We got tickets on the lawn so that we could bring our cooler and snacks and beer.  Took some camping chairs so we wouldn’t have to sit on the ground.  We got there about 90 minutes prior to the show and we had our picnic and a beer and then sat back to enjoy the show.  And good stuff it was.

For those that don’t what type of show this was, they basically showed clips and segments from video games from the last 4 decades on big screens and the orchestra played the themes or sound effects right along with the clip.  There were a couple vocal performances and several other side item performances, like Martin Leung who became popular on YouTube for playing video game themes on the piano while blindfolded.

The thing I really found cool and interesting was how they combined a few genre’s of music.  They had someone playing an electric guitar right along with the orchestra and at one point that guitarist was jamming with the standing bass player – nice touch.  There was also a choir, an opera singer and another vocalist.

There was also a Guitar Hero challenge for one person in the audience (who had won a skillz contest ahead of time) to complete Aerosmith’s “Sweet Emotion” on hard with at least 200,000 points.  If he managed it, he won a $2500 Dell Laptop.  Not only did he win it, he did it on expert and only missed one note.  He had a streak of 609 notes, which looked pretty amazing to me.  Of course, the orchestra played along as well.

This was a show that celebrated the artistry and culture of video games.

The only thing we honestly didn’t enjoy had nothing at all to do with the show.  There was a small group of college age kids sitting next to us on our left that talked the whole time as if they were in their livingroom.  Everyone talked a little bit, which was part of the enjoyment; but these folks simply did not shut up.  The louder the music got, the louder they got.  Also, one of them had a camera and kept taking flash pictures.  It was an outdoor show at night.  That built in flash has a range of about 15 feet.  The only thing it accomplished was to blind everyone near her.  I did finally ask her to stop, which she did.  Sadly one of her companions took up the picture taking after she stopped.

Thankfully the group of 12 year old’s in front of us and the group of college age kids on the other side of us were really enjoying the show and were not making asses of themselves.  The group to our left really was in the minority in that regard.

If you enjoy video games you should really check out Video Games Live if they come to an area near you.  It was a lot of fun.

Here’s a YouTube clip to give you an idea of what it is like:

Yesterday, we took a trip to visit 4 wineries. Village Winery, Lost Creek Vineyard & Winery, Hidden Brook Winery and Fabbioli Cellars. I linked to the Virginia Wine pages rather than the individual winery websites here because the info given is consistent and compact. The individual winery websites can be found at the end of this post.

Our first stop, Village Winery, wasn’t much to look at. The building is weathered and the barn next door looks like a strong wind would knock it down. The owner is in the process of restoring the farm buildings.  For wine, he specializes in apple and elderberry wines, but he also make some more typical cabernets and merlots.  Both the apple and elderberry were quite delicious summer time wines.  They both had a very casual feel to them and were sweet without being desert wines.  We marked this winery for future visits and recommend it.

The other 3 wineries we went to were all practically next door to each other.  This allowed us to visit more wineries than we normally do in one trip.  Lost Creek Winery is very modern and has a large tasting area and a gift shop.  Their wines were quite good, particulary the Chambourcin and their two desert wines – Late Harvest and Courtney’s Christmas Blend.

Next door to Lost Creek is Hidden Brook Winery.  It was opened by one of the children of the Lost Creek owners.  It’s in a log cabin building and is fairly modern.  This winery was the most bland (ie uninteresting) we went to.  And the only one where we did not purchase any wine to bring home.  Their wines were good, but nothing really unique.  They also seemed a bit unorganized.  I don’t think they had a system worked out for paying for tastings because unlike every other winery we’ve visited in VA, they asked for payment before the tasting and then as we were leaving they stopped us and asked about payment again — and then realized that we had already paid.  That was just weird.

And lastly, we headed down the road to Fabbioli Cellars.  It’s run out of the finished basement of the family’s home.  Of the 4 wineries, we enjoyed the atmosphere of Fabbioli the most.  Also, we liked every wine we tasted there.  It was actually difficult to choose which ones to buy — well we are on a budget, so we couldn’t really buy one of each.  The people that run the place are all nice and personable and love a good chat.

I love this time of year.  It’s finally warm and there are so many wineries to visit.

Winery Websites:

Village Winery

Lost Creek Winery

Hidden Brook Winery

Fabbioli Cellars

I figured that living up here for 8 1/2 years without seeing the Lincoln Memorial was long enough, so with that in mind we jumped in the car, drove to the Vienna Metro station and took the metro into DC.  Getting off the metro at the Smithsonian was familiar enough; we’ve done that many times to visit the musuems.  Strangely, this is the first time we’ve done so with no intention of visiting any of the museums.  It was too nice a day to spend it indoors anyway.

First stop — the Washington Monument.  One of these days we’ll have to go to the top.  I think the view from up there must be incredible!  Today, though, I really wanted to enjoy the sunshine and not deal with any lines (although they did look pretty manageable).  I started out my photo taking day with my wide angle lens and took several shots of the Washington Monument — including one I really like!

Then we headed for the WWII Memorial on our way to the Lincoln Memorial.  I would really like to see the WWII Memorial at night with all the fountains going.  It must be quite an impressive sight.  Even still, standing in front of the Field of Stars, does give you pause.

After taking a good, long look at the WWII Memorial, we decided to head toward the Lincoln Memorial.  I’m excited because I’ve never been to this side of the National Mall before and I’ve been meaning to do this for a long time.  We stopped on the far side of the Reflecting Pool to take in the view.  It was gorgeous.  My photo of this view does not do it justice at all.  I really nead to come here one evening this spring so that I can see it all lit up.

The statue of Lincoln is far more impressive than I thought it would be.  It’s an amazing pice of art.  I have often admired the talent and skill that must be required to take on such a task as this.  He sits up on his throne with his flowing coat, looking quite majestic.  Impressive!

After this we decided to take a stroll past The White House and then back home.

To see the rest of my pictures from todays trek, check out my gallery here.

They have many of the original Muppets in display cases – Kermit the Frog and Gobo Fraggle were my favorites.  They also have story boards and lots of photos and several video’s showing various Jim Henson’s stuff.  There is also a section of display items from The Dark Crystal and a whole room for kids to exercise their own creative vision.  It was very cool.

I didn’t even know the exhibit was coming to the Smithsonian until a few weeks ago.  Well worth the trip into DC.  If you’re in the DC area between now and October 5th of this year and you like Jim Henson’s work, check it out.  I’m thinking I might just have to go back just so I can buy a “I heart Kermit” lunch box.  I just might.

We had decided to stay an extra day in Vegas after TAM to do a couple Vegasy things. One of those things was spending most of Monday at the Las Vegas Hilton’s Star Trek: The Experience. We’ve been there before, but it’s been nearly 10 years and they’ve added quite a few things since then. Since our first trip, they’ve added a new ride – “Borg Invasion 4d” and a behind the scenes tour and several photo options. We went ahead and did all of it.

We got there around 11:30am and decided to have a drink and a snack at Quarks before getting any tickets and really deciding on what to do for the day. We had the Holy Rings of Betazed (onion rings) and a couple of their specialty drinks. Very refreshing. Then, after a short walk through the shopping promenade, we headed to buy our tickets. We chose a package deal that got us unlimited rides for the day as well as photos on the Enterprise Bridge, photos in a Borg set from either ST:TNG or First Contact (they told us, but I don’t remember) and the Behind the Scenes Tour. Sadly, because Paramount keeps a tight reign on their trademarked stuff, photos were not allowed on the tour, with exception to the “Captain’s Lounge” at the end, where wedding receptions are held. The Captain’s Lounge kind of reminded me of Ten-Forward.

Before the Behind the Scenes tour, we decided to go on both rides, so we could get a good ‘before and after’ feel, and get the photos done. We had plenty of time. The Klingon Encounter, which was the original attraction, was more fun than we remembered. The transporter effect, I must admit, is really cool. And, the Borg Invasion was also a lot of fun and very well detailed – plus a couple of the effects were a bit startling – one where you feel the borg nanotubes piercing your back. That effect made me jump even the second time when I knew it was coming.

After going on both rides and before the tour, we still had a bit of time so we headed back to Quarks for another frosty yummy beverage. I really like Quarks. It’s futuristic and fun and the drinks and food are really quite good. We also decided to do one of their alien photos and got assimilated into into the Borg collective. I guess resistance really is futile.

Now for the tour – it was about 90 minutes long and we got to see how they did the special effects for the transporter as well as many other things on the Klingon Encounter. We only went through a couple things regarding the Borg Invasion ride, but still very cool. Walking through the corridor of the Enterprise looks just like the ship on tv looked. The bridge was flawless. They even had the smallest of details down, like the little labels you see on the panels in the corridors actually had the little things that the set folks had put there. The first one I read said “Kilroy was here”. Someone else read the ingredients to a soft drink on the one they were near. And then there were the conduits labeled “GNDN…” – Goes Nowhere Does Nothing. And the button on the bridge panels were a lot of fun, too and had all the ‘hidden’ stuff that were on the real set. And they did the whole transporter effect with the lights on so we could see how it was done. I won’t spoil it for you, but I will say it was actually much simpler than I thought it would be. And seeing it didn’t at all ruin the experience the next time we went on the ride. They also took us to the ‘shuttle craft’ that is part of the ride and showed us how they work.

If you like Star Trek at all and you find yourself in Vegas, you should check out the Behind the Scenes tour and the rides. They’re a lot of fun. And have lunch or dinner at Quarks. You might even get accosted by a Klingon, a Ferengi or an Andorian. Plus, did I mention the drinks are really good?

Gallery: Star Trek The Experience

Edited 05 Jun 2008: According to this press release, Star Trek: The Experience will be shutting down on September 1st of this year. That means we visited it in its first year and its last.

Since I decided to take today off work, I thought I should get out of the house and enjoy this gorgeous spring weather we’re having. So, I went to the zoo. I know I was just there last month but that was part of a field trip with the photography class I was taking. And, although I got some good panda and tiger shots, there was a lot I didn’t get to. So, today I went to get some shots of the animals I don’t normally photograph and just to see what I found.

I did ok, but I wasn’t really in the zone today. I got there a bit later than I originally intended, so there were school groups and families here for Memorial Day Weekend already there. Not ideal. I really should have gotten there by 9am to really do what I wanted. I still didn’t manage to get into the Reptile House and the Small Mammal House was also just too crowded. I also didn’t go see the seals and sea lions like I meant to. Next time, although I doubt I’ll go again until at least the fall.

My best shot of the day is of a waterfall. I was experimenting with the shutter speeds to get just the right softness to the water. I like the result of that one. As for the animal shots, I got a couple cute ones of one of the orangutan’s, but overall not my best photography day ever.

Here’s the gallery if you’d like to see some of the photographs I took today:

National Zoo – 23 May 2008

The nice weather makes me want to actually get out of the house and go do fun stuff. I recently got a few new camera toys to play with, so I’m thinking about heading out to the National Arboretum or the Botanical Gardens or something like that in the next week or so just to be somewhere pretty and play with the camera a bit and the new macro toys I got. Another option would be to take a drive to the mountains, but I prefer doing that in the fall when all the golden colors are really bright.

There certainly is a lot to see around the DC area that is photo worthy – and for as long as I’ve lived here (about 8 years), there is still so much I haven’t gone to see. So, I’m thinking it’s time to get out of the house and get some practice in.

Ahhh spring!

Yesterday my photography class met at the zoo for our second field trip. I love the zoo. I’d love to go there more often. So, anyway, I cleared off my memory cars, charged the camera batteries and off we went. It was a beautiful morning. We got there around 8:30 and met by the panda’s. They were all out and chowing on some bamboo. Mmmmm…..breakfast, said my stomach, as I remembered I forgot to pack that granola bar.

In spite of the fact that the panda’s had the tendency to sit with their backs toward the zoo goers as they ate, I managed to get a few really good shots. I even got a couple of the red panda’s — and they are just so cute!

After the Asia Trail, we all headed for the Bird House, where I absolutely suck at getting any shots worth anything – but the birds are always lovely to look at. And then the Small Mammal House. We were going to practice our flash through glass technique, but it was really too crowded to be able to do that. The zoo was hosting a special even that was drawing more people in than normal. Great for the zoo, not so good for our practice. Well, I’ll try it out another day.

Because of the extra people brought in by the special event, I’m assuming, there was a line to get into the Reptile House. Too bad, because the last time I was at the zoo I skipped the Reptile House because it was too crowded in there. It’s on my list for next time, for sure. So, I set off for the Big Cats. My favorite parts of the zoo are the panda’s and the tigers, so those are always a must see for me. It matters not how many times I have visited them in the past.

The lions were lounging in the shade where it was difficult to get any good photos of them. It was about nap time, so who could blame them. One of the tigers was also hanging out under a tree at the top of the habitat. So we headed around to the other side and the tiger there was a bit more active. He wandered around and played with a big ball that was in his habitat – he dragged it up to the top, which is always fun to watch and then he found a smaller ball and gnawed on that for awhile. I took a great many shots of him and got several that I really like.

One of these days I’m going to have to take a day off work and get up insanely early and take the metro in and see what shots I can get before it gets hot.

I put up a gallery of yesterday’s visit, that you can look at, if you’d like:

National Zoo – 26 April 2008

As promised, here is a more in depth posting/review of our fantastic Mexico vacation. We both really needed a vacation and we chose the perfect one. In fact, I don’t remember the last time I came back from a vacation feeling this refreshed and rejuvenated. We had a blast and we both want to go back and explore more ruins.

First, I want to say how much we liked the hotels where we stayed. While in Cancun, we stayed at the Westin Resort and Spa, which is at the far edge of the hotel zone (and only about 10 minutes from the airport). We wanted to be away from the downtown party scene as we wanted to relax a bit in between excursions. The Westin is a wonderful hotel, we highly recommend it and will definitely stay there again should we go back to Cancun.

Upon our arrival we were given warm towels to wash the travel away so to speak and the staff was very friendly and helpful. It’s a beautiful modern hotel with a fantastic view of the ocean. Being as how it is still off season for them (just, actually, one of their waiters mentioned that starting on 20 Dec they were pretty much full for the next several months) they upgraded our room to an ocean view room with a patio. It was a nice room – very Caribbean in flavor – and the view was gorgeous. Also, the staff was great. Neither of us speaks Spanish and thankfully, most of the staff spoke pretty good English. They were friendly and helpful and made us feel at home. The food was also quite good as were the cocktails.

For our overnight at Chichen Itza, we stayed at the Mayaland Hotel. We booked one of their bungalow’s for one night so that we could enjoy the archaeological park early in the morning before the tour buses started arriving. Mayaland hotel and it’s grounds are stunningly gorgeous. We didn’t see what the rooms in the main hotel were like, but the bungalow we stayed in was pretty neat. If you are expecting the Ritz, then this place probably isn’t for you. The bungalows aren’t luxurious, but are very much adequate and they are really quite neat. The woodwork on the doors, window frames and furniture is stunning. There were only a couple negatives, in our opinions; the beds were a bit hard – fine for one night, though – and the water in the shower never really got hot. Even still, we’d happily stay there again as we both loved the little bungalows.

The bungalows were built in the 1920′s for the archaeologists that were excavating Chichen Itza. They are scattered throughout the Mayaland Hotel property and are nicely private. While there we found the food to be fairly simple, but quite good and once again the staff was fantastic. Many reviews I read prior to going mentioned that the staff were terrible, but we found quite the opposite to be true. Of course while we were eating breakfast before setting out for the ruins we did see an example of Americans that give us all a bad name. Nothing seemed to be good enough for them. I guess your experience is what you make it. We even found a Mexican beer we both really liked – Montejo. It’s made by Mondelo and, unlike Corona, this beer is yummy yummy. Sadly, Montejo wasn’t available at the Westin, but I will be looking for it at Total Beverage…

Ok, now on to the really good stuff.

After arriving on Thursday, we settled in with some food and cocktails. It was certainly a lovely way to start a vacation.

Friday morning, bright and early, we had booked a tour with Gray Line Tours to go to Tulum for a half a day and then to Xel Ha. Our tour guide was Tania, and she was fantastic!

Tulum is one of the newest Mayan archaeological Mayan sites. It’s right on the beach on the edge of a cliff and wow, what a view! This ruin site is much smaller than, say, Chichen Itza, but it is in some ways more impressive. First, there is the stunning view of the ocean and second, when you are outside the park you can’t really tell what’s inside. We passed through this narrow and short archway and then – wow! Also, unlike Chichen Itza, there aren’t vendors trying to lure you into parting with your cash while you are trying to enjoy a bit of history and culture (more on that later). Tulum is the first Mayan site either of us had been to. If you ever find yourself in that part of the world and both Tulum and Chichen Itza are on your ‘to see’ list, visit Tulum first. As I mentioned, it is a smaller site and it will give you an excellent taste of what Mayan culture and architecture was like. The tour was fantastic and our guide was very experienced and told us quite a lot about what we have been able to determine about Mayan history.

After we left Tulum, we were off to Xel Ha (pronounced ‘shell ha’). It’s a water park. Quite lovely, although fun in the sun isn’t really our thing. We booked an hour dolphin swim and it was a blast! Definitely a highlight. They put us in groupos of 5 and there were 2 dolphins per group. They started out swimming among us and letting us pet them and such – one of the other people in our group was terrified at first, but she relaxed a bit into it and had a really good time. The best thing about this hour was getting pushed by one of the dolphins so that you are almost flying. Wow! I’d love to do that again.

Saturday we reserved for relaxation, food and drink so we could recharge so we could really enjoy our time at Chichen Itza. It was a good plan.

Sunday, bright and early and again with Gray Line Tours, we set off for Chichen Itza. Our tour guide for this trip was Isidro. The trip to Chichen Itza took longer than did the return. On the way down they stopped off at a souvenir area so everyone could use the restrooms and, of course, shop. I could have done without the detour as I really wanted to spend my time at Chichen Itza, but several of the group seemed to enjoy their time there and they even spent some cash. Hopefully they remembered to bargain with the vendors, as the prices for things were a bit marked up because they expect people to haggle. From what I am told, if you speak Spanish you can get better deals than if you don’t.

Once we got to the Mayaland Hotel, our temporary home base, we got a buffet lunch and some entertainment before our guided Chichen Itza tour. As I mentioned above, the Mayaland Hotel and grounds are gorgeous. They even have peacocks and a couple cats – one of which was a kitten and I just wanted to take him home, he was so cute!).

After lunch Isidro gave us a guided tour of the Chichen Itza ruins. He had already warned us all about the vendors and how they will say just about anything to get you to stop and look at their stuff, and once you stop they really do the hard sell to try and get you to buy stuff. There are also people (women, mostly) that wander about trying to sell little embroidered things for a buck. For the most part, I find the presence of the wandering panhandlers (I don’t know how else to describe them) and the vendors to be quite distracting and it takes away from the overall experience. If you can tune them out and just absorb the history, it’s a wonderful thing. I think it would be better to have a section of the park that is dedicated to a marketplace where people can sell their wares. In my opinion it should be accessible and visible, but somewhere where it does not take away from the experience of the archaeological site.

During the tour, Isidro included lots of history and trivia and even showed us all just how much acoustics were important to the Mayans. If you stand at the base of the Temple of Kukulcan in front of the stairs and clap your hands, the sound that echoes back to you sounds like a bird. It’s wild! After the tour we wandered around on our own for a couple of hours and took many pictures. Then we headed back to the hotel for some food and drink and relaxation before the after dark laser show.

The narration for the laser show is all in Spanish. We opted to not get the translation headsets and that was fine. The show itself was pretty cool, although our view was kind of obstructed by people that decided to move their chairs up to the front without regard at all as to how their acts effected anyone else. We ran into quite a lot of inconsiderate people there, actually — taking pictures with flash, lighting their lighters to try and find their way around, in spite of the fact that if they would have just let their eyes adjust they would have been better off, moving their chairs, etc without any regard for anyone else. A few people even thought they would just stand in the front not caring that they were blocking the views of about a third of the people there. A park ranger finally told them they had to find a seat. Even still it was a pretty good show. I don’t think any of my pictures turned out at all, but I’ll find out soon… Another thing I found distracting, but in a good way, was the sky cleared and we could see so many stars. It was beautiful.

We got up early the next morning to get to the park when it opened so that we could get some pictures without a bunch of people about. That worked like a charm and I completely recommend doing that. In the morning it was nice and cool and there were no vendors and the buses don’t start coming in until around 10am. We spent 2 hours just walking around and taking pictures. It was the most amazing 2 hours. We went in and out of the park for awhile after that, but it did get kind of crowded and hot so we pretty much called it a day and did some shopping and had a couple beers and some lunch. In the late afternoon we headed back to the Westin to finish up our best vacation ever.

And now we are home again.

If you want to read about the places we visited:

Wikipedia’s Tulum

Wikipedia’s Chichen Itza

Xel-Ha Ecological Park

For photos:

Our Mexico photo galleries are on my main site.

I have about 600 pictures to process and it will take me a few days to do so, but once done I will upload the ones I like to my gallery and I will also be posting a more detailed report of the trip sometime in the next few days.

¡Muy bueno!