about an hour and a half later. We got the famous egg tarts and shared a half dozen. We noticed on the walk that there was a Banksy exhibition and made a note to come back, as they were about to close by the time we saw it. We took the bus back to the touristy street and had some ginjinha and gelato.
Monday we went back to the Banksy exhibition in the morning and really enjoyed it. The exhibit wasn’t by Banksy, but about him and featured a good bit of his work and explanations of what they represented and were about. We then took the tram to the top of the hill where we were staying and to the Castillo de George. We hung out at a cafe overlooking the city before having dinner at Cantio do Aviles, which was good.
Tuesday we were supposed to have a cooking class, but after getting to the local market and waiting for an hour we decided the guide was a no show, so we went to the aquarium instead. This was nice and we got to relax and look at fish for a while. The aquarium also had puffins, penguins, and otters to round out their sea life offering. The puffins were adorable, and the otters are always fun to watch. They also had a fascinating exhibit on display of sea creatures made from fishing hooks.
We went to a nearby vegetarian restaurant for lunch, Ohana. It was really tasty food, and if this place were near our house I would be going there all the time. They even had a green smoothie with added turmeric. We then headed to the 24 de Abril bridge for an evening cruise. We took the trolley, and didn’t count on the main coastal street not being crossable by pedestrians. After we made it over a pedestrian bridge some ways away we made it just in time to get on the boat. The cruise was very nice, and relaxing. They gave us a bit of history of the buildings visible from the water.
After the cruise we went to an area called LX Factory, which was a gorgeous hidden gem. We stumbled on it while trying to get to the boat. This is an artist community with a touristy main street with lots of restaurants. I really liked the feel of the area and would recommend a visit.
Wednesday we spent the morning just relaxing at a cafe before lunch at AO26, a vegan restaurant. The vegan cheese was some of the best we’ve had. They also had a soup we had all the time on the trip (and before the trip with Adam) a strawberry gaspacho. We walked over to the Elevador de Santa Justa, and had a great view from the top. We walked along the ridge and took the stairs down to a small shop Ginjinha de Carmo to have the ginjinha in a chocolate cup. It was delicious and unique. We headed to the airport after a mixup with luggage that got sorted quickly. We got back to Barcelona and spend the night at the airport hotel there.
Thursday we got on our flight back to the US. We were connecting through Philadelphia, but the Philadelphia to SFO flight was cancelled once we got there. We were given a hotel room and got a nice dinner at a tasty Thai place. Friday we had time to kill so we got a nice veggie brunch and then went to see Toy Story 4. The flight back in the evening was thankfully uneventful and we even got back a little ahead of schedule.
Lisbon was a great city, and we could have spent a few more days there with things still to see. We were slowing down at this point in the trip as well, so we weren’t trying to pack in all the things like we could have. I enjoyed the relaxing parts just as much as the interesting ones.
It's an Exciting World 