Back home

The flight from Boise - the top picture shows Boise with the Sawtooth Mountains in the background - to Chicago was on time, even early. It's been a beautiful flight over the Rockies (2nd pic), no clouds and no turbulences. We even saw The Tetons and Devil's Tower!


Anxious, originally, about having only one hour transfer time in Chicago, we, fortunately, arrived early and had no problems to catch our direct flight to Munich. Chicago was cold, but there was not much snow. Flew on a new B777 and - yeah! - got upgraded to Polaris' BusinessFirst Class, where we not only could stretch out on a flat "bed", but also had the royal treatment and were wined and dined nicely. Flight was only (considering upgrade)eight hours, but despite of all the unexpected luxury we didn't sleep much. Arrived on time, 9:30 am to MUC, and were picked up by a friend there. Gray skies, clouds, about 5 deg C. (40 F). Welcome home!

Farewell to Boise - back home we go,,,

On Wednesday evening the Go West Farewell Party took place in a new event venue by name "JUMP" in downtown Boise. A big buffet was set up, no lack of drinks and good conversation. On the last evening people are usually more laid-back and glad that the conference is over.

Thursday was "Adventure Day" with a choice of different tours for congress participants. We choose the brewery tour, which was mostly about "tasting" and not so much about "touring" and gathering information about some of the 25 (!) breweries in town. We only went to two: Barbarian (a brewery which is experimenting quite a bit with over 20 beers on tap, see pic above) and Payette. Breweries here seem to not serve food in the majority, therefore we got lunch delivered into the brewery from a great Mexican food truck in front of the building and indulged in delicious Empanadas, Tacos and Burritoss. Last stop was a bottle shop, which had a great selection of beers from all over the world.

After the tour we explored downtown, the State Capitol and a view of Downtown:

Also, there are many murals in downtown, one even with a Bavarian theme:

In the evening the circle became complete: We met with a gentleman who we had met in Elko, at the Cowboy Poetry Gathering. He has a second home in Boise and though we already had doubts that he'll get in contact with us again, as promised, he did and we had a wonderful last evening with dinner at Bardenay Restaurant & Distillery. We found out that he is a retired FBI investigator and - being a big mystery fan myself! - it was fascinating to talk to him.

Another short night. My cold got worse in the last couple of days and my nose was clogged, couldn't breathe and therefore was awake quite a bit. Fortunately, we were not in a hurry this morning. Took a hot bath, packed and got ready for the hotel shuttle to the airport around 10 am. Boise has a clean little airport, very convenient, short lines, friendly employees.


Well, almost five weeks on the road now, and still not really happy to go home. It's been three (or even four) trips in one this time: Nevada's Cowboy Country, tropical Hawaii, the Pacific Northwest and Boise/Idaho for the conference. It's been a smooth trip, very interesting, though, also exhausting in the end. Ten flights in total on this trip - don't need that, but it was not to avoid.

Big announcement: Portland 2020

That's where we are spending our days right now: the Boise Conference Center. Eventually, it stopped to rain or snow and the sun came out. In a break inbetween I went out for a couple of minutes to check out the attractive city center:

This morning the host city for 2020 was announced during a special breakfast (pic above) with a Portland DJ and a rapper performing and with mimosas/bloody marys, salmon hash and other goodies being served: PORTLAND, Oregon. Good for us! We love this city, and, in addition, our just-published guidebook on Portland hopefully needs an update until then. Also, possibly we can see more of Oregon (and Washington) and visit our friends in Astoria. Already received a couple of invitations to come and visit.

And, I just received a nice pic of our sleigh ride in Leavenworth, with our fantastic international group:

GO WEST !

"Go West" is a 4-day-tourism show taking place at a different place very year, with around 800 attendants: suppliers representing destinations, properties and attractions from the American West and international tour operators (and a hand full of media) participating. It started yesterday with a choice of either lectures and speeches or a city tour of Boise/Idaho, the attractive metropolitan center of the "Potato State" Idaho.


The opening event in the evening took place in Boise's beautifully renovated Idaho State Museum (pics below and on left), with a performance of Basque dancers (the city has a long basque heritage, with a community of about 16,000 - one of the largest in the U.S.!) and pow wow dancers and an unique all-female drum group of the local Coeur d'Alene tribe. There was Basque food, Basque wine and local beer being served, too.



Today we had our first full day of appointments, which gets pretty tiring after a while. There are a 155 tables set up (each of us had one) and "suppliers" are running around to meet with "buyers" (and the few media people). It's a lot of talking and being attentive. Some of the appointments are interesting and productive, some are not so much. But, you never know before,,,

Some contacts we choose ourselves, some were chosen by the suppliers. In between lunch was being served (pic below), coming along with speeches and presentations, sponsored by Best Western: pork tenderloin with hash browns and veggies and not bad at all, considering the number of meals they had to serve at the same time. We met a lot of people today and my head is spinning now (it's late afternoon). Fortunately, no event tonight, just a quiet beer with a good friend of us in a nearby brewery.

Experience the Northwest

Time is flying and our days were packed since our flight into Seattle last Tuesday. Besides not having slept all night, our flights from Honolulu to San Francisco - where we had a 4,5 hour layover - and, on to Seattle, went smooth. Seattle was the starting point of our "pre-fam" (a group familiarization tour) called "Experience the Northwest" and, anticipating the outcome, it was one of the finest group tours we have ever had.

It was a VERY mixed group (see pic above) of ten people, all tour operators with the exception of us. They came from Korea, China, Thailand, Hongkong, Saudi Arabia, El Salvador, France and the U.S. and the tour was operated by a regional tour operator, the tall guy on the pic: Guy Glaeser with InquisiTours. For Seattle the Port of Seattle has arranged a whirlwind itinerary for us, including Bill Speidel's Underground Tours (top left) to the Troll (a huge stone sculpture), Pike Place Market (pics below), Chihuly Garden & Glass and the Space Needle, offering great views. We stayed at the historic Mayflower Hotel in the middle of downtown and were spoiled food-wise at Dahlia Lounge. Just a few Seattle pics without much of a description: