This week, I am heading to Berlin for the week for the Berlin Matrix Community Summit! The event will happen on Thursday through Saturday, but I am heading there early so that I can work and have a bit of vacation before the summit.

I flew out on Saturday late afternoon on Lufthansa. There seem to be no direct flights to Berlin, so I flew through Frankfurt on the way out (and will fly via Munich on the way back).

This week, I went to Oakland to visit a friend Jack Garner, a friend from school who works at Salesforce out in San Francisco. I flew in in the evening on Tuesday to minimize the time I had to take off of work. I worked for the first two days and then we both took Friday and Monday off for a long weekend.

Today, I was in a total of five countries. Why? Well, one of the things on my bucket list was to go on the Eurostar from Paris to London under the Channel tunnel. I don’t know why it was on my bucket list; I think it was because I have always liked trains.

Anyway, I woke up early and navigated my way to Gare du Nord for my 09:00 train to London.

Today, I took a day trip to the Normandy beaches. The tour visited Omaha Beach, the American Cemetery at Omaha Beach, the D-Day museum at Arromanches (Gold Beach), and Juneau Beach.

This post has taken me a long time to write because I wanted to do justice to the topic, and capture some of my thoughts and emotions from the day.

Today was my first day in Paris! I decided to move to a hotel because I didn’t feel totally safe at the hostel I was staying at. I normally don’t care too much about my sleeping accommodations and can sleep anywhere, but just something about the vibe didn’t sit right with me. I was a bit concerned about leaving my things at the hostel, even locked up. Maybe it was just that my expectations were skewed by the great hostel in Lisbon… Regardless, I’m not on that tight of a travel budget, so I spent the first part of the morning moving to the new hotel (the citizenM).

Today was my last day in Lisbon. I spent the morning on a walking tour of the city and then flew to Paris.

Touring Lisbon

The tour was gratuity based, and it was really good. The guide’s name was Hugo and he was very engaging and informative. He took us around a bunch of places in Alfama, and he pointed out interesting things that I wouldn’t have noticed on my own.

Due to staying up way too late last night in Alfama, today was a day for relaxing. I woke up just before noon, and a few people that I’d hung out with at various points over the past few days (and who had also been out late last night partying) were planning to go to a beach in Cascais, a town a bit west of Lisbon.

Today, I went to the Alfama district and toured the Castelo de São Jorge. Then, in the evening, I went out with some people from the hostel to the streets where there were celebrations for the Feast of Saint Anthony which is the largest festival in Lisbon.

After a small breakfast at the hostel, I started walking over towards the Castelo de São Jorge in the Alfama district which is the old quarter of Lisbon. My goal was to eventually get to the castle, but I wanted to enjoy walking through the old quarter on my way, so I went at a very leisurely pace. The streets were beautiful, and in some areas, people were already setting up decorations for the celebration that night.

After the week of the work retreat, I am staying in Europe for another week (until next Sunday). The first four days are going to be in Lisbon, and then I’m heading to Paris for a few days before flying home.

I caught a ride from the retreat venue to the Lisbon in one of the taxis so that I wouldn’t have to pay as much for a taxi to the hostel that I was staying at.

I spent the first week of my trip at a Beeper company retreat in Ericeira, Portugal: a town about an hour northwest of Lisbon. We were staying at an event venue called Alma do Paço. The goal of all of the work retreats is to allow the team to have a week of focused collaboration. We tried to take advantage of having all of the teams together by working on some cross-team projects. We also try to have whole-team meetings such as retrospectives, planning and brainstorming discussions, and other meetings. The retreats are also our main opportunity to meet coworkers in-person and are great times to build relationships. I find that meeting people in person is extremely helpful for making the online interactions feel personal.