2021 New Experiences

 2021 New Experiences

Taking a look back at 2021, here are some new experiences for me...

New Places Visited

Asheville, NC - Still limiting travel due to Covid, but decided to drive to Asheville, NC for a visit.  Asheville is a small city with a vibrant art scene, from the Folk Art Center to the many downtown galleries. There is also an excellent variety of microbreweries, including the Wicked Weed Funkatorium and New Belgium Brewery.  

New Activities

Virtual Reality - I first tried this last year when I got an Oculus Quest II VR headset, but the list of new experiences continues to grow.  Some of my favorite experiences include...

• Eleven Table Tennis - being able to play against my brother, brings back fond memories of our epic table tennis matches when we were kids.  Nice to be able to play again, even though we live far away from each other.
• Mission ISS - a full-up detailed experience of being inside (or OUTSIDE!) the international space station.  Experience floating around and using your arms to pull yourself around the station, with loads of pop-up descriptions explaining what you are looking at. 
• Anne Frank House - take a virtual tour of the Anne Frank house.  I don't know if I'll ever make it to the real house in Amsterdam, but it's closed now due to Covid, so this is probably the best tour you can get.
• Army of Dead VR experience - this is a commercial VR experience that is only running in DC and London at the moment, but it looks like it rotates to other cities.  You and five of your friends are put into the back of a truck (a room that looks like a truck in VR) and shoot at a horde of zombies from the 'safety' of the truck.  A well done immersive experience that is not too scary.  I expect that we will see even more and better immersive experiences like this in the future.  Can't wait.
  

New Foods

Tried a new restaurant called My Cravings for some Turkish breakfast.  The breakfast featured a wide assortment of breads and spreads.  And that would have been filling enough, but it also came with muhlama which is a mixture of corn flour butter and cheese, for dipping the bread into.