Tag: travel

Photos: Europe Trip – Paris, France

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

After Brussels, we took a train down to Paris, France, where the mythical girlfriend and I would spend a few days doing a boatload of touristy things, eating all of the food and drinking all of the wine.

Not that it was necessarily a bad thing, but if there was one city that genuinely felt, not really that European, I would have to say that would be Paris. Perhaps it’s on account of just how tourist-heavy Paris is in general, but at least where we were staying, right in the heart of the city, it felt almost like New York City. Lots of cars, honking horns, road ragers, large-scale branded department stores and popular international brand stores adorned Rue de Rivoli, which we were right off of, and a Metro stop was almost always within eyesight, to duck into, and take whatever train to whatever destination at the drop of a hat.

Sure, the vast majority of overheard conversations and speech are in French, but just about everyone in Paris speaks English, extremely well, and I can’t recall a single time in which I felt incapable of being able to communicate with someone if necessary. International immersion is something that I kind felt like I was seeking out, and I don’t necessarily think I found it in Paris; but considering the polar opposite of what I experienced in Berlin, I’m wondering if it really is a bad thing.

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Photos: Europe Trip – Brussels, Belgium WORLDS

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The first leg of the Europe trip was Brussels, Belgium, where the semifinals of WORLDS was going to take place. It was pretty much a hit the ground running kind of trip, since as soon as we settled into our hotel in Brussels, we power napped for a while due to the jet lag I’d never experienced in my life before; by the time we woke up, it was pretty much time to go to the venue.

There’s nothing I haven’t already said about the WORLDS experience that wasn’t in my prior post about the event as a whole, but at least now I’m putting up some of the pictures from the event, which include my hot mythical girlfriend, as well as some shots from within the arena itself, attempting to show some of the atmosphere, the championship Summoner’s Cup, as well as some post-victory pictures from SK Telecom’s victory over Origen.

The rest of the pictures are more or less a litany of mushy couple selfies, as well as some of the places we hit up in our free time in actual Brussels, and not the shitty area surrounding the Brussels Expo area.

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Musing about WORLDS

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m never going to deny the fact that ultimately, the impetus for going out to Europe in the first place came about on account of video games, namely the one that I talk about just about every single day, League of Legends. Given the fact that Riot Games made it clear that the annual World Championships would take place in different countries each year, it was a pretty safe bet back in like March that 2015’s WORLDS was very likely going to take place in Europe, considering the previous two WORLDS were in two of the other primary LoL markets of the United States and South Korea. And when it was confirmed that WORLDS would be scattered throughout Europe, it was full speed ahead on making plans not just for attending WORLDS events, but also providing the opportunity to do some European travels.

But yes, for lack of a better term, it all started with WORLDS, and frankly it ended with WORLDS too, since the entire trip was bookended by the WORLDS semifinals in Brussels, with the finals in Berlin.

Everything in between was the sweet gravy of personal travel and new experiences, with the mythical girlfriend.

Anyway, in an attempt to compartmentalize and try to organize my thoughts into neatly organized brog posts, I’m taking an approach of writing about one thing at a time, if I can manage to stick with it; seeing as how WORLDS was what led us to Europe in the first place, I figure there would be no better place to start talking about my Europe trip than talking about WORLDS.

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The pursuit of exploration

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Growing up, I didn’t travel a whole lot.  Up until I was like maybe 11 years old, my entire world revolved around the states of Virginia and Maryland, bouncing around between family visits and, family visits.  Family vacations as I aged were to places like New York, Chicago, and to Niagara Falls, where we barely crossed into Canada for a spell.

Conventions, afforded me opportunities to visit other states, although I didn’t really explore any of them outside of the respective conventions I went to, but for what it was worth, I started visiting places like California, Georgia and the Carolinas.  And when I became my best impression of a functional adult and got super into baseball, the pursuit of baseball parks has given me the best excuse to visit a whole slew of places I never imagined seeing growing up, like Seattle, Portland, Miami, Boston, Minneapolis, Phoenix and San Diego.

However, aside from visits to cities in adjacent countries Canada and Mexico, I’ve never been outside of the United States.  In fact, I’ve never been out of the western hemisphere in my entire life.  For shame, when you consider the fact that I’ve never been back to the Motherland at any point, and it’s still my goal to ultimately take my mother to Korea one of these days.  I never went, or really had the opportunity for any dramatic international travel in my life; I didn’t go backpacking through Europe, nor did I ever have the aforementioned trip back to the Motherland.  And up until I was really an adult, I guess I didn’t have the financial means and/or the drive to pursue it.

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To write, or not to write

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

All six of my regular readers are probably aware of my general desire to post something at least once a weekday.  They may or may not have noticed that I haven’t posted anything over the last few days too.

That thing I have that most people wouldn’t believe called “the girlfriend” works an unorthodox schedule, which leaves her “weekend” somewhere in the middle of the week, as opposed to the traditional Saturday-Sunday.  I had some mid-week travel plans that went awry, AKA an inexplicable number of people decided to go where I wanted to go on the exact same dates I wanted to go, therefore there was no room on any flights to my destination.  So, I decided to scrap the trip, not go to work anyway, and spend my girlfriend’s weekend, with my girlfriend.

However, those were two days in which I wasn’t sitting at a computer, writing about nonsensical things, or trying to find nonsensical things to write about.  Actually, that’s not entirely true, because I was in front of a computer at times, but that was time spent playing, you’ll never believe this, League of Legends.

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Photos: League of Legends Mid-Season Invitational

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

So after a few years of watching LoL streams, the east coast of the United States was finally thrown a bone with an actual League event, with the arrival of the first annual Mid-Season Invitational.  The good news was that it was within reasonable driving distance for me, however the bad news was that it was held in Tallahassee, Florida, and most notably, on Florida State campus.

Florida State blows, but since it would be nice to actually attend and see a notable League event, sacrifices had to be made.

Anyway, as a whole, I thought the event was pretty good.  MSI proved that there are in fact, serious LoL fans on the east coast, and hopefully this will be a promising sign that perhaps more things might come to the east coast; maybe not such a shithole like Tallahassee, and perhaps a place that’s easily accessible by anyone via plane, car or internationally, has facilities to host, as well as an existing culture, like say one of the Collegiate teams, like in, oh, I don’t know, like Atlanta*cough?

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Photos: Frawley Stadium, Wilmington, Delaware

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Because I’m a baseball hipster that prefers minor league baseball over the majors, I had to capitalize on proximity, and take advantage of the fact that my friend and I would be passing Wilmington on the way back down to Virginia, and stopped for food and MiLB baseball, at Frawley Stadium, the A+ affiliates of the Kansas City Royals.

As the classic film Wayne’s World inquires what there is to do in Delaware, we at least found one decent thing to do in catching some minor league baseball at a pretty clean and comfortable ballpark.

Not that anyone but me would care, Frawley Stadium is one more park closer to achieving a smaller accolade than visiting all 30 MLB parks; which is seeing all of the stadiums in the Carolina League of minor league baseball.  With Wilmington now off the list of eight ballparks, that leaves just two more Carolina League parks to see for completion.

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