Poo poo in Pula

There are actually a couple of direct flights to Croatia from Dublin.  Aer Lingus has regular service to Dubrovnik in the very south and Ryan Air flies to Zadar in the middle of the country.   After doing research I found another flight on Aer Lingus into Pula in Istria, in the north of the country, which is what we took to get here.  We’ll eventually fly back to Dublin on the Dubrovnik flight in a tad under 3 weeks.  The Pula flight turns out to be seasonal – 3 times a week beginning May 19th, so we are on one of the first of these flights this year.

The only downside to this flight is that it arrives at 10:20pm.  Well, that and the fact that within Europe, Aer Lingus operates as a budget airline, so the cup of tea and glass (not bottle) of water we got on the plane when asked “what would you like to drink” were not in fact free, but cost Eu3.  Not going to break the bank, but none the less a bit of surprise, especially as the glass of water was charged for at 0.60 cent.  Really, Aer Lingus can’t give you a free glass of water?  Luckily I did not see a coin meter on the bathroom door.

So why is 10:20pm a problem time to arrive? First off the car rental counter for Sixt, where we had reserved, closes at 9pm.  Luckily I noticed that when I booked and contacted them.   For Eu32.50 more we were able to have someone stay late to meet us.  When we went to get our car, there was another couple in front of us, who seemingly had also paid the same fee.  Hmmm, sounds like a bit of a racket to me.

The other problem is that check in to our hotel was supposed to be before 9pm.  Again, I had emailed them and they told me that it was no problem.  Someone would meet us and show us where to park.  Except that when we arrived at our hotel, there was no one there, but there was an envelope with my name on it that contained our room key. Later we were told they have a new person on late duty and that they had misunderstood their directions.  The challenge here was parking in a country at night when you don’t know the regulations.  The spot outside the hotel had blue stripes around it and consulting people in a local bar yielded opinions that the car was fine until 10am tomorrow or maybe only 7am tomorrow.  Deciding I didn’t want one of my first experiences in Croatia to be that of getting a parking ticket, I set my alarm for 6:30am.

Meantime we found our room, and noticed something on the pillow, as you can see from the photo.  At first glance, this looked like the mess a small dog might leave on the carpet to let their owner know they weren’t too happy.  Which was quickly followed by the following thoughts – how did the dog get into and out of our room?  Why did it do this on BOTH our pillows? and what sicko came in and wrapped their poo in plastic?

Instead this turned out to be some chocolate covered, banana flavored marshmallow sweet.  My brother Andrew, ever the punster, opined later that this might be a Croatian specialty, named after the city along the coast, i.e. Banana Split!

Europe Here We Come

Time to get ready to roll out the blog again!

On Tuesday we head to Dublin, Ireland for about a week, and then off to Croatia, starting in Pula, Istria, and ending 3 weeks later in Dubrovnik.  Along the way, we plan on side trips to Bosnia-Herzegovina and Montenegro.

From Croatia, we will be going back to Dublin for another week before heading home.

Beginning to get excited!

What do you mean, “What size light bulb do I want”?

My previous article got into wattage, lumen output, etc.  This is about the actual size and shape of light bulbs.

What you may or may not know is that every light bulb type has one or more letters and some numbers that are used to categorize it.  Thing of this as the taxonomy of light bulbs, and if you are ordering one online, it is especially important in order to be able to search for the correct bulb.

The “common” light bulb is an A19.  The letter indicates the shape.  A is used for, well, what I would call a light bulb shape!  Some common types:

A – standard light bulb shape

G – Globe (the rounded style often used in bathroom and vanity lights)

R – Reflector (think spotlight)

PAR – Parabolic Aluminized Reflector. 

B – candelabra shape

MR – metalized reflector

There are many others, but the above are the most common.

 

The numbers indicate the widest part of the bulb in multiples of 1/8 inch.   So, for example:

A19 – the “common” light bulb is 2 3/8” at its widest part (19 x 1/8th inch)

MR 16 – 2 inches wide (16 x 1/8th)

etc. 

 

While this is the bulb’s overall shape and size, the connector also has to be considered, i.e. how the bulb plugs into the light socket.

The standard American “medium screw base” is officially designated E26.  “E” is for Edison screw, a nod to the light bulb inventor and 26 is the diameter in millimeters.  Because they are essentially the same size and interchangeable, you may see E27 bulbs in places like IKEA, since the European screw base is 27mm.  Because the size difference is so small there is no problem using an E27 bulb in a US fixture (as long as it is 120 Volts of course!)   So the good old American light bulb shaped light bulb might be listed as A19 / E26 or A19 / E27.

By contrast, the smaller, “candelabra” base in the US is an E12.

There are other bases, which are typically only found on specialty bulbs such as bi pin halogens, e.g. MR 16 bulbs.  Since those get much more complicated, but sure to take your old specialty bulb with you to the store as there are many bulbs that look very similar but often have subtlety difference base sizes. 

 

So next time you see an A19 / E26, 800 lumen, 5,500, 85 CRI, 10W LED bulb, you will know that it will be:

- Standard light bulb shaped (because of the A)

- Standard light bulb sized (19 x 1/8”, or 2 3/8” at the widest point)

- Standard medium screw base (E26)

- Putting out 800 lumens of light (about the same as a typical 60W incandescent bulb)

- Cool white (5,500 degrees Kelvin)

- Able to show all colors well (since it has a Color Rendering Index of 85)

- Using only 10W of power (to produce the same amount of light as an old 60W bulb).

 

Now you just need to choose clear or frosted….!

What? Watt? What?

It used to be pretty simple to buy a light bulb.  Barring specialty items, you just went to the store and bought a “standard” light bulb.  The more watts the more light – 60 W was normal, 40 a bit dim, 100 W as bright as most sockets could handle.  Oh yeah, you had to choose clear or frosted, but that was pretty much it, right?  The common light bulb was available just about anywhere.  The standard American screw type light bulb was invented in 1909 and for about a century, not too much changed until recently.

If you go to buy a light bulb today, it can be bewildering to figure out exactly which bulb you need.  Consider this a primer on light bulbs for the average home owner.  There are literally thousands of light bulb varieties, but most of these are specialized for various applications that really don’t concern the average home owner.   As someone who is a photographer and has a degree in Physics, I am pretty familiar with much of the techno-babble surrounding this topic.  I also worked one summer in a wholesale electrical supply warehouse - but that’s another story.  I thought I would try to de mystify some of all this for the average home owner.

Technology

There are three principal technologies we are concerned with – incandescent (think “old style”), CFL (compact Fluorescent Lightbulb), and the newest, LED (Light Emitting Diode).

Incandescent bulbs work by heating up a wire until it gets so hot it emits light.  Halogen bulbs are a particular type of incandescent bulbs that use a tungsten coated wire and include halogen gases in the bulb so it can operate at higher temperatures and wattages, putting out more light.  Unfortunately most of the energy used by an incandescent light bulb is emitted as heat and only about 2% produces light in the visible spectrum.  But they are cheap – basically a little wire held inside a glass container under vacuum and presto – the light bulb.

• Good – cheap, standardized, familiar, “the standard” for our expectations of the amount of light and the quality of light.
• Bad – inefficient, relatively fragile, short operational life.

Flourescent and Compact Flourescent (CFL) bulbs work by exciting low pressure mercury vapor to create UV light that causes a phosphorescent coating on the bulb to fluoresce or glow.   Fluorescent light bulbs, including CFLs require an electrical component called a ballast that limits the current flow through the bulb, otherwise they would self destruct.  The ballast is build into CFL bulbs, which is a major portion of their cost, whereas typical large “shop” fluorescent fixtures have discrete external ballasts, which is why the tubes are so inexpensive.

• Good – moderate price (has come down dramatically), more energy efficient, longer lasting, wide variety of options.
• Bad – contain mercury vapor (dispose of properly!), poor quality of light (see below), take time to “warm up”, lighting changes with age, fragile, strange looking, special versions needed to work with dimmer circuits.

Light Emitting Diodes (LED) bulbs use semiconductor technology to create light.  Because these are electronic components, they are much less fragile that incandescent or CFLs, but also currently more expensive to purchase.

• Good – most efficient technology currently on the market, cool to the touch, good quality of light,  long lasting, robust.
• Bad – expensive to initially purchase.  Special versions needed to work with dimmer circuits.

Who, Watt, Huh?

OK, but why can’t I just buy a “60 Watt” LED bulb.  Well, first let’s think about what a watt is – a unit of energy.  Specifying a light bulb’s output by the energy used is crazy.  It would be the equivalent if all gas powered cars more or less got the same MPG, (say 25MPG) as asking someone how far away a place was and instead of them answering “100 miles”, the actual distance, telling you “4 gallons”, the fuel consumed.  It works out the same, if all cars has the same fuel efficiency.  But along comes new technology such as hybrid cars that get 50 MPG.  When you ask someone how far the place is, it is still 100 miles away, but they have to answer “it is equivalent to 4 gallons in your gas powered car, but only 2 gallons in my car”.  Sheesh, just tell me it is 100 miles!

The unit of light output we care about is the lumen (equivalent to the mileage in the above analogy).  The precise definition of a lumen is actually quite complex, but for simplicity we can think of this as the “amount of light”put out by the light bulb, which is what we care about when we need to measure or compare brightness.  What makes CFL and LED bulbs much more cost efficient is that they have much better luminous efficiency (think MPG in the above analogy) compared to incandescent light bulbs, plus they last much, much longer.    A typical CFL will use about a quarter of the energy to produce the same amount of light as an incandescent bulb and a typical LED bulb will use more like 1/6th the energy of the same incandescent bulb.  In other words for the same amount of light, a 60W incandescent bulb bulb can be replaced by a 15W CFL or a 10W LED.  You should see the actual wattage on any light bulb package, but most new packages will more prominently list the lumens used and may have a “60W equivalent” or similar tag somewhere on the package.  You can imagine that if someone doesn’t understand this, they will think the 10W labeled LED bulb will be very dim compared to their 60W incandescent bulb. FYI, a 60W incandescent bulb puts out about 800 lumens and a 40W incandescent bulb around 420 lumens.  Good numbers to keep in your back pocket when you go shopping.

Wait, There’s More!

The power used (watts) and light output (lumens) are not the whole story.  For instance, aside from the physical characteristics of CFLs (e.g. their sometimes strange shape, and fragility), CFLs had other problems, some of which are noted above, in particular “quality of light”.

There are two things I’d like you to understand about “quality of light” – color temperature and CRI (Color Rendering Index).  First color temperature.  This is essentially how “white” the light is, something very important to me, since I am a photographer.  Our eyes tend to adjust such that we usually perceive the brightest thing we see as white.  But in reality the color of a “white” light bulb is very different from the “white light” outdoors.  If you look at an indoor light bulb while simultaneously gazing out a window, you will perceive the common incandescent light bulb as orange and the daylight as much bluer.  The actual color is measured in degrees Kelvin.  Higher numbers on this scale are “bluer”.  Perversely although their color temperature is higher, we describe them as “cooler” since they are more blue.  A typical tungsten light bulb will be about 2,700-3,000 degrees Kelvin.  Soft/warm CFLs are around 3,000, cool/daylight CFLs about 5,000 which is closer to the color of sunlight at noon (5,500), but not as high as an overcast sky (6,500).   LED light bulbs are offered in different colors – look for lower numbers (around 3,000) if you want something “warm”, i.e. closer in color to an old incandescent light bulb, or higher if you prefer closer to daylight.

But again, this isn’t the full story.  Turns out that different light bulb technologies don’t evenly reveal colors in objects.  You can have bulbs that have the same light output (lumens) and the same color temperature, yet the things lit by them will look different.  A good test of this is to get a paint palette or test pattern with all the colors and just look at it under the different lights.  Some of the colors will pop and others will seem very dull.

This is because although they may have a particular color temperature, the light bulbs may have a spike (or for that matter, a relative gap) in the color spectrum.  Fluorescent light bulbs are notorious for making things look greenish, which is particularly problematic for skin tones since it tends to make people look like ghouls.  The CRI (color rendering index) is a measure (out of 100) of how well a form of illumination can reveal different colors.  The standard incandescent light bulb has a CRI of 100 and so you can see all the colors of the palette.  CFLs vary widely here – a cheapo CFL can have a CRI of 50, but a high quality bulb can get as high as 89.  Typically I have only seen the CRI of a CFL listed on expensive bulbs, typically used for photographic applications.  Most LEDs are above 85 and thus their ability to render colors is much better than all but the best CFLs.  So even at the same level of light (lumen output), and same color temperature, the lighting from an LED will just look better than a CFL and should be virtually indistinguishable from that of the common old incandescent light bulb.

Over time, the difference is even more dramatic – CFLs get worse as they age.  While incandescent light bulbs might dim a little as they age, they will usually burn out first.  They also tend to get a little more orange as they age, but most people aren’t able to notice.  However CFLs may not only change noticeably in color, their CRI can drop too, i.e. as they age, things illuminated by them look even worse.

Economics

The typical incandescent bulb has a useable life of about 1,000 hours, versus about 10,000 hours for a CFL or 50,000 for an LED.  So you’d have to buy 50 incandescent bulbs (or 5 CFLs) for each LED. Right now a 60W incandescent bulb costs about $1 and a 60W LED replacement about $10, thus the purchase price is 10 times as expensive.  But, since it uses 1/6 the power to run, it is obviously much more efficient and less expensive in the long run, even if the up front cost is relatively high.  In fact, LEDs can be had for much less (about $5-6 at Costco, and even less at IKEA).  Depending on the cost of electricity from your utility (the more expensive your power, the more you’ll save), over the the life of an LED bulb, your actual cost (for the bulbs and all the electricity used) should be about 1/4 to 1/8 of that versus using incandescent bulbs.

Replacements for the standard 60W and 40W light bulbs will be the least expensive type of bulbs.  More specialized bulbs, such as spots, globes, etc. will cost more.  For instance, right now Costco sells a 2 pack of 65W spotlight (R30) replacements for $18.  See the next blog entry for more on decoding the light bulb alphabet soup.

My Two Cents

LEDs will continue to come down in price, but for now, my recommendation is that if you are not ready to take the plunge and replace all your old bulbs with LEDs,  pick a place in your house that you use a lot – the kitchen is probably the best option - and try replacing the main bulbs in that room with LEDs.  Also, if you have a room where you switch the lights on and off a lot, e.g. the bathroom, LEDs work much better than CFLs.  By the time the CFLs get fully warmed up, you may be ready to turn them off.

Some interesting factoids:

60W incandescent light bulbs are more efficient in the US versus Europe and other places that use 230V electricity. What?  Turns out at the 120 Volts used in North America,  our 60W light bulbs put out 850 lumens, vs. just 584 lumens in 130 Volt countries.  Or essentially our 40W light bulbs have about the same light output as a European 60W bulb!

Since I replaced almost all of the CFLs in my house with LEDs, I did a little testing to try to compare the brightness of some incandescent vs. CFL vs. LED bulbs.  I wouldn’t say these are “lab quality” results, but I did measure everything and I used a consistent testing methodology.  Interesting findings:

• My new 400 Lumen IKEA bulbs were actually a bit brighter than the incandescent 40W bulbs they are supposed to replace.  The light output was actually as much as a new 100W replacement CFL bulb!
• All of the CFLs I tested, (new and used) seem to put out less light than their incandescent or LED equivalents.  Most likely had I waited longer for them to get to “full temperature”, the light output would have improved a bit.
• I had about a dozen CFLs of a particular type, all theoretically identical power and style, but of various ages. In testing them, I found their light output when measured the same way varied by as much as 8x!
• I replaced these supposedly 65W replacement CFLs with 40W replacement LEDs and could see that the room appeared brighter.  By my testing, even the brightest of these CFLs was dimmer than the supposedly weaker LED, often by a considerable margin.

Bruisin’ for some Cruisin?

 

Often people ask if we have ever been on a cruise.  Having done lots of travel, we’ve been on most types of conveyance, including many watercraft.  We’ve done our fair share of ferries from big slow ships to state of the art high speed catamarans.  We’ve rented river cruisers on the Shannon in Ireland and even stayed on a permanently moored decommissioned cruise liner in St. Petersburg, Russia.

At the other end of the spectrum, we’ve travelled by motor canoe for hours to get to the heart of the Amazon jungle in Ecuador. We’ve even spent a couple of days on a boat plying the Mekong river from Thailand to Laos.

We have actually “cruised” a few times before - In the Galapagos we spent a week sailing the islands, but on a 16 passenger yacht.  We’ve also cruised the Yangtze River, but a Chinese cruise vessel is a lot different than what most people think of when they hear “cruise ship”.

For a long time we’ve talked about taking a trip to Alaska and realized we’d probably end up on a cruise when we went there.  For various reasons, we didn’t have a ton of time to plan our travels this year and so ended up booking passage on a Princess cruise from Vancouver to Anchorage.  We’ll spend a week in Vancouver on our own beforehand and see some of the Alaskan interior via a land package to Denali after the sailing.

Had we had more time, I suspect we might have booked our own passage on Alaska’s Marine Highway ferry system and made plans to explore various parts of the state at our own schedule.  Part of the issue with our decision for this year was that we really wanted to get to Denali and accommodations are scarce and inexpensive there, so booking with the cruise line gave us more options.  Perhaps if we really like Alaska we’ll go back at our own pace, but for this year we are in the hands of Princess Cruise lines for much of the way.

I have a natural aversion to of the general concept of a typical cruise, although I know many people that love them.  I thought it might be interesting to explore and document some of my preconceived notions/prejudices and then later look back to see how far off base, or how on target they are.

So, here goes:

1. Lack of control.  One thing we like about traveling independently is choosing where we go, when we go, and for how long we stay.  if we like a place, we might stay longer than originally planned. On a cruise, we have to give up almost all of that control.  Once you choose a cruise with its itinerary, the cruise will arrive and depart as scheduled.  Too bad if you’d like to stay longer.  Of course you do get choices in the shore excursions, but even then you don’t have complete control over when you can get on and off the boat.
2. Being in a floating resort.  My expectation is that the ship we will be on will be large, and impersonal, like a floating 5 star hotel. Even though the Alaskan ships aren’t the largest cruise vessels, I expect them to seem huge. Normally when we travel, a hotel is just a place for us to sleep and what we like is some place that is safe, convenient, clean, comfortable and reasonably priced.  The hotel is just a base for us to get out and see the places we want to see and do the things we want to do.  On a cruise we will be spending a lot of time on the ship and from the marketing information, they seem to go out of their way to try to out-glitz themselves. I’ve heard stories about all the creative ways towels can be folded, but bathware origami just doesn’t seem that important to me!
3. Corpulent people stuffing themselves with food 24 hours a day.  Having good food is important to us, but unlimited quantities of fattening or unhealthful food will likely be a test of will.  There is something to be said for having to pay for a meal. 
4. A much older traveling population that we are used to. Although I understand that Alaska cruises tend to have a younger average age and are more popular with families than many other cruises.   I suppose the “fear” is that the entertainment, etc. isn’t ideally suited to us.
5. Ports of call flooded with businesses ready to take your money and offering quite a bit of schlock.  A friend recently told me that most of the main street shops in the Alaskan ports of call are owned by the cruise lines themselves, which makes business sense, but if true, sounds like a Disney/EPCOT ersatz experience rather than an authentic encounter.  We have travelled independently to many places that are popular cruise ports of call, such as Belize City, Helsinki, Singapore, Hong Kong, etc.  Spending several days (or longer) in these places one gets a sense of the people, the food, the vibe, what’s available in local markets, etc.  Being there on days when a cruise ship arrives and discharges its passengers for a few hours is a totally different experience.  Understandably it is not possible for the cruise passengers to get beyond a certain radius of the port in a limited time, but I know that many places we have visited would seem very different if we only had the chance to see what those serving the cruise industry were offering.
6. Regimentation and formality.  We are casual travelers.  Our goal is to travel light and we usually have one small carry on backpack and a modest sized rolling case each, even on the longest journeys.  One thing we’re not especially looking forward to is “formal nights” on the cruise, which necessitates us bringing clothing and items we otherwise would not take with us.  Helpfully the cruise lines do offer to rent cocktail dresses and tuxes.  Really, the cruise lines could have taught Henry Ford a thing or two about vertical integration.  This regimentation also applies to scheduling.  Thankfully we chose anytime dining and so have flexibility in when and with whom we eat, but I wonder with fixed times for entertainment, port calls, eating, etc. will this seem like a luxury adult summer camp at times?

Doubtless some of these will prove to be off base and I suspect that some of this will not be black and white, but shades of gray.   Who knows, perhaps we’ll come back as cruise converts and much of that which I think we might dislike, could turn out to be something we love.

We’ll see!

Warsaw Walk Sore

Today I did a ton of walking around the city. When I got back to my hotel, I calculated that I must have walked at least 11 miles, not including walking through museum galleries. No wonder my legs are sore!
Places I got to included:

The 13th century Old Town, with its castle. More interesting to me were the building decorations and shop signs that make the Old Town quite distinct.
   
Warsaw also has large sections of its original walls, including an impressive Barbican, leading out into the “New Town”, which was built around the end of the 14th century.
Since Warsaw was almost completely destroyed during the second world war, all of the contemporary buildings are renovations done in the post war years.

One of the first buildings of interest in the New Town is Marie Curie's birthplace; now a museum dedicated to her. The exterior is a traditional building, but is decorated with the symbols for Radium and Polonium, the two elements she helped discover.
 
There are only a few artifacts inside, but lots of photos with Polish, French and English captions. Not much information on her actual work or science though.
 
Several blocks away is The Memorial of the Warsaw Uprising, in traditional Socialist Realist style. Note that the Warsaw Uprising was not the same as the Ghetto Uprising, which happened in 1943. The Warsaw Uprising against the Nazis began in 1944, and although the Soviets were at the outskirts of the city, they sat back and basically watched as the partisans got slaughtered. Worst still, the surviving Polish  leaders were imprisoned and sometimes killed shortly after the war, because their participation indicated " Western sympathies".
 
One of my friends had told me that a trip to Cafe Blikle was a must, where I got talked into having one of their signature rose doughnuts as well as some chocolate cake. Good thing I walked so far today! Yummy.  Actually Warsaw has quite a number of “Chocolate Cafes” and they take their chocolate very seriously.
 
The National museum is mostly an art gallery, with some very fine paintings and, as you might expect, is particular strong in Polish artists. A few notable images include an 1874 painted portrait indistinguishable from a modern color photograph.

I also liked an older painting of Noah and animals - Noah has a tallit ( prayer shawl) wrapped around his waist! 

Next door is the Military museum, whose best part is outside and free - military hardware from Napoleonic times to the present including many Russian made tanks, planes and helicopters I had not seen in person before. 

A lloooong walk got me to the Warsaw Uprising Museum, one of the city's signature new museums which tells the story of the uprising with artifacts, innovative displays, and well presented information. Something that caught my eye was a German Goliath remote controlled mine - it looks like a tiny tank, but was packed with explosives and controlled by wire.  However, it wasn’t very effective. One defense was to just detonate a grenade on the control wire. Another was to built small walls in front of key defensive positions which the tank could not cross. The Poles called these walls "Davids".
 
On the recommendation of my new friend, I ate dinner at a restaurant called Opasty Tom where I had an excellent 4 course meal, but costing more like what fine dining goes for at home.
Boy are my legs going to be sore tomorrow!

Warsaw - Pact and ready.

Since I was coming to the UK on miles for a family event, I thought I'd take a few days to go somewhere else in Europe, since the award would cover the flight. Didn't want to go somewhere Kelly might want to visit, since she is not with me on this trip. She was here many moons ago and although I've been to Poland before, I had not been to it's capital. I also have done some work involving Warsaw, and have a few contacts, so here I am.

I ended up with a day flight to London via Chicago, which meant I needed to overnight at Heathrow before flying on to Warsaw. Chopin airport is very modern, and connected to the city by a new, fast, convenient, and cheap light rail system.

Once I got to my hotel, I met up with Zybyszek, who grew up in the US, graduated UT, then emigrated to the country of his parent's birth.

For dinner we went to a local milk bar,a hangover from the communist era. These are sort of cheap local cafeteria that serve simple, authentic Polish meals very cheap. Not everything is dairy, and there was no  "bar" in sight. The one we went to was surprisingly decorated in a very trendy fashion. The food was indeed simple and inexpensive, but tasty and excellent value none the less. I had hot borscht ( beet soup), which was zesty ( maybe had a little horseradish in it), carrot slaw, and kasha ( buckwheat) with mushrooms. All for less than a cup of Starbucks at home.

My hotel room is nice enough, but I don't think I've ever stayed in a room with only one single bed in it before, even though there is plenty of room for a king sized bed in the room. I suppose it makes no difference since I am on my own, but it made me realize that every other hotel room I've seen had at least two singles or a queen or larger.