The Puget News » travel

The rediscovery of “Keep Calm and Carry On”

Eric Franklin — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 16:20:04 +0000

The lovely backstory of a recently rediscovered design icon. The next time I visit the UK, I have a new stop to hit for used books. What a beautiful store!

Beautiful Libraries: Baroque Library Hall, Klementinum, Prague, Czech Republic

Eric Franklin — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 21:38:16 +0000

Readers of this blog will know that we’re into beautiful books. Last week I visited Prague for the first time and managed to snap this (illicit) picture of the Baroque Library Hall at the Klementinum in Prague (clcik the photo to see it in grand size):

The Baroque Library Hall is the home of Czech National Library and is home to around 20,000 books going back as far as the 16th century. The Klementinum tour was one of the surprising delights of our time in Prague, at least for me. We had an energetic, although difficult to understand tour guide, who delighted in relaying the stories of the Mirror Chapel, this library, and especially the Astronomical Tower. If you ever visit Prague, I’d recommend this tour as a great way to see the city from up high.

Trying to be a Walla Walla Property Owner

Eric Franklin — Tue, 06 May 2008 17:03:22 +0000

My mother came to town late last week and Jan and I took her to Walla Walla to do some wine touring and look at some property. If you live in Washington and you have not been to Walla Wall yet, get out there as soon as you can because it’s moving up-scale in price pretty quickly. I think we’ll all look back at this phase of development as a pretty special time out there.

While out there, we discovered a different piece of property that recently entered the market as a foreclosure and before I knew it I was making an offer. This is a picture from the uppermost corner of the property. As you head down the property (walking straight from where this picture was taken) the views of the valley open up a bit more. Yesterday, my offer was signed by the selling party. At this point, it’s all just financially contingent on whether or not I get the loan product I’m trying to get.

Eventually we hope to build an energy neutral “green” vacation home (something similar to some of the Michelle Kaufmann pre-fab designs like the Glidehouse or Lotus) out at this location and rent it to adventurous wine tour folks who want to go home and drink their wines and cook some dinner with big views and some peace and quiet. For me, I think it’ll be a nice place to escape from the greyness of Seattle and kick up the feet to do some reading.

You can see my other photos of the property on flickr in my photoset.