Starling Travel

Megan Wallent visited Paris, France last month and shared her experience with us all:

• Paris – Getting Here « M( )

• A Day in Paris, but no Good Food? (Almost!) « M( )

• Paris Day 2 or “Look, That Kid Has No Head!” « M( )

• Paris Travel Summary (Details to Follow!) « M( )

My favorite entry, A Day in Paris, but no Good Food? (Almost!) talked about how exhausting traveling and getting fed can be:

At this point, Anh and I, in our tiredness, broke one of our rules – always eat good food. We settled for a crappy café, and while edible, was not great. Oh well.

I don’t have a rule like that: “Always eat good food.” Most of the time, I am so absorbed in what I am experiencing when I’m traveling that I delay eating until I’m starving. Then I will eat anything that is nearby. Sometimes, we end up finding wonderfully delicious food from a street vendor, other times… well, you know.

I know the food of a place is just as important as the architecture, museums or amusements, but sometimes I let it fall by the wayside.

Looks like Megan and Anh had a wonderful visit to France and I wish them much happiness.

When we were in California last February, we were able to visit Star Trek The Tour. It is currently at the Queen Mary and is destined to travel to 40 U.S. cities, but we couldn’t be sure Salt Lake City was on the list, so we saw it while it was in California.

Star Trek The Tour is a collection of the props, sets and costumes from all the Star Trek television shows and movies. The coolest part was the staff allowed us all to take as many pictures and video as we wanted. I took so many pictures that I could fill the screen with them all. Here a couple of highlights:

When you first walk into the place, the Guardian of Forever is there to greet you. They let you walk up to and jump through it all you want. It’s awesome!

There were dozens of these exhibits with props from the original series. I loved how much attention to detail they gave them. Some of them were labeled as props, but repainted. Others were in original condition. If they were replicas, it said so on the little card.

Here is Captain Picard’s office with his desk and even a photo from Deanna and Riker’s wedding. It was fun so see all of the sets from television in real life.

You can see ALL of the photos I took here:

• Star Trek The Tour – a photoset on Flickr

At the end of the tour, you go through a Star Trek Experience. It was a lot of fun and this video doesn’t really do it justice:

Download this video for your iPod

The experience leads you out into the gift shop. If you think that it’s just ordinary Star Trek paraphernalia, then you would be mistaken. I bought my Starfleet Academy school ring there and I haven’t been able to find anything like it anywhere else. Not even The Star Trek Experience in Las Vegas has them.

Ssandart got video in the Borg Simulator. Since these kind of rides make me motion sick, I avoided them. Looks like they were pretty cool, though. Skip to the 2:06 minute mark to see the video of the simulator:

Here’s a commercial for Star Trek The Tour on YouTube:

A special thank you to Wil Wheaton for announcing this on his blog:

• WWdN: In Exile: announcement two of four (collect them all!)

I wouldn’t have known about this if I hadn’t read it in his blog, so I’m so glad I was able to play with all the fun at Star Trek The Tour!