I have forgotten how absolutely terrible and hostile Frankfurt airport was. Not to me personally this morning, but I cannot imagine my parents navigating the maze of terminals, bus routes, underground passages and security checkpoints. Avoid at all cost.

Here are two products that work wonders for reducing travel anxiety:

• Anker Magnetic Battery, for when you want to charge your phone
• Anker 45W Wall Charger, for when you want to charge everything else

Both are small and affordable, especially if you set a price alert.

And so my trip to San Francisco ended with a 3-hour flight delay by United “for mechanical reasons” and a 3:30am touchdown at Dulles airport. At least it wasn’t a 737 MAX.

My last day in San Francisco. The city has the perfect combination of density and natural beauty. I’d say it’s underrated, but looking at property prices I’ll switch to “appropriately rated”. Will come back. And soon.

The news of San Francisco’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. What a delightful town.

It’s my first time in San Francisco today, and waiting at SFO’s designated spot for my Lyft ride I am stunned — stunned, I tell you — by how many BMWs, Lexuses and Teslas are used for ride sharing. An interesting data point.

While I admire Craig Mod’s extensive introduction to Walking and Talking, the European part of me — which is 100% to the nearest decimal — is rolling his eyes and thinking, “Really, Craig?”

This is America at its best and worst: optimize, plan, extract every ounce of utility from what is supposed to be a leisure activity. I’d rather go flaneuring.

In nicer news: I took the train (Acela) from DC to Philadelphia this week, and you know what? It wasn’t half bad! It was, in fact, surprisingly good, from the boarding experience to the service (both rides had the happiest conductors I’ve seen anywhere). Now if only the DC-Boston line didn’t take twice as long and cost twice as much as flying.

Chris Arnade’s preface to his latest post, Walking Fuji:

I am going to torture you by over using the word experience because that’s what my father did to us on these trips. Whenever we were in the middle of something arduous, dangerous, or especially weird— which happened a lot on these trips— and expressed any annoyance, fear, or confusion, he’d gleefully remind us, “It’s an experience!”

My wife and I are his parents in this regards! Not sure if I should hope — or worry — that our own kids may end up like him.

In my notes from Honolulu I downplayed how much better the food was there — for the price you pay — compared to what you can get back home.

Case in point: returning from Diamond Head (an easy trek, highly recommended) we took a Lyft ride back to our hotel. The driver, “L.J.”, turned out to be Ljubiša from Novi Sad, Serbia. Needless to say, we had a good conversation, which led to food, which let to us making a pit stop at “the best doughnut place on the island”. Selling Portuguese doughnuts, of all things.

I don’t know if they were the best on the island, but they were better than anything we’ve had in DC in our seven years here!