Quist World Tour

I’m spending a long weekend with my sister-in-law in Colorado Springs, which might sound more exotic than it is. Normally, people go to Colorado Springs to go see the amazing Garden of the Gods or ride the cog rail up to Pike’s Peak. There’s the Air Force Academy and the Olympic Training Center too. The upside of having a sister far away is that you get to visit that cool place a few times, and I’ve been able to do all of the above in the past—Colorado Springs has lots to offer. This time around, though, I’m just here to hang out with Julie. And Julie is a working mom with a couple of young kids, so life is busy! While she’s been working, I’ve been running some errands—getting boots for her daughter, dress shoes for her son for the Christmas concert, etc. Generally, when I travel somewhere, I find it sort of depressing when I see that I could go to all the same stores and restaurants that I could visit at home. However, when you are running errands, this simplifies things...

Breakfast is the most important meal, they say. For us, a free breakfast is the most important. It also poses a dilemma: We want the kids to really fill up on the free breakfast, in the hopes that it will cut the later food costs of the day. At the same time, we don’t want to look like ugly Americans clearing out the dainty breakfast buffet. Cheapness wins out as we push more food on our kids—“how about some fruit? Yogurt? Cheese? Okay, one more pastry.” And we’re off. The Grand Canal is magical—every building worthy of a photograph or two. We caught a vaporetto (no gondolas for us, we've checked the prices) to the market, checked out all the creepy, crawly sea creatures (thought Allison would balk at the smell, but she thinks it is cool). We walked by some souvenir vendors (there are miles of them), looked at all the masks and picked out a couple of things to take home. Walked to Rialto Bridge and watched the water traffic, the spectacular views and the odd conglomerations of...