The Adventures of Poolie and Loolie

White Haven, Tannersville, Scranton, PA - Day 3

2011-08-31T11:45:00.000-07:00

Friday, August 19th, 2011 (continued from last blog post)

After Centralia, we drove in the direction of our hotel, through more mountains and villages. The valleys were completely shrouded in fog from the previous rainfall and it all looked so pretty with the sunset in the background.

Our eventual stop was in White Haven, PA at a Holiday Inn Express off the side of I-80. It wasn't too far from the outlet mall, plus it came with a complimentary breakfast. It was clean and comfy, nothing special or fancy.

Saturday, August 20th, 2011

Sorry, there won't be many photos here, but lots to write about! The last day of our trip through New York and Pennsylvania already! The time has just flown by with lightning speed.

We woke up at our hotel, the Holiday Inn Express in White Haven. Before leaving, we had a couple of items from a standard continental breakfast - nothing special, really. All in all, the hotel stay was nothing special, plus we were woken up in the night and morning by annoying children running and screaming up and down the hallway, paired with equally annoying loud-talking parents. Oh well.

The Crossings Premium Outlets was about a 20 minute drive away in Tannersville, PA. Shopping at the outlets was an awesome experience for the both of us and we both found things that were just our style! Arriving right at 10am was a good idea because we had no problem finding a prime parking space. I ended up finding a striped tee at Rue 21, a navy blue cardigan at DKNY, a big wallet that fits all of my cards at Fossil, a whole assortment of shirts at J.Crew, a denim dress at Guess, pajama pants at the Gap and a whole assortment of treats at Harry & David! I picked up so many yummy flavours of coffee, two different kinds of trail mix, and root beer float flavoured Moose Munch popcorn (as featured on the Food Network!). Poolie bought a lot of clothes, too, which was fantastic because it is tougher for him to find clothes that he likes. He had no problem at this outlet mall finding a DKNY sweater, a Lacoste gingham collared shirt, two pairs of Levis, a whole bunch of shirts at PacSun and boxers at the Gap. I may be forgetting some things but suffice to say, we had a great shopping day!

Even the pizza we had at the food court was delicious and there were loads of vegetarian choices.

After a serious day of shopping, we drove up to Scranton to the Waffle House - the same Waffle House that we visited on our NYC trip in 2009! Thankfully, it hasn't changed one bit and we devoured our hash browns. I got a double of hash browns, scattere and smothered, with a grilled cheese sandwich on the side. Poolie got a triple hash browns (a whole plate full!) scattered, smothered, covered and capped! (onion, cheese, and mushrooms) Yum! We only wish there was a Waffle House closer to home, but I suppose that makes it all the more special to visit when we travel.

After lunch, we started driving home - a good 5 1/2 hour drive from Scranton - through Binghamton, Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo. Some of the highways were so interesting - both sides of the road are super far apart at times, even with a swamp, stream or trees dividing the road. We even saw one place in Pennsylvania on a mountainside where the road split and there was a small valley with a house in the middle of the highway! The scenery was just beautiful and made the long drive seem much quicker.

We had to wait a really long time at the border, nearly an hour. They were much stricter than usual, especially for coming back into Canada! We eventually made it across without incident and finally arrived home.

I have a feeling we will be back to Watkins Glen at some point to explore the Finger Lakes further! We could spend many more days at the breathtaking gorge and take in the views from across the lake. We had yet another wonderful vacation!

Centralia, PA (August 2011) - Day 2 of Our Trip

2011-08-31T11:43:00.000-07:00

Friday, August 19th, 2011 (continued from last blog post)

Finally, we had the opportunity to visit Centralia, Pennsylvania. We watched a documentary called The Town That Was about Centralia a couple of years ago and had always wanted to check it out. Today was the day! For those of you who are not familiar, you can check out the Wikipedia page about Centralia, as well as numerous resources on the web by searching on Google. Essentially, Centralia used to be a thriving community until the 1960s when a coal mine fire started burning beneath the town. Needless to say, the fire was never extinguished and continues to burn today. In the 1980s, it became apparent that the fire was a health issue and a danger to the citizens. People were relocated to neighboring towns. Some of the citizens chose to stay in an effort to save their town, but the government claimed eminent domain on all properties in Centralia and has been slowly forcing the remaining Centralians to leave. Mostly all of the structures in Centralia have been demolished, with only a few homes and buildings left standing.

The documentary, as well as information about Centralia around the web is truly fascinating and sad. If only the fire had been put out properly (or hadn't started to begin with), this town would continue to exist as a community of hundreds, if not thousands of people. There are also some conspiracies that some former and current residents (of which there are only a handful remaining) believe. They feel that the US Government forced people to leave so the government can have sole ownership over the billions of dollars worth of anthracite coal beneath the town.

If you did not know about the history of Centralia, you may not even realize that this town existed. We drove down Highway 42 from the North, which turns into Highway 61. Driving down the two lane highway, you may notice the municipal building to your left, where a fire department still operates (but the Centralia police department no longer exists). As you drive along, you only really see overgrown plants and trees, a few side-streets that have no buildings down them, and then you end up driving away from what is left of Centralia. It would certainly be easy to miss.

We walked from where we parked our car (near the Municipal Building), crossed Highway 42 and took one of the side streets. We saw no real remains of a town here - all of the buildings were totally gone without a trace with new-growth forest beginning to reclaim the land. Every so often, we may have caught a glimpse of a town that used to be, such as an old fire hydrant buried by bushes or a stone wall covered by trees.

We walked down a street that used to be called Troutwine where we found two homes still standing. There are still residents living here and we did not want to disturb them in any way. I know they must get enough visitors and I'm sure that they want their privacy. I didn't take any pictures of their homes directly as to not intrude. I did take one image of the street that captures part of one of these homes. The houses are across the street from one another.

Continuing along, we arrived at the site with the most damage at the end of the street known as South Street. This area still has an active coal fire burning beneath it. There was a man at this area who lived nearby that told us that this area had been covered and backfilled. This area did look very different in the documentary. However, filling in the area and covering over the mine fire does not completely remove it from existance. There were areas where you could still see the smoke venting from underground, steam pouring out from rocks that covered small spaces in the ground.

South Street

You can see the steam coming out of the ground here.

You can see the steam here as well.

Off to the left side near the centre of the photo, you can see the frame of an old swing set.

This area also provided us with a great view of the town. You could see the municipal building from here, as well as a church off in the distance.

It is hard to believe that this was one of the main roads in town.


Here are some steps that led to a building. Only small amounts of concrete show that a building even used to exist here.

We saw one of the three cemetaries that still existed in the town. These cemetaries are still in operation and are visited on a regular basis. In "The Town That Was", one of the things that people said was even if you moved away from Centralia, you would eventually come back to the town for your final resting place. This cemetary was right off South Street.

We saw both of these along South Street as well. I believe that one used to vent the gas and steam, and one is the current red BAMR monitoring pipe. One of the other larger cemetaries was in the background. We didn't want to explore any of the cemetaries as this seemed like a violation of sorts. After all, we were just visitors to a devastated town and did not want to disturb anyone who still lives there.

We continued back along Highway 61/42 towards the municipal building. We felt like something was missing...a lot of the buildings that we had seen in the movie, just produced a few years ago were gone. After we got back home, we re-watched "The Town That Was" and tried to compare everything that we saw in the movie to what we had seen in real life. We never saw the home of John Lokitis Jr., the former row house that had the brick pillars along the side. After further investigating online, we discovered that it had indeed been demolished and John Lokitis Jr. had been forced to move away from Centralia by the government. That's so sad. John was the main "tour guide" and character in the documentary and he had so much passion for Centralia. It is no wonder that much of the town is overgrown now, as John would often mow the lawns of vacant lots and even hung Christmas lights around the town during the holidays. If the government really wanted to bury the remains of Centralia, they did their duty by forcing John Lokitis Jr. to leave.

We searched around because I wanted to see the Centralia park bench that John painted in the movie, the Veteran's Memorial, and the town's time capsule. Without any real sense of where this might be located, we wandered around until we found it. It is no wonder that it was a little tricky to find. The Veteran's Memorial only had its foundation left and the park bench was completely gone. I later discovered that these had been moved to a neighboring town after Lokitis left so they would not be vandalized or destroyed. The time capsule was still there, but this entire area was overgrown by weeds and tall grass. What a shame. I sincerely hope that the Centralia time capsule does not become stolen or destroyed before 2016.

Where the green Centralia park bench once was.

The foundation for the War Memorial

The Centralia time capsule, to be opened in 2016.

Another place I wanted to visit was the destroyed section of highway. Highway 61 used to run directly through Centralia, but sections of the highway started to buckle under the pressure of having a mine fire burn beneath it. After various attempts to fix or patch up the highway, the solution was to re-route Highway 61 around the town of Centralia. When I saw pictures on the Web, there were signs saying "Highway Detour" and "Dangerous Underground Mine Fire" all around the area, so I was picturing these signs in my mind. We did not see any signs like this at all, so we were not able to even locate the closed section of highway at first! I am sure that the government removed these signs as to not attract any attention to the area. While driving around the south part of Centralia on Highway 61, we saw a bend in the road that looked like this:

Poolie thought we should stop here as maybe the closed highway was behind this sign. Sure enough, across the road and behind the sign was the closed section of Highway 61.

There was graffiti everywhere. Please excuse the profanity or sexually-explicit messages in any of these photos. You couldn't avoid it! At first, we noticed that the former centre median of the highway was overgrown with weeds and trees were beginning to grow out of it. Walking along, the road began to shift and cracks were forming. Soon enough, huge splits and crevices formed in the concrete. We even saw areas where smoke was coming out of the ground and pieces of wood found in these holes were smouldering. It is hard to believe that this used to be a section of highway.

We got back in the car and drove back towards Centralia. We passed through part of Byrnesville, PA. Byrnesville was quickly claimed by the Centralia mine fire as well. It was a very small town of less than one hundred residents (in 1980). There are no homes or citizens left in Byrnesville. On the left side of Highway 61, you could see an old washhouse that used to exist here. This was where the coal miners used to wash up after their shifts. Now, nature is reclaiming the remnants of this old stone building.

Our trip to Centralia left us with an unsettled feeling. If the town could change that much over the course of a few years, between the time when "The Town That Was" was made and 2011, what will be left of this town in the years to come? Mining is still very much present in the area, as we saw while driving down Highway 61 towards Mount Carmel. It is hard to say if the town will become useful for its coal in the future, and it is difficult to say if this land will ever be home to anyone in the future. It is sad to see that Centralia may only continue to exist in the history books, images on websites and in its cemetaries.

If you decide to visit Centralia, please be respectful of the land and of its citizens. Please do not cause a disturbance in any way and leave the land as you found it. There is enough garbage and graffiti everywhere and you do not need to add any more. I found some great resources online once we got back home from the trip - if you need a detailed map of what used to be in Centralia (and what is currently located there), there is a CentraliAlmanac Map. I also enjoyed this Centralia website and this Centralia forum for information.

Corning Museum of Glass - Day 2 - Watkins Glen & Corning, NY

2011-08-30T12:35:00.000-07:00

Friday, August 19th, 2011

We woke up today at Sunset on Seneca to a delicious breakfast, thanks to the owners, Frank and Donna! We enjoyed fresh fruit, yogurt, muesli and a hot meal - Poolie had an omelette and I had waffles. The view from the kitchen overlooked the dock and the lake, and it was stunning! Then, we took one last walk out to the lake for a last look and the cat came running down the dock towards us. It was great to be able to play and hug the cat for a bit! Then, all of the ducks in the lake came swimming towards us as if to greet us! It was so cute!

We bid farewell to the B&B and ventured into town. A yarn shop caught my eye the day before and we stopped for some shopping at the Finger Lakes Yarn Store. There were many high quality yarns to choose from, including some that were locally spun and dyed. Poolie found the perfect one - shades of purple and blue - the colorshade was named after the Finger Lakes and it was only available in the area! I also got some super soft Madelintosh sock yarn in a hazy shade of purple-gray.

After the yarn store, we headed down the road to Corning, NY to visit the Corning Museum of Glass. The Corning Museum of Glass really surprised us because we didn't realize the museum was so big and there were so many amazing works of glass art to see! There were tons of different displays of impressive glass works by artists from all over the world. Here are some pictures of some of our favourites:

There was also a giant room of historic glass works dating back to the times of ancient Egypt leading right up to modern times. We also enjoyed the interactive displays, including one where you stood back on a line and walked forward, and then your perspective totally shifted - you went from viewing yourself in a mirror to having crazy reflected images surrounding you! We also saw a hot glass blowing and shaping demonstration where a bowl was created out of glass right before our eyes!

We stopped at the café for lunch and had a mix of healthy and unhealthy foods, including delicious salads (mine was spinach & strawberry and Poolie's had tomato and fresh mozzarella) and deep-fried mozzarella sticks, onion rings and fries. At the gift shop, Poolie bought me a glass cat that was curled up sleeping made by Nunwell Glass. I also got us a Christmas ornament and some postcards.

In the afternoon, we hit the road en route to Pennsylvania. It started to rain but cleared up later on. We drove through many mountains and were often fully surrounded by trees. So beautiful!

In the next blog post, I'll write about the second half of our day when we visited the ghost town of Centralia, PA.

Watkins Glen - Day 1 - Red Newt Winery and Bistro

2011-08-25T19:15:00.000-07:00

Thursday, August 18th, 2011 (continued from last blog post)

After visiting the Watkins Glen State Park and Gorge, we went back to the Sunset on Seneca bed & breakfast to get ready for dinner. The owners, Frank and Donna are very kind and welcomed us into their home. The house is situated on Lake Seneca, and we had full access to their dock and lake front property. Even our room, "the White Room" had a beautiful view of the lake. Lake Seneca, one of the Finger Lakes, is so peaceful - I could just sit and look out onto the lake for hours.

We got ready for dinner and dressed up a little bit for our night out at Red Newt Winery & Bistro. It was a nice change of pace to enjoy a meal at a fine dining establishment! Here we are all dressed up, including playing around a bit on the swing at Sunset on Seneca.

The restaurant was a short distance from our B&B, just down the road about a 10 minute drive. We enjoyed the scenic drive along the lake, where you could see waterfalls and rock wall from one side and the view across the lake on the other side.

At Red Newt, we unfortunately arrived a little too late for a wine tour. We did enjoy some wine at the restaurant with our meal - a local bottle of Sauvignon Blanc from Damiani Wine Cellars in the Finger Lakes region. In fact, our waiter pointed out that a co-owner of Damiani was enjoying a meal at a nearby table in the restaurant! It was fantastic to taste the wine that was produced directly in the area. The wine was absolutely lovely!

It also helped matters that it was half-price wine night on Thursdays at Red Newt! Of course, we would have purchased a bottle regardless but this was a nice surprise! As the sun began to set, we started receiving our meal and it was absolutely delicious! They had plenty of vegetarian options for us and it was so yummy. We enjoyed such a fabulous meal and we would not hesitate to return to this amazing restaurant! Here are some pictures of the food we enjoyed:

Cornmeal Crusted Black Bean Cakes (With roasted corn salsa and cilantro sour cream):

Local Organic Spicy Greens (With shaved shallots, roasted corn, black beans, and a cilantro roasted garlic vinaigrette):

Farfalle - Finger Lakes succotash (zucchini, summer squash, roasted garlic sweet corn, red onion, arugula) and a roasted tomato sauce topped with Parmesan: (Poolie's entree)

White Lasagna - Seasonal vegetables, spinach, ricotta cheese, roasted garlic cream sauce (Loolie's entree):

And as for dessert...I was pretty full at this point but there's always room for dessert! Poolie had a blueberry crumble with vanilla ice cream and I got a chocolate "paté" with raspberry and cream. And of course, a coffee! Delicious! My apologies for some blurry photos, especially the dessert...as the sun set, the lighting got worse, and my camera skills got worse as I drank more wine ;)

Back at the B&B, we took another walk (at night) out to the dock. I was greeted by a friendly, adorable cat that lives at the house. This cutey polydactyl (has an extra toe on each paw making for huge paws!) calico kitty was very loving, purring a lot! She let me pick her up and hold her in my arms right away!

We had a fun-filled, action packed day in Watkins Glen!

Watkins Glen, NY - Day 1 - State Park and Gorge

2011-08-24T21:07:00.000-07:00

Thursday, August 18th, 2011 (continued from last blog post)

After our amazing experience at Farm Sanctuary, we drove a short distance to our bed and breakfast, Sunset on Seneca. It is a beautiful home situated right on Lake Seneca, complete with a dock that you can walk out on! We quickly dropped off our things at our room to head straight to Watkins Glen State Park (more on the B&B later!).

I warn you, this is going to be incredibly picture heavy...as it is an absolutely gorgeous place! The Watkins Glen gorge was simply breathtaking. It is one of the most beautiful places I have visited!

We walked along a bridge and up some stairs, along a path, all while being surrounded by rock, greenery, and the water below. We continued along the path walking behind small waterfalls all along where the river flows. The gorge walls at times completely surrounded us and all you could hear was the rushing water below.

We also saw some wildlife there, including one the protected Gray Pedaltail Dragonfly, and this little caterpillar that we moved from the path to a ledge out of harm's way.

We walked along one of the paths elevated above the main walking area by the water and stumbled upon this cemetary. What a peaceful final resting place to be so close to the beautiful gorge.

After our time at the gorge (and some time at the gift shop), we went back to the B&B to change for dinner. More to come in the next post!

Watkins Glen, NY - Day 1 - Farm Sanctuary

2011-08-23T17:33:00.000-07:00

Thursday, August 18th, 2011

Another trip and we're on the road again! We left the house bright and early for the first day of our three-day long summer vacation. We crossed the Canada-USA border at the Rainbow Bridge and had no problem at all. Then, we stopped at Panera Bread in Cheektowaga, NY just after crossing into the United States. A Panera Bread location just opened in Mississauga (there are only a couple locations in Canada) and it seemed like a good place to stop for some breakfast before continuing on with our fun-filled day of activities.

We continued driving mostly through the countryside and the odd village here or there in New York State on the way to our first destination - Farm Sanctuary. Farm Sanctuary is on the outskirts of Watkins Glen, located on 175 acres of land in the Finger Lakes region.

We entered the large barn marked "People Barn" and waited for our tour in a very informative space. There were lots of boards with details about some of the animals that they have rescued, health information regarding a vegan or vegetarian diet, displays showing how the mistreated animals are generally kept at factory farms, plus information on how to get involved to help. There was also a nice store (that we stopped in after the tour and purchased many items!) and a friendly cat walking around that I befriended.

Farm Sanctuary is such an amazing organization that rescues abused and neglected animals, mostly those from factory farms that are on the verge of death. It is so incredible that this sanctuary exists with hundreds of rescued animals on hundreds of acres of farm land.

We watched a short movie about the history and reasons why Farm Sanctuary exists. We were told about Hilda, the first farm animal rescued that started Farm Sanctuary. Hilda was a sheep who was left for dead in a pile of dead animal carcasses at a factory farm. Everyone thought that Hilda had died, but she lifted her head and looked right at Gene Baur, the co-founder of Farm Sanctuary. After rescuing Hilda, it was discovered that she had only collapsed due to the brutal transporting conditions and did not have any injuries or illnesses. Hilda made a full recovery and lived out a happy and peaceful life at Farm Sanctuary. She passed away from old age in 1997 and is buried in a beautiful garden with a wonderful memorial plaque so we can all pay tribute to this brave creature.

We started our tour around the farm to visit most of the animals that live at Farm Sanctuary. Our tour guide was great at introducing us to the animals, explaining & answering all of our questions, and she was very cheerful all around! We first visited the cows who had a huge pasture to walk around in, munch on grass, or just lay in the shade. All of the animals on the farm have a great quality of life with many choices on where to go based on how they were feeling, if they wanted to socialize with the guests to the farm or be left alone. They are very well taken care of in terms of food, socialization with other animals and people, and medicine. The cows that we met were very sweet and friendly, and let you walk right up to them and pet them. I am not used to interacting with farm animals so I found it amazing to be able to have interactions with such gentle creatures as the cows.

Next, we visited many happy goats in their section of the farm. The goats even had a wooden playground that they could climb on (and many goats were sitting up there!). They were very friendly and loved to be petted. As we stayed there longer and longer, more goats decided to come out to greet us. One of the goats had lost part of her ears due to frostbite and was missing part of her leg. She had a prosthetic leg that she could walk around on, but she preferred to walk around the farm without it. It is nice that the animals have nothing forced upon them and are given the choice to move about freely as they choose.

Next, we visited the turkeys and the chickens in one of the chicken coops. What interesting creatures! I had never interacted much with turkeys or chickens in the past but it was incredible to watch them kick up the hay and move around their home. It was so sad to see that their beaks and toes were trimmed back from their days at the factory farm. At least there is some comfort in knowing that they will live out the rest of their lives happily at the farm.

One of these gorgeous turkeys had it made in the shade on this warm summer day! He was sitting underneath a big blue umbrella with plenty of water to drink on the comfortable grass. There were some larger chickens in this area as well. In November, Farm Sanctuary holds an event called "Celebration FOR the Turkeys" which sounds amazing! From the website:

At Farm Sanctuary’s annual Celebration FOR the Turkeys at our New York and California Shelters, guests are invited to visit with cows, pigs, chickens, and other rescued residents and participate in our beloved Feeding of the Turkeys ceremony, where turkeys are offered a feast of pumpkin pie, stuffed squash and cranberries. Guests on both coasts will also indulge in a delectable vegan holiday meal of their own and be inspired by presentations from special guests.

I wish I could attend!

We also walked past some ducks and geese. We weren't able to interact directly with geese as they can sometimes not be kind to visiting humans, but we could see that they were very well loved. There was a big pond that they could swim in, a grassy patch to enjoy and a barn to live in. These geese were certainly enjoying the warm summer day in the pond or the shade.

Then, we visited the pig barns! What relaxed, gentle creatures! These pigs were laying on piles of hay, mostly sleeping or laying with their eyes closed. We were able to pet one of the pigs and its skin felt so rough to the touch. It was comforting to see that these pigs were indeed very content on the farm!

A very inspiring quote written on a board along a path at the farm.

After the hour long tour, we were given free vegan ice cream bars and I purchased many items from the gift shop! I bought a t-shirt, a necklace (that says "veg for life"), the Farm Sanctuary book, some postcards, a patch, and a magnet for our fridge. We also donated some money to this amazing and wonderful safe haven for animals!

After our experience at Farm Sanctuary, we drove through Watkins Glen en route to our bed and breakfast, Sunset on Seneca. Day 1 of our trip will be continued in the next blog post!

Goat Island - Niagara Falls, NY

2011-07-28T11:10:00.000-07:00

It was a beautiful summer day outside and we decided to take a trip across the border to Niagara Falls, USA. We drove to Goat Island to check it out because I had never been to see the American side of the Falls, and Poolie hadn't been since he was a little kid. We parked our car at the island and walked all around.

The day started off a little bit overcast, but the weather was just perfect - not too hot and not too cold. Plus, the mist from the Falls cooled us off rather nicely! These views are from Terrapin Point at one edge of Goat Island. You can see the Maid of the Mist boat from one of the photos. I should also mention that this was the first time that we got to really test out our new camera and it works wonderfully! It is an Olympus Pen E-PL1 and it takes amazing photos showing extremely vivid color and detail.

We found that the views from Goat Island are a lot better than from the Canadian side. While the Canadian Horseshoe Falls are the most spectacular falls and they are on the Canadian side of the border, you can see them a lot better from the USA! You get to be way closer to the water and there were less tourists. Having been to the Falls on the Canadian side many times in my life, I can say that this was a new perspective of Niagara Falls that I loved!

We walked along the edge a little bit further to take in the views of Niagara Falls and the river. You can see the Maid of the Mist boat and the Rainbow Bridge between Canada and the USA.

After our view of the Falls, we walked along the river down a scenic path on our way to the Three Sisters Islands. We were the only ones walking down the path and there were many opportunities to duck into the trees that were growing along the river to get right up next to the rushing water. The water was flowing down the Niagara River incredibly quickly!

The Three Sisters Islands are named after the three daughters of the man who originally made it across to each of the three islands. There are small bridges and a path across to each of the three small islands. We stopped at each of the bridges for the view of the river. We also went off the main path and explored around the small trails that wrapped around the edge of the islands.

After visiting the Three Sisters Islands, we walked across a Pedestrian Bridge to the mainland where there were a whole bunch of touristy activities in which you could partake. We chose to skip most of that stuff and just enjoy the beauty of nature and the view.

We walked back to Goat Island and saw the Nikola Tesla Memorial statue. He designed the first hydro-electric plant in Niagara Falls.

We departed Goat Island and Niagara Falls knowing that we had a fantastic afternoon there and thoroughly enjoyed our visit! After the trip to the Falls, we drove to Walden Galleria and did some shopping, and of course, made a trip to the Cheesecake Factory! On our way to Buffalo, we stopped at a scenic waterfowl outlook and spotted some ducks. We had a wonderful day together not having to travel too far from home!

Niagara Falls, Ontario - Day 2 - Bird Kingdom and The Falls

2011-03-05T16:30:00.000-08:00

March 4, 2011

Continued from my last blog post about the Bird Kingdom - now we have entered the Main Aviary! We did not expect this at all! It was a huge multi-level room where the larger birds all fly around. There is a waterfall with a swampy area below where some of the birds live. We saw so many interesting birds and some of them seemed to be not afraid of people as you could get very close up to them!

One of my favorite parts was going into the lorikeet cage to feed the lorikeets! I paid $2 for some nectar in a small cup and all of the birds landed all over me! I had at least 5-6 birds all on my hand and up my arm to my shoulder, and one of them landed on top of my head! It was hilarious and felt so strange to be covered in birds! Thankfully, none of them pooped on me. They were all very friendly and loved the nectar! Even when I just had the nectar cup out without any nectar in it, they knew what was going to happen and all flew over and landed on me. It was an amazing experience to interact with the birds so closely!

We were able to get right close up with several different birds. The birds all had free reign of the huge room from floor to ceiling and were all flying around as they pleased.

White Cheeked Turaco (Africa)

Red Crested Turaco (Africa)

Victoria Crowned Pigeon (New Guinea)

Mandarin Ducks (South East Asia)

Scarlet Ibis (front) and Giant Wood Rail (back)

The Main Aviary also is home to an authentic Javanese Tea House, originally built in 1875 in Java, Indonesia! It is the only one of its kind in North America. They serve tea and treats inside. We just looked around - it is a masterpiece of detailed carved wood.

Afterwards, we had to check out the gift shop, where I purchased a bird Christmas ornament, some postcards, and got a touristy pressed penny made. Of course, we had a bit of fun trying on some hats and playing around!

After the Bird Kingdom, we wanted to go to a restaurant called Taco & Tequila, but it was closed (despite its sign saying it should be open!) Lunch would have to wait.

We decided to check out the Falls. They looked majestic, frozen, and beautiful in the Winter. I will never grow tired of their breathtaking beauty, even though I have visited on numerous occasions! It was very misty and parts of the waterfall were frozen solid. The water was so icy and a vivid shade of blue. Everything around the Falls - the railings were mostly covered with ice and snow, even though much of the Niagara area is no longer snow-covered. The constant cold temperatures and mist generated from Niagara Falls must keep this area frozen for a longer amount of time.

After taking in the beauty of Niagara Falls, we drove back towards home with a stop at our very favorite authentic Mexican restaurant in Burlington called Adobo. After all, if we couldn't get our Mexican food in the Falls, we were going to have it eventually elsewhere! We got some yummy vegetarian burritos, nacho chips with guacamole, and Poolie got a mango juice and I got a guava margarita! Yum! Then, we visited the Vegan cafe next door called Kind Food and got some dessert - a chocolate macaroon cupcake and a chocolate brownie.

Our trip to Niagara Falls was such a fun little getaway and a wonderful way to celebrate our 6-year anniversary!

Niagara Falls, Ontario - Day 2 - Winter Whirlpool and Bird Kingdom

2011-03-05T16:09:00.002-08:00

March 4, 2011

We woke up early in the morning at Great Wolf Lodge and got ready to check out by 11:00am. We could have gone to the water park today as well, but opted to visit the Falls instead. Upon checking out of the hotel, the animatronic forest animals were singing songs to a small group of children and it was awesome - some kind of fantastic breakfast song! One of the characters sang that he wanted to eat garbage for breakfast and we laughed a lot.

I got a bagel and coffee and we sat by the fireplace for a little while before leaving Great Wolf Lodge to start the rest of our day.

After we left, we drove down River Rd. for a little while and decided to stop when we saw the river out of our window. The tourist area by the Whirlpool was closed for the season, so we decided to hop over the fence to get a closer view of the river below. The river and the whirlpool, as well as the escarpment looked so cool. It is beautiful to view in the winter, especially when there aren't many tourists around. Being there on our own made it even more special!

We also saw the Aero Car that runs in the summer - it looks like a bit of an antique, as though it would be too sketchy and old to actually run! It looked very neat though. I'm not sure that I would feel safe dangling above the Whirlpool in it, although I'm sure it is safe since it runs each season!

We continued driving and saw a beautiful Buddhist Temple at the side of the road with many intricately carved statues. It is amazing that such buildings exist right around the corner from the bright lights and tourist trap of Clifton Hill!

Then, we arrived at the Bird Kingdom. I found out about the aviary online and didn't know too much about it. We weren't sure what to think at first, but this aviary is incredible!

An information room about Niagara Falls. Oh no...I'm in a barrel going over the Falls!

You start at the Reptile Room to view lizards, turtles, snakes, iguanas, and even a Komodo Dragon I think! We even saw a soft-shelled turtle.

An actual Laughing Kookaburra! We heard its amazing loud "laugh" - never heard it in real life until now!

Next was the small-bird aviary. Lots of finches and cute little birds flying all around, including birds of all different colours from various areas of the world!

Wattled Jacana from South America.

Java Sparrow from South East Asia.

Blue-Gray Tanager - beautiful shade of turquoise blue!

Then, we saw nocturnal creatures (sorry, no photos as I didn't want to disturb them!) - huge bats with a 4-foot wingspan, owls, cockroaches (eww!), huge spiders (eww!) and poisonous frogs (cool!).

Niagara Falls, Ontario - Day 1 - Great Wolf Lodge Arcade

2011-03-05T15:48:00.000-08:00

March 3, 2011

Continued from Part 1 of our amazingly fun day at Great Wolf Lodge!

After dinner, we went to the gift shop and I purchased a Christmas ornament (starting a collection of these for our tree!), postcards, and an awesome grey knit poncho for a great price! We also had some fun in the store trying on crazy sunglasses and hats.

Then, we went to the "Northern Lights Arcade." We played so many games with just $20 worth of tokens between the both of us!

We were very happy to find older machines like Ms. Pac-Man and Donkey Kong. Those are some of our arcade favourites! Oh, how I would love to own our very own Ms. Pac-Man machine!

We also played basketball, skee ball, some shooting games, driving games, Wheel of Fortune and Deal or No Deal. We won 125 tickets on the Deal or No Deal machine! We also played a Taiko Drum arcade game where we were able to play co-op for three different songs - "Doctor Jones", "The Goones 'R Good Enough" and "Barbie Girl". Soooo fun!

There was also a hilarious game where you had to step on spiders (my kind of game!), one where you punched rubber duckies, and one where you jumped rope.

There were TWO Flamin' Finger machines, the one that I loved from Dave and Buster's! There were hooked up to one another so you could race head-to-head. Amazing!

The best was a game where you had to flip a coin into a wizard's pot - I got the coin right in and won the jackpot of 150 tickets! The tickets just came pouring out! With our tickets, we got a clownfish plushie, a tiny dinosaur, and fake moustaches. OMG - the moustaches. We had WAY too much fun at night taking pictures with these moustaches on! I wore two of them as eyebrows, or one as a beard and moustache. We were laughing so hard over these - I have not laughed so hard in such a long time! Then, I started sticking them to the TV to give some celebrities awesome moustaches.

By about 11pm, we were pretty exhausted from a fun waterpark day!

Niagara Falls, Ontario - Day 1 - Great Wolf Lodge Water Park

2011-03-05T15:31:00.000-08:00

March 3, 2011

Poolie and I decided to celebrate our 6-year anniversary by going to Great Wolf Lodge in Niagara Falls, ON! We celebrated a week early due to the way that our shifts at work ended up (our actual anniversary date is March 10th).

We arrived at around 3:30pm to check into our room. Great Wolf Lodge is HUGE - like a gigantic log cabin! When you walk inside, you notice all of the forest/woodland-themed decor, including a big display of animatronic creatures. The main set included a talking moose, bear, and tree, and there were other animals all around the main foyer area, including wolves and racoons.

Loolie saying "hi" to a friendly moose

Poolie and a gentle bear.

Loolie and the talking tree.

There was also a giant fireplace with seating in the front foyer. Our room was #3011 on the 3rd floor, down a very long hallway. Even the carpet and lighting down the hallway was decorated with woodland creatures!

Moose lighting down the hallway

The room was the "Family Fireplace Suite" with 2 beds, a couch, 2 TVs, a fireplace and a balcony. We didn't use the balcony because it was too cold outside, but we had the fireplace on a whole bunch of times! Another cool thing about the Great Wolf Lodge was that you wore a wrist band that was your room key, water park pass, plus you could charge anything to your room on it! It was nice not having to carry around your keys or wallet, especially while at the water park!

We headed straight to the waterpark first. The first slide that we went on was called "Niagara Rapids Run" and it was like a roller coaster and water slide all in one! It started by going uphill, and then you plunged into a waterslide, dropping super fast! Poolie was laughing so hard and I was screaming and laughing!

At the entrance to the waterpark - Great Wolf Lodge logo projected to the floor. When you stepped on it, the fish all around the logo swam around!

We went on a couple more slides where you could ride on a double-tube together! One of these slides was called "Canada Vortex" and you went down a slide into a giant spiral tube (called a "cannon bowl" on their website) where you spiraled around as though in a whirlpool. We were spinning so fast, laughing hysterically! You eventually ride down through the middle of the bowl to the pool below - of course, we somehow went down on this part of the slide backwards! It was so funny!

Another slide called "Wooly Mammoth" was in a giant inflatable tube that could fit at least a family of four. Poolie and I went on this one together and I was faced backwards the entire way down! I screamed during the whole ride and Poolie was laughing. It was pretty hilarious!

At the bottom of the slides, they all linked up to the lazy river. We went around several times at the end of almost every slide. About halfway through the river, there were these buckets overhead that filled up with water and would randomly dump out on whoever passed below. Thankfully, each time we passed through, we somehow missed getting soaked with water (even though Poolie kept trying to push my side of the raft underneath the nearly-full buckets!)

We also ran around on this giant jungle gym type of structure called Fort Mackenzie. It was filled with various types of ways to soak people with water, including the unsuspecting folks beneath the fort!

After we were finished going on the water slides, we picked up some pizza at the Pizza Hut Express and a couple of tasty treats. We took them back to our room for dinner. Poolie got a brownie with a swirly marshmallow topping, and I got this big cookie sandwich with sprinkles. As it turned out, the filling was purely icing! So sweet and sugary!

Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada - Day 2

2010-07-23T16:00:00.000-07:00

We woke up on Thursday morning and went downstairs for our 9:00a.m. breakfast. Maddie at Copper Lane made us our delicious breakfast and she tries her best to cater to all of the guests' tastes. She specializes in various diets - vegetarian, lactose-free, gluten-free or peanut-free - whatever your allergy or preference may be. For instance, we are both vegetarians, I cannot consume yogurt, one of the guests did not like fruit, and two of the guests did not like onion. Maddie prepared our first course - a delicious baked biscuit and delicious baked pears with cinnamon. For the guest who did not like fruit, she made a yummy looking slaw type salad with zucchini, carrot, and other fresh veggies. She also prepared a main course frittata, with onion for most of us, and without onion for the other two guests. There were three couples in total (one in each room). For dessert, she made these yummy gooey brownies and cranberry oatmeal cookies. What a great cook Maddie is! We thoroughly enjoyed our meal and were so pleased with the trouble that she goes to prepare meals to please all tastes and preferences!

After our breakfast, we went for a walk to the main shops in downtown Niagara-on-the-Lake. We saw these wonderful little Japanese-inspired shop called From Japan. There were so many amazing Japanese gifts, art, tea, dishes and glasses, stationary, paper goods, and more! We absolutely adored everything in this shop! Paul purchased some stationary sets for me, as I love cute stationary sets!

Then, we just had to stop at Victoria Teas and Coffees, since I heard that their coffee is amazing. Now that I'm back home, I've brewed coffee from the coffee beans that I bought, and it is so good! I purchased a Maple Cream coffee and an After Eight coffee. They sell so many varieties of coffee beans and tea, including some unique varieties to the Niagara area, such as Icewine coffee and tea. I haven't tried either of those flavors, but I'm sure they are fantastic!

We decided (the day that we left for our trip) that we would take a little zip across the Canada-USA border for an afternoon in the States! Maddie was nice enough to keep the wines that we purchased, as well as our luggage, at the bed & breakfast so we could travel without taking anything with us, since the border guards may hassle us if they discovered alcohol or a suitcase. We wanted to go to the Wegmans to do a bit of grocery shopping (we LOVE shopping in the USA to find different foods, mostly snacks really!), so we went to one in Buffalo that was near the Cheesecake Factory at the Walden Galleria in Buffalo, NY.

After grocery shopping, we went to the Cheesecake Factory for lunch! I went to the Cheesecake Factory for the first time last month while in Ohio with some girlfriends, and I really wanted Paul to experience the Cheesecake Factory first hand!

For lunch, we had the White Pizza and some Fried Mozzarella as an appetizer. The White Pizza, as shown above in the picture, has already been enjoyed a bit by us! It was so good! Paul said it was probably the best pizza he's ever had. It definitely rivals the pizza that we had in New Jersey on our NYC trip - in a totally different way, of course, but it ranks right up there for best pizza ever!

Mmmm...and when we thought lunch was totally amazing....here comes the cheesecake!

Yum yum yum! We decided to split a piece of Red Velvet Cheesecake...good decision, since we could barely finish the one slice of cake! Best cheesecake EVER. It was delicious bits of red velvet cake in between cheesecake and icing, and had white chocolate along the back of it! It was well worth the trip across the border!

We had a fantastic mini-vacation to Niagara-on-the-Lake and a quick trip to the USA! Since we're saving up to buy a house very soon, we haven't been able to travel as much as we would like to - hopefully the next trip we'll be making will be traveling for our wedding (or wherever our travels may end up taking us...!)

Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada - Day 1 Dinner and Wine

2010-07-23T14:02:00.000-07:00

After touring the wineries, we went to Deluca's Wine Country Restaurant as a part of our wine tour & dinner with Niagara Vintage Wine Tours. Since Paul and I are both vegetarian, we inquired ahead of time about a vegetarian meal. On the menu, there were vegetarian options for us, and we were able to fully enjoy everything as there were meatless options for every course! Also, each course was paired with a wine from a local Niagara winery that fully complimented the food.

We were brought an Amuse-Bouche to begin, which was some sort of apricot-rice mouthful with many other ingredients which I can't remember. It was absolutely delicious - incredibly flavorful and all of the ingredients came together so well! I always see the Amuse-Bouches being prepared on the Food Network and various cooking shows at fine dining restaurants, so it was really fun to be able to try one!

Next, we were brought some freshly baked bread with an olive oil balsamic vinegar dip. Mmmmm... I wish that I could eat this all the time! I could have easily just filled up on bread for the rest of the evening!

We each chose to try the salad (even though the soup was vegetarian, too, and sounded delicious) - this was easily the best salad that I've ever eaten! There was a wine salad dressing that tasted delicious and topped a very complex and yummy salad! It had salad greens, radish, beets, pickled asparagus, and a sweet pepper relish underneath, as well as feta cheese. Oh my goodness....it was so good! I could have eaten this salad for the rest of my life!

Yummy....wine! We had a white wine with our salad, a red wine with our dinner, and an ice wine with dessert! For dinner, we had a handmade pasta with a tomato sauce, topped with fresh ricotta and grated parmesan cheese and fresh parsley. This was so incredibly delicious, too! It has been since our cruise that we last ate at a fine dining restaurant of this caliber and it reminded us of the delicious cruise food...perhaps on par or even better!

For dessert, we had a fresh peach cobbler, as peaches just came into season here in the Niagara region. It was warm and delicious! Paul was even impressed with the fact that I don't normally eat raisins, but I gobbled them all up in this tasty dessert! Yum!

After dinner, I enjoyed a great cup of coffee and then we were back in the shuttle van with the tour company and taken back to our bed and breakfast. We were greeted by a friendly neighborhood kitty on the front lawn - apparently, there are lots of friendly neighborhood animals that live in the area, as there are plenty of trees and areas for wildlife to enjoy. Although we never "met" him, Maddie (who owns Copper Lane) told us about a red fox that is fearless and only walks around on the sidewalks of the neighborhood!

When we arrived back at Copper Lane, we were ready to go to sleep as we had another adventure ready for us the next day!

Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada - Day 1 Wine Tour

2010-07-23T13:38:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday, July 21st, Paul and I took a mini-vacation to Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario for an overnight stay at a bed & breakfast and a wine tour. Even though the Niagara region is just a 45 minute drive from home, we had always been meaning to take a wine tour and visit Niagara-on-the-Lake. Paul and I had a couple of days off together in a row and just a week ago decided to book this trip last-minute, if we could. As it turns out, we were able to book a room for just one night at a bed & breakfast, and the wine tour happened to have some spaces available, so we were in luck!

We stayed at Copper Lane Bed & Breakfast, right in the heart of Niagara-on-the-Lake. This beautiful home is literally just steps from the main downtown shopping area! It was incredibly convenient for us, as we just parked our car at the home (parking spaces are available for all guests) and were able to walk down the street and be in the center of town.

We stayed in the Cocoa Bean room, a very warm and charming room that made you feel right at home. Each room is equipped with an LCD TV with all of the movie channels, if you feel like staying in and watching a movie at night. Each room also has air conditioning, so it was very comfortable to sleep at night during these hot summer days.

Our bathroom was just a quick step across the hall, which wasn't a problem at all. It was just our bathroom and it was incredibly close to the room. It was decorated in similar shades of chocolate and caramel, and the bathroom was beautiful, just like the room! The shower was quite large, and there was lots of room to get ready in the morning after having a shower.

After we arrived mid-afternoon and walked around town for a little while, we went back to Copper Lane to wait for our wine tour to pick us up. We sat out on the porch of Copper Lane and watched some of the horse drawn carriages pass by. Copper Lane is surrounded by many trees and has a beautiful front porch with plenty of places to sit. The home itself was built originally in 1871 and has been fully restored, retaining many original elements of the house. It is quite charming!

The wine tour company that we went with was Niagara Vintage Wine Tours. We were picked up and dropped off from our bed & breakfast and embarked on a tour of three different wineries, as well as dinner at a fancy restaurant! This tour was described on the website as the Evening Wine Tour: Tony de Luca's Wine and Country Restaurant - a Californian inspired 5 course dinner tour and wine pairing experience!

The first two wineries that we visited were Reif Estate Winery and Pondview Winery, respectively. At Reif, we tried their Vidal, Merlot, and Riesling Icewine. They were all fantastic! We ended up purchasing a bottle of Late Harvest Riesling, Late Harvest Vidal, and a small bottle of Vidal Icewine from them. Next, we visited Pondview Winery, which just opened up on June 1st, 2010! The family had been producing wine for decades and finally decided to open their own winery. At Pondview, we tried their Riesling, Gewürztraminer Riesling, and Cabernet Franc Rose. This was the very first Rose wine that Paul and I both really enjoyed, so we had to pick up a bottle of that one!

Next, we visited our third stop, Pillitteri Estates Winery. We went on an extensive tour of their property, including outside where they grow the grapes, and inside the production rooms and down to the barrel cellar. First, we were given a brief history of Pillitteri, their family and their wines. Their wines have won many awards, many of which are prominently displayed in the front foyer of the building. Their Sparkling Icewine Cabernet 2008 won the top gold medal prize for best Icewine! There was also a beautifully decorated wagon displayed in the front foyer, painted and decorated with family history and kept in the family for generations.

It was a beautiful day outside when we saw the grapes growing that go into Pillitteri wines.

There are separate barrels that produce icewine and regular white/red wine. These containers separate the skins from the grapes and press them down into wine. The room with the giant metal containers was freezing cold and store the wine at the perfect temperature until they are ready to be transferred to the barrels.

We went down into the barrel cellar, which was enormous! There were so many barrels stacked all around inside a huge concrete cellar. There was the longest concrete table in the world in the center of the room...well, apparently it is now the second largest concrete table. There were 23 chairs all bolted up high around the room that get brought down on rare occasions for the family and friends to sit at the table in the cellar. The number 23 is special to the family and the owner, so many instances of this number are represented around the room as it brings good luck to them.

After the tour, we tasted many wines at Pillitteri: a Riesling, Gewürztraminer, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, a Gewürztraminer Icewine, and a rare Red Icewine! All of their wines were delicious and we ended up purchasing the Cabernet Franc and the Gewürztraminer Icewine. I would have purchased the Red Icewine, but it was a bit on the expensive side, understandably so!

After the wine tour, we went for our delicious dinner, which will be continued in the next blog post!

Cruise Photo Album Printed!

2010-04-12T10:13:00.000-07:00

Paul and I went on a cruise vacation to the Caribbean in December 2008 (you can read all about it in previous posts!), and I had been meaning to get some photos printed from the vacation. On our previous vacations, I had just put the pictures into a photo album, but I wanted to get a photo book printed up this time. After looking at a few different companies online, I decided to go with Photo in Press.

Creating a photo album at this website is really easy and intuitive - you download the software to your computer and create your photo album by using the program. Once you are finished creating the album, you just upload it to the website and can pay easily with Paypal. The program has an auto-save function so you don't have to worry about saving your work, and you can preview how the finished album will work at any time.

We chose a blue suede finish cover (you can choose from a bunch of different colors), but you can choose to get a little fancier with a leather cover, or a printed photo jacket for your book. You can add as many pages as you'd like to your book (up to 100) - mine came out to be about 50 pages and I have TONS of photos in it from the whole week-long vacation.

You can choose to fill the entire page with one photo, or put several photos or text on a page. It is entirely up to you! While the program does have its limitations (only a few different fonts and font sizes), it does have many layouts and colors to choose for each page, and it is quite customizable while remaining user-friendly for the average person.

I am really happy with this photo book! The quality is excellent and the book arrived within a few days of placing my order! The shipping cost was low as the company is located within Canada, and it was shipped Express. While making scrapbooks is a ton of fun, getting this photo book professionally printed ended up costing a lot less than it would be to purchase a scrapbook and scrapbook supplies, as well as getting photographs printed. I would highly recommend Photo in Press to anyone who is looking to remember a vacation or any special moments in their lives!

New York City (May 2009) Day 5: Driving Home with a Stop in Pittsburgh, PA

2009-05-19T21:28:00.001-07:00

Monday, May 4th, 2009 - 11:53pm

Home, at last! It feels like this trip has just flown by, but it also feels like we've been away from home for a very long time. Today was a very long one, filled with lots and lots of driving.

After a bite to eat at the hotel, we left around 9:00am. The directions that I printed off Google Maps were not clear, and as we discovered earlier, the signs in NJ are not clear at all! We had no idea where we were going - all we knew is that we had to get to the I-95. To make matters worse, we were running out of gas.

Thinking we were going the wrong way, we tried to turn around, but ended up on a toll highway! Quickly paying a toll fee and getting off the highway, we found a place to stop for gas. Miraculously, we spotted a sign for the I-95! Hooray, we're saved! From then on in, the directions and the drive were smooth sailing...er, smooth driving.

It was pouring rain for most of the morning and afternoon, which made for some hectic driving conditions, especially with transport trucks all around. Upon entering Pennsylvania again, we re-visited the beauty in heightened ways. This region, driving from NJ towards Pittsburgh, was even more mountainous than our drive in. On quite a few occasions, we drove through massive transit tunnels through the mountains!

We stopped for lunch at a rest station that had many different foods - we went for some veggie subs at Quiznos. Afterwards, we got some ice cream from Hershey - we were right near Hershey, PA, and little did I know that Hershey's makes ice cream, too! It was amazing - so rich and creamy - I think the flavour was something like peanut butter cup cookie dough. I also grabbed some Starbucks and we were back on the road.

Some hours later, after countless songs played in the iPod and numerous silly jokes to keep each other laughing for the whole ride there, we arrived in Pittsburgh. It originally struck us that it might be similar to Hamilton, ON, as they are both Steel Cities, but Pittsburgh is WAY nicer, cleaner, and more cultured!

Our sole destination was the Shop Kawaii store on Walnut St. This is the home of our favorite online shopping site, where we have purchased many gifts for Christmas and special occasions for each other. Walking inside, the real-life store did not disappoint; it was better than I could have imagined! San-X characters filled the whole back half of one room, adorable apparel filling another room, and Japanese figurines, collectibles, and Kid Robot/Munny figures lined the walls. This is the store of my dreams! We spent a good amount of time in the shop and it was really tough narrowing it down to purchasing a "reasonable" amount of items.

We left Pittsburgh and drove towards NY state. In Erie, PA we stopped for dinner at Boston's Restaurant and Sports Bar to find it was nearly identical to our Boston Pizza, just with a different logo! The menu was different, too, with a few similarities; the decor inside was nearly identical. We just shared some appetizers, including crispy deep fried green beans with ranch dipping sauce that were awesome - never had anything like that before!

It was now 9:30pm and we arrived at the border. Our border guard was so nice and friendly, and actually conversed with us a bit about NYC! What a stark difference between him and the nasty US border guard! We drove through the border without any difficulties and arrived home around 11:00pm.

It feels great to be back at home and in my own bed, but what a fantastic experience! My third visit to NYC, but my first time experiencing the city with my love, which makes it my first "real" time in NYC. This was the first planned-out trip there with a longer duration as well. The trip to NYC was amazing and we'd both love to visit back sometime as there are many more places to visit and see! I've heard that NYC can be visitd numerous times and you could do different activities each time - upon visiting the city first hand, I'm sure that statement is very much true indeed! We had a wonderful time in the Big Apple!

New York City (May 2009) Day 4: American Folk Art Museum (Part 2)

2009-05-19T21:27:00.002-07:00

Sunday, May 3rd, 2009 - 9:19pm (Part 2)

(continued from the previous post...)

After the museum, the plan was to go to MOMA (Museum of Modern Art). When we arrived, it was around 4:15pm and the museum closed at 5:30pm. Plus, the line-up to get into the museum was pretty long. We wanted to have enough time to see everything thoroughly without feeling rushed, so we decided to pass on visiting the museum and save it for next time.

We walked past a smaller museum next door, the American Folk Art Museum, and decided to go inside. The museum has 5 levels, and we were told to start at the top and work our way down. (I didn't take many photos because after snapping a couple, a security guard informed me that you weren't allowed to take pictures). The 5th Floor had the museum's permanent collection, which showcased a variety of art across centuries in a variety of mediums.

The 4th Floor had more art that was part of the permanent collection as well as the Henry Darger exhibit. I hadn't heard of him before, but his art is utterly fascinating. His artwork was not found until after his death, but it is super impressive in sheer volume - he wrote a 15,000 page story that featured many characters that he created for his own ficticious world. His art features these characters - it is incredibly interesting!

The 3rd Floor was a loaned collection of Ulysses Davis who created intricate word carvings of important Biblical and mythical characters, presidents, plus more. I hadn't seen anything like it before!

On the 2nd and 1st Floors, there were a collection of Paula Nadelstern's Kaleidoscope Quilts! What a unique and interesting concept. I've never seen anything like it! When you got up close, you could see just how detailed the quilts are - careful planning on the precise placement of the fabrics to create a perfect kaleidoscope design. There were many different takes on the kaleidoscopes as well - snowflake patterns, and "shards" - a kaleidoscope that was broken and pieced back together.

There was a little shop at the museum where we were able to purchase a book about the Henry Darger collection at the American Folk Art Museum, an "opulent ornament" that looks like the patterns from the kaleidoscope quilts made of fabric, and a kaleidoscope quilt postcard. All in all, the fact that we didn't have time for MOMA didn't matter - we found a hidden gem in NYC, the American Folk Art Museum.

After the museum, we made our way back to the subway. Tired with sore feet, plus hunger setting in, we were in search of good eats. I consulted my list of restaurants that I looked up in advance, and I wanted to try out a nice vegan restaurant called Angelica Kitchen. Located in the East Village, it was a bit of a trek on the subway (transfer to the L-train), but we arrived and walked a couple of blocks to 12th St at 2nd Ave. The menu looked very appetizing so we went inside.

We ordered some tasty selections from the menu - Norimake to start, fresh lemonade and cool apple cider, and main dishes: Poolie got a Tempeh special and I got the Dragon Bowl with soup + bread: rice, beans and sauce, a green pea and vegetable soup, and sourdough whole wheat bread with onion spread.

The Norimake sushi rolls had many vegetables and bean curd. The rolls were really too big and they fell apart really easily - they weren't really rolled properly. I enjoyed some of the flavors, but Poolie didn't feel as though the vegetables all necessarily tasted good together.

My soup was excellent and had garlic croutons. The bread was nice, but the onion spread was a tad too sweet and pasty. The juices were excellent.

Our main dishes arrived - mine had rice, pinto beans, tofu cubes, sea vegetables and other veggies with a soba sauce. The sauce tasted great! The tofu cubes and rice were the best part of the meal, the pinto beans were just okay and the veggies were alright. The sea vegetables were kinda gross. Poolie's tempeh dish wasn't as great - he said it was totally bland and had no flavour - it came with a bland sauce with a few sides (beans, cucumber) that didn't add anything special. The tempeh was spiced but was uninspiring.

It didn't help matters that two of the most vapid girls sat down next to us, plus we had a pseudo-intellectual who read a book during half of his meal on the other side of us. Clearly, this was a dining locale for fake-hipster-wannabes in the city. Our waitress was also rather dour; she lacked any sort of spirit, was neither pleasant nor unpleasant, but brought an air of depression to our table. I guess you win some, you lose some when it comes to restaurants! Next time, we will do ourselves a favour and head back to Gobo's in Greenwich for a fantastic vegetarian meal!

After dinner, Poolie was a little disappointed so we stopped for ice cream (I got a coffee instead since I was pretty full from dinner!) We took the subway back to Port Authority. The NJ Transit schedule that I printed out from the website before we left for the trip said that the bus came at 7:56pm. We waited for 20 minutes after purchasing NJ Transit tickets for the 125 bus from the machine. We waited and I thought to check the wall to make sure that the bus was coming. The bus schedule changed - the bus now comes at 7:30pm on Sundays (must have missed that one) and then not until 9:00pm! Ugh, we did not want to wait that long!

We decided to check back at gate 51 for the Community Coach bus and they had a large coach bus to take people back to NJ! Community Coach is way better than NJ Transit - way more frequent and way more reliable! So, we have unused NJ Transit bus tickets...oh well, a $5 souvenir, haha.

Back to the hotel...we took the elevator up to our room and our room keys didn't work. We went all the way back down and got them activated again. Back in our room, thank goodness the toilet seat was fixed! But...this time, the toilet was broken! It wouldn't flush! Another call to the front desk, and we waited again. Finally, someone showed up to fix it (a Howard Johnson employee from next door, just like yesterday) and after about 10 minutes, he was able to fix it. Thank goodness, I did not want two nights in a row with a broken toilet!

Now, we are finally settled in and will get ready to leave bright and early tomorrow morning! We have had a great vacation here and will have to come back for more!

New York City (May 2009) Day 4: American Museum of Natural History (Part 1)

2009-05-19T21:27:00.001-07:00

Sunday, May 3rd, 2009 - 9:19pm (Part 1)

Our final day heading into the city, and we had another busy and fun-filled day! Our legs still hurt a bit from all of the walking that we did yesterday, but that didn't stop us from walking all over the city all day long. After breakfast, we walked up to the top of the very steep hill (10th St.) to the bus stop at Kennedy. We took the smaller "Community Coach"bus again to Port Authority. They're so much more convenient than NJ Transit buses - they run way more frequently!

Once in NYC, our plan was to head up to the American Museum of Natural History. I looked at the map and saw that the A, C, and E trains went to our stop (81st St./Museum). Obviously, I read that completely wrong because only the A and C trains went there and we got on the E train! A little ways out, it seemed strange that we hadn't arrived yet so I checked the map - we were headed out towards Jamaica Plain! Oh no! At the next stop, we got off and took another train (I think an R train) back so we could transfer to our destination. At our transfer stop (50th St.), we were going to transfer to a C train to go uptown to the Museum. Upon reaching the 50th St. station, we discovered that due to the construction, the C train wasn't operating from that station for the weekend. Great, clearly it was not our day for public transportation. We ended up walking to another station, taking a different train uptown, and walking a few blocks to the museum. By this point in time, Poolie's legs and heels were killing him and it was raining out, too. We didn't let this disrupt our day; after all, a rainy day is the perfect day for visiting museums!

We reached the American Museum of Natural History, located on an edge of Central Park. I reminded Poolie that this was where "Ross" on the TV show Friends worked, but I doubt that he cares too much about that, haha. Upon entering, we bought our tickets and decided to attend a show at the "Big Bang Theatre" called "Cosmic Collisions".

We walked around for a while in the Rose Center for Earth and Space, since we both love all things about the universe and outer space. There were lots of neat displays where you could see what your weight would be on various planets and stars. You could also read up on pretty much anything pertaining to the planets and our galaxy. There were also gigantic real meterorites that you could see and touch.

The show at the theatre, "Cosmic Collisions" was so cool. It was in a large theatre with a spherical ceiling that was one giant screen all around us. The movie was narrated by Robert Redford and detailed various collisions in outer space throughout history and hypothesized possible collisions in the future and their implications. The special effects were super awesome and the movie explained the positive and negative effects of these collisions on our planet. We loved it!

After the movie, we stopped for a quick bite to eat, and then continued around the museum. We walked through the Hall of Human Origins, Hall of Meterorites, Hall of Minerals, Hall of Gems, Hall of Biodiversity, and the Hall of Ocean Life. The meterorites were amazing, and it was incredible to the immense variety of minerals and gems from all over the world!

The museum does have over 30 million artefacts and pieces (including the geodes pictured above) - you could spend days and days studying everything and learning new things, and still have more to see and read! I'd love to go back sometime!

At the end, we bought these hologram postcards from the museum store, and Poolie also got me a holographic bookmark of kittens running through a field that is awesome :)

New York City (May 2009) Day 3: Central Park, Times Square, and Back to Greenwich (Part 2)

2009-05-19T21:12:00.000-07:00

Saturday, May 2nd, 2009 - 9:23pm (Part 2)

(continued from previous post, leaving off from after the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens)...

We walked back to the subway and back to Greenwich Village for some lunch. When we walked up from underground, it was suddenly a beautiful, sunny day outside, without a cloud in the sky! Hooray! The weather people definitely got this one wrong!

We could have looked for a place in Brooklyn I suppose, but we really wanted to go back to Greenwich to the Risotto place that we found yesterday. We ate at the Risotteria for lunch and it was delicious!

Poolie got a Stella and my Diet Coke came in a little glass bottle. We shared a big salad with arugula, onion, and oven-roasted tomatoes, with fresh mozzarella and balsamic vinaigrette. It was so fresh and flavorful! They brought these complimentary soft cheesy breadsticks out as well, and they were so good. For the main course, my risotto was feta/spinach/roasted red pepper, and Poolie's was roasted garlic/roasted tomato/spinach. They were just perfect, yum! I loved how there was a special vegetable-broth risotto section, and the vegetarian and gluten-free options were clearly marked on the menu.

Since it was so nice and sunny outside, I thought it would be a good idea to take full advantage of the nice weather and visit Central Park. We took the subway up to the Upper West Side and got off at 79th. I wanted to walk up to 80th and Broadway so I could pick up some coffee at Zabar's to bring back home with me. I heard that they have amazing coffee there, and I am a coffee fanatic.

Then, we walked to Central Park, which is another green sanctuary in the middle of the bustling city! There are so many paths for cyclists, walking paths, giant boulders to sit on, great big trees, and a grassy area around a pond.

We went for a lovely walk around the park. We came across this castle called the Belvedere Castle that you could walk up to have a great view over Central Park. You had to walk up a narrow, winding staircase, and it had a couple of different levels that both offered incredible views of this natural area of the city.

After our walk around the park, we went back to Times Square in search of the Nintendo World store. Times Square was an absolute zoo! It is the tourists who are the most rude and pushy, certainly a stark contrast from the locals!

We found a Sanrio store and I just had to go inside since I love Hello Kitty! I bought a Hello Kitty New York pin and sticker and some cute note paper.

The streets were packed with people, so we took a little detour to less crowded areas because otherwise, we could hardly move! Finally, we reached Nintendo World! A very fun store, loaded with tons of Nintendo Wiis and DS systems to play, old systems and special edition items on display, and lots of Nintendo merchandise. Poolie was disappointed that he couldn't find a nice Nintendo shirt; I ended up finding a Mario shirt for myself and a Duck Hunt patch.

By this point, our legs were hurting quite a bit, and we needed to get some dinner! We went to a restaurant that I looked up in advance called Gobo in Greenwich. It is a vegetarian restaurant with unique and delicious choices! It was very elegant and it was tough to make a choice from all of the delectable menu items!

We settled on the Vietnamese Spring Rolls with honey glaze dipping sauce, and yam & yucca fries as appetizers.

My main dish was the Vietnamese spicy rice noodles and sprouts, and Poolie got the sesame protein with sweet and sour sauce. Everything had such fresh and tasty flavors and was absolutely excellent! I also got a fruit smoothie and Poolie got freshly squeezed pineapple juice. I could eat at this restaurant every day for the rest of my life and be perfectly happy!

After a small walk around the area, we went back to our hotel room. When we arrived in our room, our whole toilet seat had been dismantled for some reason and was in pieces on the floor! I called the Front Desk and they didn't know anything about it, so they sent up a repair man. Apparently, he was unable to fix it since it was a plastic piece that was broken on the toilet seat itself, so we had to wait until the next day for a replacement. Hopefully it gets fixed tomorrow. I said to Poolie, "Oh well, we'll just have to make do" without realizing that phrase has double meanings in this instance, and we both had a good laugh about it!

New York City (May 2009) Day 3: Cherry Blossom Festival at Brooklyn Botanical Gardens (Part 1)

2009-05-19T20:58:00.001-07:00

Saturday, May 2nd, 2009 - 9:23pm (Part 1)

We had an incredible day today! Our feet and legs are very tired and sore from the immense amount of walking that we did today!

We woke up at 7:00am again today, got ready, and had some more waffles for breakfast (yum!). I decided to check the weather and since there was a better chance for rain on Sunday as opposed to today, we decided to take a chance with our good-weather-dependent-activity, which was attending the Cherry Blossom Festival at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens.

We got to the bus stop and took one of the Community Coach buses to Port Authority. Then, we got on the #2 train to Brooklyn. It was a little bit confusing because there was some construction that affected route changes, but someone offered to help. People here are so helpful and incredibly friendly as well! It has been a pleasant surprise that the citizens of other major cities could look to as an example (in Toronto, you would hardly ever run into such helpful and polite people!). Shortly after, we reached the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens just before 10:00am where a small line had formed to get into the gardens.

The gardens themselves are amazing - what a beautiful and lush sanctuary in the city! The Sakura Matsuri, or Cherry Blossom Festival, was a weekend-long event that showcased the cherry blossom trees in bloom, the Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden, a Bonsai display, and a variety of Japanese performances and workshops. You were able to check out the entire Botanic Garden, too.

First, we checked out the Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden with a very knowledgable tour guide who gave us a fully guided tour. There was a large pond surrounded by beautiful lush greenery, along with ducks and koi who lived in the water. Later, we saw some turtles, too! We walked right around the pond, circling to the other side.

When we exited the Hill-and-Pond Garden, we saw tons of huge, flowering cherry blossom trees all along a path. These trees were such a wonderful sight, such beautiful pink blooms everywhere! The path was covered in a blanket of pink, and the trees were all in bloom.

We continued our walk around the premises and saw so many different varieties of plants and flowers. The air smelled so fresh and fragrant and looked so green and colorful. We saw that there were stages set up for J-Pop and Anime tables, but that doesn't really interest us.

Eventually, we walked right around to the Steinhardt Conservatory that was home to many tropical and unique plants. Outside of the Conservatory (and inside!) there were very tall bamboo plants growing.

Inside, we found a marsh climate in a separate room (it was hot in there - it even fogged up my camera lens!).

There was also a tropical plant section, a warm temperate zone area,

and a cactus section.

Downstairs, there were many bonsai to look at that was run by a group of bonsai enthusiasts. These gardeners were there to provide any advice that a novice might seek on growing their very own bonsai. You could even purchase bonsai and plants from the gardens, although we decided against that since there are rules against bringing plantlife back into Canada from the US.

Upstairs, there was a Bonsai Museum that was home to very large and old bonsai - one was even 110 years old! While we were inside, it poured rain for a few minutes and stopped completely when we exited the Conservatory.

Not only were the cherry blossoms in full bloom, but the tulips were as well! There were so many different varieties and colors of tulips at the BBG, more than I've ever seen!

After we checked out the rest of the gardens, we left realizing that it was the greatest botanical gardens that either of us have ever visited!

Here is a video that I took at the Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden:

New York City (May 2009) - Day 2: Soho & Greenwich Village

2009-05-19T20:36:00.000-07:00

Friday, May 1st, 2009 - 7:00pm

Today was a really fun day filled with walking and shopping! We woke up around 7:00am and put on our comfiest running shoes, prepared for lots of walking today. Our hotel had a free continental breakfast that included hot foods, too. There is a great waffle maker where you dispense your own waffle batter from a machine and pour it into a waffle maker. Very cool - fresh and fast! A great start to the day.

To get to NYC, we had to walk from the hotel (Comfort Suites in North Bergen) to the 10th Street bus stop - walk down the street from the hotel to 10th Street, and up a huge hill to Kennedy St. The bus stop is right across the street at the intersection of 10th St. & Kennedy St. A nice lady helped us locate the bus stop and explained that we could get on any bus that goes to the city. We originally planned to take NJ transit, but these smaller mini-buses kept pulling up, so we got on one. We later learned that these are the "Community Coach" buses and they seem to come a lot more frequently than the larger NJ Transit buses. It was $2.50 to get to Port Authority, similar to the NJ Transit bus ($2.55 for one way).

We arrived at Port Authority and walked to the subway. We each bought an unlimited 7-day Metropass for $25. We got on the #2 train to 14th St. to visit the Greenwich Village area.

Walking around earlier today was great - it was overcast, not too hot and not too cold, and just perfect for walking around! We saw a little garden with a monument to the Gay & Lesbian community.

We also spotted a building that Poolie may have seen on Law and Order where a murder was committed.

We saw this sticker stuck to a window of a shop, thought it was pretty funny.
Our shopping day had a slow start since it was 9:00am and we found out that most shops didn't open until 11:00am. We found a shop that opened early where I found an awesome black knit dress for only $60! Soon enough, as we walked further into Soho, all of the shops were open. I actually found a shirt that I liked at H+M (at the ones in Toronto, I can never find anything that I like!) - a black shirt with tons of ruffles, very unique and just my style. We went into a shop called Pearl River - a Chinese shop with all sorts of fun things, including traditional items. I picked up some origami paper.

The highlight of the day was the Uniqlo store - a Japanese style department store. We were able to find great clothes there! Poolie got 2 hoodies ($20 each), 2 pairs of pants, 2 t-shirts, boxers; I got 3 t-shirts and some undies. The t-shirts are all awesome video game shirts! Poolie got shirts of "Tower of Druaga" and "Galaxian" and I got a Pac-man shirt. I also got a sparkly Astroboy shirt - way cool.

One of the best parts of the store was the giant Pac-man floor and the Pac-man arcade machines that you can play for free!

We stopped for lunch at the first place we could find since by that point I was absolutely starving - it was called "Miro's". We had the yummiest sandwiches there! Flatbread with vinaigrette dressing, tomato, basil, and fresh mozzarella, paired with fresh grapefruit juice and lemonade. So good! Fresh, tasty flavors - we were lucky to stumble upon it!

We walked back down Bleecker St. and later stopped at a small coffee shop for a rest. I got an iced coffee that was so good and Poolie got a pineapple orange smoothie. The shop had Wifi and a computer that you could use that was inside an old telephone booth for added flair.

After, we went into a spice shop that had so many different spices - the place smelled fantastic! We got some special vindaloo hot curry spice, a chipotle chili pepper, and a chili blend. Our shopping bags even ended up smelling amazing after shopping there, as the strong smells of curry and chili emanated from the bags.

We went into a store called Pylone and didn't end up buying anything, but everything in there was pretty cool. Bright, colorful, plastic household items with cute animals and faces on them!

After our day of shopping, we walked back to the subway because I wasn't quite ready for dinner yet (so many good dinner choices in that area, we'll have to go back!). The plan was to walk around Times Square for a little while until we felt hungry (this was around 4:00pm). To our surprise, when we walked out of the subway station at 42nd, it was pouring rain outside with thunderstorms! Since we had lots of shopping bags and didn't want our things to get wet, we decided it would be best to just go back to the hotel.

We're both so tired after a fun-filled day of shopping around NYC!
Finding the gate for our NJ Transit bus was a bit of an ordeal. We knew that we needed to find bus 125, but we had no way of finding out the proper gate out of the hundreds of gates at the station. The first information desk was closed, but we found another one. The right gate was #407. By the time we finally got there, we discovered that our bus left at 4:40pm (it was 4:41pm at this time, no joke!). We would have to wait until 5:20pm for the next bus to arrive. We were tired, sweaty, and sore by this point. I went for a little walk to pick up some snacks for back at the hotel.

When I got back, an older Greek man was talking to Poolie. His name was Steve. As it turns out, it was probably a good thing that we had to wait for the next bus because otherwise, we wouldn't have met Steve. He was very nice, intelligent, helpful and informative - he was interested in how life was for us back in Canada, and was interested in sharing his experiences of living in New Jersey. We learned so much from him!

Back at the hotel, we decided to just stay in and eat some pizza from last night (still so so good!) We had a relaxing evening playing Nintendo DS together and watching some TV.

Oh, Poolie wanted me to mention that I forgot the name of our lunch place and accidently called it "Mavo's" instead of "Miro's". Oh well, close enough!

New York City (May 2009) - Day 1: Driving, with a Stop in Scranton, PA (The Office Tour!)

2009-05-18T06:54:00.001-07:00

Loolie, taking the first photo of the trip (of herself) while driving in the car

Hello! Welcome to The Adventures of Poolie and Loolie - our travelling adventures! I posted back in December when we (Paul and Lauren, or as we call each other, Poolie and Loolie) took a Caribbean cruise to San Juan, St. Thomas, Dominica, Grenada, Bonaire, and Aruba. Now, I'm back to post about our most recent vacation to New York City! These blog postings are originally from a journal that I kept while we were on the trip - now it's paired up with photos! Enjoy!

Day 1: Thursday, April 30th, 2009 - 7:30pm

Hooray, we're finally here! After reaching our hotel, having a shower and settling in, we are ready for a nice and relaxing evening. Poolie and I woke up at 5:30am this morning, bright and early! We left the house around 6:30am and made stops at Tim Horton's (Loolie's coffee) and McDonald's (Poolie's hash browns).

After a short drive, we reached the Peace Bridge to cross the border. Let's just say that the border guard was a bit...intense. He asked tons of questions with long pauses in between my answers and his next question while giving me some piercing death stares. I had to give him my car keys so he could look in our trunk, but he ultimately decided that we weren't terrorists, just tourists. We were allowed to pass through.

The first stretch of our drive took us through some serene New York state countryside. At one point, we saw the most adorable little donkey with some cows, so we had to stop and say hello! This is a pattern with us (or maybe it's just me; I don't know if Poolie would stop to take photos of cute animals unless I was in the car) - we always seem to find some sort of cute creatures while on road trips! We continued along our way, passing through small villages and farm land.

After that, we reached Pennsylvania, which is a beautiful state. There are so many trees all around the highway, as well as mountainous regions. The roads travel through rocky areas that have been blasted away. This made for a very pleasant and beautiful drive - we were able to look out the windows to pass the time, while also just acting like our weird and crazy selves (this also made the time just fly by!).

Our first destination was Scranton, PA to visit the city where The Office (TV show) takes place. Of course it isn't shot there, it is shot at a studio in California, but there are many landmarks from Scranton that appear in the show. We travelled to The Mall at Steamtown first in search of the "Welcome to Scranton" sign that is now located inside the mall. We went to the second floor food court and sure enough, in the back corner was the Scranton sign from The Office's show opening! It was up on a little set on some astro turf allowing for photo opportunities. A lady was nice enough to offer to take our photo so we could both be in the picture. She asked if we were fans of the show, so people must show up fairly often enough to visit this iconic sign. I was pretty excited!

We went for a little drive around town and saw several other noteable places of interest from the show - the "real" office building where Paper Magic is located (the real company that The Office was modeled after),

Farley's (a restaurant that is mentioned on the show), Southside Bowl and Poor Richard's Pub (an Office hangout), and

Alfredo's Pizza (where the "good" pizza in Scranton is from in an episode).

After our escapades around town, we drove to the Waffle House for lunch. I was so excited to learn that there was a Waffle House along the way to NYC! That might sound silly, but I remember going to them on family trips to Florida when I was a kid, so I needed to go back for nostalgic purposes. The last time I'd been to a Waffle House was probably 15 years ago since they don't have them in Canada (but they should!)

The Waffle House was better than just reliving an old memory; the food was fantastic! We both got a waffle (obviously) and we also got these hash browns fried with onions and melted cheese...so good! Mmmm...I'd like to go back there again!

Back on the road and out of Scranton, we drove the rest of the way through PA and NJ. New Jersey's landscape is quite gorgeous as well! So many trees, hilly regions, so much beautiful scenery - I would have never expected it!

We finally reached our destination (the Comfort Suites in North Bergen, NJ) around 5-5:30ish, except we had some major problems finding our hotel! The streets are so confusing and not labelled very well. Also, the street signs that are there do not explain where you are going very well either. We were told by our Google Map directions to take Hwy 1 & 9 to Tonnele Ave. There ended up being a Hwy 1 & 9 South and North so we didn't know which way to go. Of course, we went the wrong way (South). Turning around proved to be quite the challenge. Also, NJ drivers are crazy. Take the absolute worst taxi cab drivers from Toronto and multiply that by 10, and that is every driver in NJ during rush hour traffic. We went the wrong way two more times due to poor signage and eventually figured out that Highway 1 & 9 is Tonnele Ave!

Once we had all of that figured out, we reached the Comfort Suites in North Bergen. I don't know how we will figure out how to get home, but we won't be driving for the next three days so I won't think about that right now!

Checked in at the hotel, we're in room 408 near the elevator. The room is huge! It has a nice big window, a large flat screen TV, tons of pillows, a big king-sized bed, a couch, a desk area, closet, microwave, fridge, coffee maker, and a large bathroom. You have to pay $1.50/day to use the in-room safe, but it's better than having no safe at all.

The shower pressure isn't that great, but I don't generally have high expectations of hotel washrooms, just as long as it's clean (which it is!).

We just ordered pizza from "Amore" in North Bergen, NJ and we're waiting for it to be delivered. Going to watch The Office tonight - should be fun after spending a couple of hours in Scranton!

8:45pm
The pizza from Amore came and it is SO GOOD! Good crust, amazing garlic flavour on the garlic pizza (the whole room smells of garlic!) and great cheese. They even brought us paper plates and styrofoam cups knowing that we're in a hotel and might not have those things...how thoughtful!

A Tour of the Caribbean Princess

2009-01-17T20:50:00.001-08:00

Here is a visual (and video!) tour of the Caribbean Princess! We thoroughly enjoyed our stay on the ship from December 14-21st, 2008 and would love to share these photos with you. With this post, you will see images from our stateroom and some public areas of the ship. This is pre-dry dock, so once the ship is updated in January 2009, I'm sure that some areas will look a little bit different, but this should give you a good feel for the ship. We love this ship - one of the largest in the Princess fleet, allowing for 3100 passengers on board.

Our stateroom, a view from our room looking out to the balcony

I'll start with our room. We stayed in stateroom R704 (Riviera Deck) which is considered to be a "BC" class room. It has a fully covered balcony, so no one is able to look down on you from above, but you are able to look down on some other balconies below. It is a spacious room with plenty of closet space (like all Princess rooms!), a king-sized bed, television, fridge, desk, chair, and of course, the balcony (two deck chairs and a small table).

The bed in our stateroom

TV/Fridge area

Closet

Bathroom

Now for a tour of the rest of the ship / public areas! The Caribbean Princess is a huge ship and I didn't find that it ever felt overcrowded since there are so many different public areas and swimming pools! I hope you enjoy the pictures! They were taken later in the afternoon after being in port, so that is why it is so busy around the pool areas - most people had come back from their day at the port to relax outside on such a nice day! We were in Dominica this day - a beautiful island!

The Terrace Pool at the back of the boat

Around the Terrace Pool at the back of the ship

The Terrace Pool / back of the ship

One of the mid-ship pools

Movies Under the Stars

Pool area around Movies Under the Stars

Another mid-ship pool

A view from the upper decks

The Spa Pool

Flags on the ship, one is the Dominica Flag

A view from the front of the ship

Walkway to Skywalker's

Skywalker's

Club Fusion

Mid-ship Atrium

Mid-ship atrium, facing the elevators

Mid-ship atrium

Mid-ship Atrium

Casino

The elevators, mid-ship Atrium

Promenade Deck 7, outside (deck wraps around ship)

Here is a video of the Mid-Ship Atrium at Christmastime on the Caribbean Princess, December 16th, 2008.

December 21st, 2008 - San Juan and Going Home

2009-01-12T17:01:00.000-08:00

Picture of the emptied-out Terrace Pool on debarkation day.
11:20am
We're in the San Juan Airport right now after leaving the ship. We had a lovely buffet breakfast and it wasn't too busy, surprisingly. Leaving the ship seemed pretty organized - we were "Red 6" and sat in Club Fusion to wait. They never called for Red 6 and soon enough, we noticed that we were the only ones left waiting! When we disembarked, it was so easy to find our luggage - some of the only ones left in the "Red" section! Disembarkation was a breeze and we took the transfer to the airport.

* * *

12:15pm
The airport was a bit confusing - no sign for Air Canada, so we asked someone for Air Canada, and were told to go and stand in the United Airways Line. Then, people told us that we had to move into a different line to x-ray our bags, and then we found out that as Canadians we didn't have to do that. So, we went back into the first line, which was way longer at that point. Oh well, after a little wait, we were at the front of the line.

We were a bit worried that our bags would be too heavy and we would have to transfer things around to different bags at the airport. We weighed each piece of luggage while we waited for the attendant to help us and to our amazement, each bag weighed in at 41-42lbs each, spread out evenly! Oh hooray, oh happiness!

We stopped for lunch at a Dominos and split a cheese pizza. Then, waiting in a really short line to move through the bomb-sniffing machine that blows quick spurts of air at you - always makes me laugh! After our carry-on bags went through the x-ray machine, one of our bags was examined further, but it didn't take very long. Now, we are sitting in the airport waiting for our flight, which isn't until 5:15pm. Oh well!

* * *

12:45pm
Ugh. The fire alarm has gone off twice now. The first time was SO long and it is SO LOUD. Let's hope it doesn't happen again!

* * *

5:10pm
On the plane! Our flight only seems to be about half full, let's hope that the extra seat beside Poolie stays empty! The wait went by pretty quickly this afternoon, considering we had to kill about 6-7 hours in the airport. I got us a snack - cheese and crackers for me, BBQ chips for Pool. I went on a little walk and found a Subway and Starbucks in another area of the airport, so we had that a little later on. We talked to a couple from Brampton who said it snowed a lot while we were gone and there is a lot of snow :( Boo! They just said that back home right now it is -9 degrees Celsius and snowing. Ewwww. It is so sunny and warm here - I got so used to it and I'm not ready to leave!

Here is a video: Leaving from San Juan Airport and landing at Toronto's Pearson Airport. It was a bit of a rough landing in Toronto with high winds, but the plane landed safely! At one point, you will see the plane fly through a cloud leaving San Juan.

December 20th, 2008 - Day At Sea

2009-01-12T16:31:00.000-08:00

11:40pm
What a day! For a day at sea, I think we filled just about each moment with something fun and memorable for our final day on board the Caribbean Princess. It's hard to believe that the week has passed - it went by way too fast and I don't want to leave! I could easily do with another week on board. It said there were snowstorms back home on CNN today... uh oh!

We woke up and went for breakfast - decided to try out the Belgian waffle station - they transform the pizza area into a waffle station in the morning! So very cute - little circular flowers almost, a cute pattern, and super fresh and tasty, prepared right in front of you! We also got some of the regular breakfast items at the buffet. After all, we've gotta take in as much good food as possible on the last day!

At 10:00am, we went to the "Onboard Outlet Sale" in one of the dining rooms. Plenty of discount clothes, jewelry, watches - nothing really nice, and all of these things have already been on sale and discounted in the shops all week long! Still, I had women pushing and shoving me! Great marketing by Princess though.

Part of the day was spent filling out comment cards, surveys, sorting out accounts, picking out photos, all that administrative kinda stuff. We picked out four photos - the hilarious Pirates one, the "Welcome Aboard" photo (came with a light-up photo frame, ooohh ahhhhh) and two formal photos (one for my grandparents for Christmas). Lovely!

We went for an afternoon swim at the Spa Pool. It wasn't too crowded and the wave pool contraption was on. The ship was also rocking a bit in the ocean which added to the waves - it was awesome!

At 3:15pm, we went to the "Maitre D'Wine Club" fancy wine tasting. We tried a champagne, two white wines and three red wines - one was really fancy at about $300 a bottle! It was awesome learning more about the wines and trying out some new ones! It made us a bit drunk, too, so we stumbled back to the room.

Got to sit out on the balcony for a little while and look out into the blue ocean. Then, boring stuff - packing up most of our things into the luggage.

Then, got ready for the evening and decided to take in a show at the Princess Theatre - the "Farewell Variety Showtime". We sat up in a little side balcony. First, the Caribbean Princess dancers came out and did a short number. Then, comedian Miguel Washington did a stand-up routine which was pretty funny. Lastly, Dario El Gaucho came out to do his routine. He is originally from Argentina and did a comedy/skills show. He did bolero tricks with these balls that he whipped around his head in all different directions - very impressive. There was a comedic portion to it as well, where he called up people from the audience to participate! They were both pretty good sports - the one guy had to imitate him with a flimsy set of bolero balls and the other guy got a cigarette whipped out of his mouth. A highly innovative and entertaining show!

After the show, we went to dinner at the Dining Room for one last time. The servers were all wearing American Flag vests. For dinner, Poolie had a salad while I had the watermelon/feta/pumpkin seeds (an interesting combination!) For the main course, we both had this dish - rice and eggplant fritters with spicy tomato sauce and mango, almost in a paste form. It was so good! Almost reminiscent of an Indian dish.

At the end of the night, we went to Club Fusion for the Princess Pop Star Finale. The singers were all great! Very entertaining! One of the singers was one of the people who was on our shore excursion in Dominica from north of Toronto. The winner was Ted, a man from California, originally from the Phillipines singing Elvis' "Blue Suede Shoes." He certainly had all of the moves!

The last man who sang was an older man from Florida, who said that he left his wife at home and cruised alone because they had an argument the day before. His story was that he had three bottles of wine and his wife passed out, and then he said that he was going to "have fun with her." Poolie and I gasp, we can't believe he is telling us such a filthy story! He went on to explain that he actually woke her up to tell her about some deer that was outside that was actually a cow, and then he proceeded to call her a cow and she got mad. Then, he pretended to kiss and was super dirty with the hostess girl - what a filthy old man! The other host had the best call on it: "After witnessing that, I need to take a shower!"

Oh! I almost forgot - for lunch today, we had a sushi buffet and it was AMAZING! Lots of choices (kappa maki, ochinko maki, other veggie rolls, spring rolls, fried noodles, veggies) - so it was a fantastic lunch today at the Cafe Caribe buffet!

Well...now to sleep and take the long trip home tomorrow! Had an amazing time, it went by way too quickly! But we are so lucky to be able to take this cruise, loving every moment!

Here is a video from our day at sea: a view of the ocean from our stateroom balcony, part of a live show in the Princess Theatre with Danio El Gaucho from Argentina doing balero tricks, and the last part is the winner of our "Princess Pop Star" - Ted from California singing "Blue Suede Shoes" - he's got some great moves!

December 19, 2008 - Aruba (Day 6)

2009-01-11T20:50:00.000-08:00

12:25am
Before I start writing about today, there are a few things to write about before I forget. First, the other night, I woke up in the middle of the night and I was very confused. I woke up Poolie: "Poolie, where am I? Am I in the stateroom?" I had somehow turned myself right upside-down in bed and didn't know where I was! My head was where my feet should have been! Once I got myself turned around, thanks to Poolie, I went back to sleep!

Last night, I think I had bad dreams because the captain came on the intercom asking for people with certain blood types to donate blood for the passenger who had the medical emergency. We must have reached Aruba to get to the hospital early enough because that passenger is thankfully now in stable condition. I wonder what happened...

Today, today, today...Aruba! Woke up and looked out the balcony - looks much like Bonaire - a relatively flat island with many brightly colored buildings, but way more commercialized. After a buffet breakfast, we got off the ship to walk around in Aruba. So many shops! These are mostly high end stores...expensive jewelry stores, Louis Vuitton, fancy clothing stores, etc. I only purchased a few postcards here as many other things were too expensive for me! Oh! We also bought some of the Aruba Aloe products - some lotions and lip balm. I tried the face cream and it's great!

It was so hot, bright, and sunny today - the hottest it has been all vacation! We tried to keep in the shade. We decided to stray from the path with all of the shops to walk along the coastline. We walked near a resort hotel along the water and rocks. Soon, we noticed one iguana...then two, then several! They blend in so well with the rocks! The iguanas must be used to people because they didn't seem to be scared of us at all. In fact, at one point, we stepped out on some rocks to get a closer view of the water and we stepped around the iguanas! There were lots of fish, even near the shore. Schools of fish, smaller fish, and we saw a parrot fish as well. As we walked further along the path, we saw tons of iguanas that we had to step around.

After walking and shopping, we returned back to the boat to cool off in the swimming pool. We went to the Spa Pool at the front of the boat and it was empty to our delight. After a refreshing swim, we got a bit of a tan, and when it got too hot, we went back in the pool. Then, we went for lunch at the buffet and later, back to the room for an unplanned nap. I guess sitting in the sun can make you a bit sleepy!

Tonight was formal night, so we got all dressed up. I wore my light purple sparkly dress that leaves sparkles everywhere I went. Tonight was the Captain's Circle Cocktail Party at Club Fusion, where all of the Captain's Circle members (repeat cruisers with Princess) gathered to meet the captain and have some free drinks. I had a rum punch and Poolie had an Emerald Breeze, which was such a vivid shade of turquoise.

After that, we went to have some photos taken by the ship's photographers (NOT the one from the first night!) and went to dinner. We were a tad disappointed with the lack of vegetarian options tonight (well, good ones...who really wants to eat pumpkin anyway, yuck!) but we had a lettuce and endive salad and fettuccine alfredo. For dessert, I had a passionfruit souffle and Poolie had a cookies and cream parfait with caramel. They were delicious!

It was non-smoking night in the casino, so we went so I could try out the slot machines. It didn't take me long to lose $40, so we were out of there pretty quickly! Oh well! It was about an hour before the highlight of the evening, the champagne waterfall. While we waited, we played a game of Scrabble in the games room and Poolie kicked my butt. He got the word "Zest" on a triple word score and double letter score for the "Z"! Aww!

The Champagne Waterfall...so many glasses, all piled so high! Someone dropped their camera down on us from an upper level and it could have really hurt if it hit us - thankfully, it didn't! The camera was totally broken though. They had the band playing music, everyone was dancing, especially this one waiter on the stairs! He had all the moves! Flailing his arms around, he was the best dancer!

The Maitre d'Hotel came out to stack the final glass on top and pour the champagne. Snowflakes came down from the ceiling, everyone drank champagne and had a big party in the atrium. I went up and "poured" the champagne (got to hold the Maitre d'Hotel's arm, haha). Lots of fun, but especially entertaining to watch for the one waiter dancing!

We came back to our room and Alvin made us the best towel monkey hanging from a coat hanger! So cute! So now we have a whole towel zoo, a little army of towel animals! Time to go to sleep...can hear parents letting their kids run wild at 1:00am in the hallways, ugh!

Here is the video from the Champagne Waterfall - in particular, the awesome dancing waiter! Check it out!

December 18, 2008 - Bonaire, Netherlands Antilles (Day 5)

2009-01-03T17:52:00.001-08:00

8:15pm
We started today knowing very little about Bonaire, but now we know what a spectacular and beautiful island it is, and how we would love to visit again someday! We didn't dock until 12:00pm noon so we had a little bit of time on board before hand. Also, we woke up super early, much earlier than expected - must be getting used to the early mornings!

We went to the shops on board and Poolie bought his white sunglasses and bought a long sleeved navy and white striped shirt as well. He is also a sweetheart and bought me a Swarovski necklace that looks like an apple - it's super cute. We went to play Bingo in the morning - I played, Poolie had no interest really so he brough a book. I was 1 number away from winning a prize but someone else won first. So, I lost today, oh well!

We sat on the balcony as we arrived at Bonaire, docking in the town of Kralendijk. There were many small brightly colored buildings up to a certain point, and the rest of the area is all scrub and cacti, as we learned later on. The island is relatively flat compared to the hilly and mountainous islands that we have already visited. We got off the boat at 12:00pm and met our tour, "Discover Bonaire" (booked through Princess) and boarded the bus.

We had some great seats at the front of the bus. The tour guide was fantastic, a very sweet and knowledgeable woman. She told us what it is like to live on the island, along with some personal stories. Bonaire has close ties with the Netherlands, and the official languages are Papiamento and Dutch (learned at school). The crime rate is very low - everyone in Bonaire takes care of each other like a big family, especially helping the children. Everyone in Bonaire has a job and health care can be subsidized by the government. It sounds like a great place to live!

Bonaire is an island of great beauty. We drove along the ocean and there are many places to dive with hundreds of species of fish and coral reefs to be seen. They also take great pride in preserving their nature and natural wonders, on land and in the sea. The main thing to notice when driving around the island is the abundance of cacti, aloe, and shrubs growing wild. It is an amazing sight to see! People also make fences out of rows of cacti, which is such a great idea. There are many caves in Bonaire, on land and underwater. Some caves can be seen above land and the rock formations are from when the water level used to be higher and these rocks were underwater. Now, the water level is quite a bit lower.

Our first stop was Goto Lake, an old salt pan that became a lake. We saw many flamingos here. When we got out of the bus, Poolie and I walked down the road for a little ways for a spectacular view of the lake, sparkling in the sun. There was a small island in the middle that a man apparently owns, and we could hear a baby goat crying out really loudly - so cute!

Although we only saw a couple, there are many donkeys that roam wild in Bonaire. The donkeys are well cared for and protected by the Donkey Sanctuary.

Next, we passed through the Rincon Village, where many proud natives of the island still live, although they live around the rest of the island as well.

On to the Washington Slagbaai National Park. We stopped just at the entrance to the park - it had a whale skeleton put together on display (created by some students on the island), as well as many cacti and old stone/wood buildings to show how the old buildings were constructed.

Inside the information center was a small museum devoted to the nature of the island. From the gift shop, we purchased a small handcrafted art piece made by a local artist of the salt flats, some postcards, and patches of the Bonaire flag.

We continued on to Scru Largu, a peak with a full view of all 4 corners of the island. There were also several little lizards with blue and green markings scurrying around, and I got one to come right up to my hand - it licked my finger! Very friendly little creatures!

We then returned back to the ship. It was a great tour and made us want to come back to the island for more!

After returning to the room for a short while, we got off the boat again to look around the shore. We went to a small craft marketplace where the locals sold their wares. Poolie bought me a unique necklace, handmade by Bonaire artists - a circular delicate clay necklace with a flower in turquoise and white painted on the front. Next, we picked up two wooden Christmas ornaments of an owl and a saucy-looking turtle. We visited a few shops and I picked up a beach bag / purse.

We talked to a nice local man who had a craft table about the wildlife and he informed us that you could see big fish close to the shore - well, he was right! We walked along the shore - beautiful coral beaches - and you could see big parrot fish right at the shore up close! Amazing to see! We walked along and I took pictures above and under the water.

A funny story - we thought we saw a parrot fish underwater so I stopped to take some pictures. After snapping three photos, the water calmed down and I was able to get a closer view - of a Coca-Cola can! So, my parrot fish was actually a pop can - pretty funny :)

We saw this long red fish that we hadn't seen before, schools of smaller fish, and tiny hermit crabs crawling all along the walls at the shore! What a gorgeous island Bonaire is, so full of sea life, we can't wait to return!

We boarded the ship at around 5:00pm and checked the dinner menu - for the Chef's Table dinner night, there were no vegetarian options. We opted to eat pizza and french fries for dinner tonight (with beer and strawberry margaritas) and instead of dressing up, we went for a swim. We swam in the Terrace Pool at the back of the boat while the ship left the port, so we got to say goodbye to Bonaire from the back of the ship.

Now, we are headed for Aruba - the captain announced that we are going full-speed ahead due to a medical emergency on board. We will actually reach Aruba around 1:00am tonight instead of tomorrow morning! The ship is gently swaying back and forth even though the water doesn't look very rough - just the speed we are travelling at is making the ship a little bit rocky. It will be soothing when we go to sleep! Oh! Alvin left us a towel dog today wearing Poolie's sunglasses! Under the sunglasses were two red eyes, made with marker on scotch tape :)

December 17, 2008 - Grenada (Day 4)

2009-01-01T21:32:00.000-08:00

2:30pm
We had another early morning today - got the wake-up call at 6:45am. The Caribbean Princess arrived in Grenada at 7:00am - we got ready and had our usual buffet breakfast. We disembarked at 8:00am and got "held up" by two sets of pirates for a photo op. The first pirate guy was CRAZY and very energetic! We ended up purchasing this photograph at the end of our trip at the photo centre on board!)

We waited for our tour outside on the dock and Poolie got props from a local dude. He was pretty happy about that and said that Kris would be jealous. Nice to see that the locals are so friendly! :)

We boarded a small van and met our tour guide, Louise, who is a super sweet and positive-minded lady. Many of her stories related back to her own personal experiences of the events, such as their war in 1983 and Hurricane Ike in 2004 - she lost the roof of her house! Still, she was very positive when recalling these devastating experiences. The tour was about 4 1/2 hours long and they gave us a very detailed description of the nature and buildings around the island.

Our ship was in port in one of the main towns, St. George's. From there, we drove around the winding roads up the mountains towards the Dougaldston Estate, where the spices are harvested. Along the way, Louise told us all about the areas we drove through, including the fishing town of Gouyave near Dougaldston Estate. Grenada is mostly English speaking, but there are both English and French names for places dating back to when the English and French both wanted control of the island.

At one point, we stopped along a main road near the ocean to admire and study some carvings in the side of the mountain. There are many different carvings of faces right in the side of the mountain! These carvings were from many, many years ago and were produced by the original Carib Indians of the island. It is amazing that this art still exists, and that it can be viewed in plain sight while driving down a main road!

We saw many buildings along the way that had no roofs, collapsed buildings, or ones that were overgrown with plants - devastated by the hurricane. The island is very green with the widest variety of spices grown in such a small area in the whole world.

At Dougaldston Estate, we were shown the various parts of nutmeg (the outer shell, the nutmeg inside, and the mace that lines it - smells great!), how cocoa is processed, the various leaves and their wonderful scents - bay leaves, cinnamon (amazing how the leaves even smell!), and the loofah - which actually comes from a tree! It grows from a tree, and you break the outer layer off for the loofah inside - I had no idea that's how it grows! Also, lots of bananas growing everywhere, mangos, breadfruit, coconut, papaya, coffee (many were lost in the hurricane) and so many more plants! We saw beautiful poinsettias and other flowers in bloom. It was nice because on many occasions, they stopped along the road to show us many various plants and spices growing naturally.

After our spice tour, we drove to Grand Etang Lake - the national park where we saw a lake that formed in an extinct volcano crater. They had a cute information centre there as well as some vendors. We picked up a few local spices - saffron, curry, chili powder, and cocoa beans for some Grenadian hot chocolate. Poolie also bought me a Grenada dark chocolate bar and some postcards.

From there, a quick drive to Annandale Falls, a beautiful cascading waterfall amongst lush green plants and trees. There were some local men there who dive off the top of the waterfall into the water below. They make their living from the tips that tourists give to see them jump from the top of the waterfall. I know that I wouldn't be able to jump off the edge from that high up, but that must be a fun job for them!

After viewing the waterfall, we drove to Fort Frederick for a breathtaking view of the island. The tour was fantastic! "Grenada Explorer" offered through the cruise ship allowed us to learn so much about the island and see its beauty.

When we got back on board the ship, we went to the Cafe Caribe buffet for their Mexican-themed buffet and it was awesome! I still enjoyed a big salad but there were also cheese quesadillas, nacho chips with all of the toppings including a fresh salsa, Mexican rice, and these delicious potatoes. Yum!

Right now, I'm just chilling out on our balcony as we set sail from Grenada - we left early today from the island at 2:00pm, most likely because Bonaire is farther away and there is a greater amount of travel time. It is a great opportunity to listen to the crashing waves, soak up a little sun, and look out into the deep blue ocean. How relaxing! There is a great breeze off the water to balance the warm temperature - just perfect weather!

* * *

11:35pm
Another fun day comes to an end. We had an afternoon snooze for about an hour and got ready for dinner. For dinner in the dining room tonight, Poolie had the eggplant parmigiana, we both had a nice salad, and Poolie had stuffed zucchini with braised white beans while I had the predictable and tasty fettuccine alfredo. Pool said his dinner was outstanding! For dessert, I had the tiramisu and Poolie had the cheesecake. It was Italian night in the dining room so the waiters were all dressed up in the red/white or green/white striped shirts - fun! We didn't have the limoncello this time around but it was an option - Princess makes their own homemade limoncello and offers an unlimited amount with a shot glass that you can purchase. We tried it last time and while it wasn't really my thing, Poolie really enjoyed it!

We went into the shops and found out where the one with the sunglasses and stuff was after asking an employee on board. I found a nice cheap watch and a really nice not-so-cheap handbag - a crochet brown bag by The Sak. It is sooo my style :) Poolie is gonna go back and buy some sunglasses tomorrow.

We went to the Explorer's Lounge for a classical concert performance and there was a violinist, a pianist, and then a duo comprised of a violinist and a pianist. The first violinist played concertos that relied on a backing track, which unfortunately compromised his performance a bit. I also didn't care for the electric pick-up on the violin. The pianist didn't have a very interesting setlist and the performance was rather uninspiring and even a tad sloppy. However, the final pair were great, especially the violinist. They played a great variety of songs - a good selection of Brahms, Schubert, among others. The last piece was especially fantastic - it highlighted their skill, both independently and as a duo. It was all in all a great show and inspired me to brush up a bit on my own piano playing when I get home!

Tonight was the Tropical Deck Party night, which was unfortunately rained out as we passed through a few light rain showers out at sea. The party moved to Club Fusion where we watched a huge group of people do the Chicken Dance. We must have just missed the Macarena, haha :) Then, they started a conga line and as soon as it began to approach us, we promptly fled the scene.

Now, we're back all comfy in our pjs back in the room! Alvin, our room steward left us an awesome swan towel creation made out of two different towels. He's the best!

The following video is from our day in Grenada: you will see a view of the island from our cruise ship balcony, you will see a local group who jump off the edge of the waterfall at Annandale Falls, and you will see another view of Grenada from up at the top of the fort.

December 16, 2008 - Dominica, West Indies (Day 3)

2008-12-29T15:19:00.000-08:00

2:45pm
Here we are in Dominica - my favourite island in the Caribbean. It is the most beautiful place that I have ever visited! Since on the last cruise we went on the Aerial Tram ride through the rainforest, we booked a different tour this time - Ti Tou Gorge and Hot Springs Tour. We got to port at around 9:00am and met our tour guides outside at the dock.

Our driver, Magline was great at navigating through the winding roads up the mountain. We had a very nice and informative tour guide - I don't remember her name but she is one of the Carib Indians who still live on the island (which is awesome). She said that there are about 3000 Carib Indians who still live on the island following their own traditions and customs.

The island of Dominica is such a great beauty - lush greenery everywhere! We learned about some of the native plants, and learned that bamboo there grows at a rate of 1" per day! Coffee is something that is grown and produced in Dominica, as well as bananas (their main export). We were able to see both coffee and banana plants growing naturally.

The first stop was up at the top of one of the mountains - the Ti Tou Gorge. The only way to see the waterfall inside the gorge is to swim inside the caves. This may have been the most amazing thing that I have ever seen in my life! We got into the water (very cold at first, but you get used to it) and swim inside the caves. You can see in the image above - this is the entrance to the caves.

If you look up, you can just see through some openings in the top of the rocks with some trees and plant-life.

You swim along a little further, only for a minute or so, and scale along a rocky wall to see the waterfall. Anyone is able to see this, even if you aren't the best swimmer, because it is mandatory to wear a small life preserver around your waist (provided by the tour guides). You can see in the pictures above: the actual waterfall itself (the first picture), and in the second image you can see the triangular opening that we had to swim through in order to get to the waterfall (the picture was taken as we approached the caves).

After the amazing journey into the caves to see Ti Tou gorge and the waterfall, we walked back to the vans, which included a short walk across a bridge. We got to see the giant wooden pipe that water is pumped through for the island's electricity. It is over 40 years old!

The next destination was the Hot Sulphur Springs called Screw's Sulphur Spa. This was super relaxing - to soak in one of five natural hot springs that ranged in temperature. We were in the medium temperature one, which was like a relaxing hot tub.

The water was orange, only due to the sulphur content in the water - the water is very clean. You also couldn't smell the sulphur at all.

After the hot soak, you go up to the cooler pool which is supposedly a great combination for the skin - going from the hot pool to the cooler pool. It must work because we kept noticing how great our skin felt - my skin feels super soft and silky!

After soaking in the Hot Springs, they provided some local fresh fruits - coconut, grapefruit, pineapple, watermelon - fresh and tasty! In a little cage on the ground was their pet turtle - he was so sweet and had beautiful markings! Then, we boarded the vans and went back to the boat. This was by far my very favourite adventure ashore!

We went back on the ship and had lunch in the Dining Room - a Greek salad and Potato Gnocchi in a cheese sauce.

After our lunch, we went back on shore to the local craft market. We were looking for these pornographic mugs that we saw the last time we were here that Poolie wishes he would have bought - trust me, they were hilarious and super dirty! Unfortunately, they were no longer selling them. In fact, last time when we found them in amongst all of the generic tropical-themed mugs, the lady who was selling them seemed quite surprised that she even had them and was laughing just as much as we were! So, they might have gotten rid of them in the meantime (it was two years since we lasted visited Dominica). I did end up purchasing some locally made Dominican coffee beans and some Dominica guava jam.

Back on board and to our room! I went and got myself a coffee and a hot chocolate for Poolie, as well as some tasty treats from the buffet to enjoy sitting out on the balcony. More to write later!

P.S. I cannot rave enough about the Aquapacs - I'll write about them later on this blog - basically, we have one for keys/cards and one for our camera - a waterproof bag for our digital camera! We brought it with us inside the cave and to the hot springs without having to worry about getting our camera wet, and it worked fabulously! Otherwise, we wouldn't have been able to bring our digital camera along with us today!

***

10:15pm
I'm sitting outside on our balcony as I write this - we're at sea en route to Grenada. The moon is big and bright with a golden hue, slightly shadowy on top.

Let's pick up where I left off...

I took a little walking tour of the ship by myself in the afternoon to take photos (coming soon!) while Poolie stayed in our room to read a book and watch the new horrible Indiana Jones movie (knowing full well how awful it is, just to make fun of it.)

We got ready for dinner and went to the Coral Dining Room. The terrible photographer from the night before apparently caught sight of us and started to come over, but we escaped unscathed (Poolie saw her, I did not). For dinner, we both had a salad, Poolie had french onion soup, and we both had "tube pasta" (penne) with cilantro, garlic, and other veggies. Yum, as always! For dessert, I had coffee and a chocolate fudge cookie with vanilla bean ice cream and chocolate hot fudge; Poolie had a pineapple creme brulee. It also had coconut, even though Poolie has a fake "allergy" to coconut just because he doesn't like it, but he couldn't taste it and it also didn't kill him.

After dinner, we saw people rolling around on the floor for the crazy casual photography portraits on the white background, and it looked like there was a fat man with no shirt on who was quite fat with a woman sitting on his back. The rolls of fat were actually just wrinkles in a skin-coloured shirt and this made us burst into fits of laughter. We got into an elevator with even crazier laughing drunk French people.

We went down to the Games room with drinks in hand (a banana daiquiri for me, a Raspberry Fizz for Poolie) and decided to play some Jenga. We thought it would be pretty fun to play Jenga whilst being a little tipsy from the alcohol, and the movements of a boat at sea...needless to say, I lost twice, but it was so much fun.

Afterwards, we enjoyed an evening stroll around the upper decks of the ship. Even right now, there is still a very warm breeze and the stars are all out tonight. You could see one island way off in the distance, as well as a couple of ships, but the rest is blackness. You can see the dark waves right around the boat, especially at the back of the boat.

Back in our room, Alvin made us a super cute elephant out of towels! He said that towel animals are his specialty. He also makes little shells out of hand towels and hangs them inside pockets made from larger towels. Alvin is a really sweet room steward! I would say that keeping things very tidy is his specialty, and the towel animals are a great added bonus!

We have to get to sleep early tonight since our Grenada tour is at 8:30am! Excited! Never visited Grenada before so it will be another great adventure!

The following video is from our day in Dominica: you will see a view of the island from one of the upper decks of the ship, a view of the island from up high on a mountain in Dominica, a view of Dominica from our stateroom balcony, and a view of the island as we leave in the evening. Such a beautiful place!

December 15, 2008 - St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands (Day 2)

2008-12-26T16:53:00.000-08:00

11:26pm
Where to start! What a wonderful and busy day we had in port at St. Thomas and back on board in the evening! I'm sure I will forget a few things but I'll try my best.

We woke up very early today - a little too ambitious at 6:50am for the wake-up call, so I think we actually slept in until about 7:30am. We went for our early morning breakfast at the Horizon Court buffet - a great start to the day, as always!

We decided to do our shopping earlier in the day - originally, we wanted to go to Havensight, but we were unable to go there due to some sort of traffic troubles. So, we took an open-air taxi (at $4/pp) from our boat, docked at Crown Bay, to downtown Charlotte Amalie. We went into a whole bunch of shops and purchased some alcohol (Cruzan Rums in Pineapple and Guava flavors), some Christmas presents for friends, some awesome 80's-looking white striped sunglasses, some Caribbean coffees (Mocha Jumba Java and Calypso Vanilla coffee grounds), some postcards, and a Christmas ornament with a santa that says "Ho Ho Ho Mon!". Tacky, but fun!

While we were in downtown Charlotte Amalie, Poolie pointed out the town's library - Poolie loves libraries and has worked at the library for some time now, so we had to stop and take a picture of him in front of the library! Such a cute, bright and colorful building!

After our shopping trip, we made a quick stop back at the boat to change into our bathing suits so we could go to the beach! We walked over to the Crown Bay Marina - a quick, five-minute walk from the ship, and caught the ferry to Water Island - a little red water taxi.

The ferry we caught left at 12:00pm and we took the 2:15pm ferry back to St. Thomas. It was about a 10 minute ferry ride over to Water Island. When we got to the island, there was a cute little open building that had post office boxes and books, like a little library for the residents. We started to walk up the hill when a nice lady on a golf cart drove up and asked if we wanted a ride. That was so sweet of her to offer! We took her up on the offer and arrived at the beach that much quicker!

After a short ride on the golf cart, we arrived at Honeymoon Beach. It is a beautiful, quiet little beach with some palm trees for shade, some picnic tables, and Heidi's Honeymoon Shack for burgers/BBQ.

We swam for a while and it was so peaceful and relaxing - hardly anyone else was on the beach with us. It rained a little bit here and there, which balanced out the bright, hot sun. The rain looked super cool bouncing off the water while we swam.

We enjoyed a bit of time in the sun before we walked to take the ferry back. The walk back showed us the natural beauty of Water Island - there were many cacti growing wild. Water Island has very few residents (around 160 people is what I recall reading) and it looks like an amazing place to live! A natural beauty, a quiet island that seems to be free from the commercialization of St. Thomas - but St. Thomas is just a quick ferry ride away for all of the necessities of life (schools, stores, etc.)

Upon returning to the shop, we went straight for the Pizza place and the Grill for some food! We had some slices of Margarita Pizza - always such a tasty treat! Poolie went to the grill and brought back some fries and a veggie burger. The veggie burger was just okay - it was a little on the mushy side.

Then, we went for afternoon tea in the Coral Dining Room. We had a hilarious waiter who served the scones in the most fun way ever - spinning and swirling the spoons around - I got extra scones that I didn't even need just because I wanted to see what he would do! Lots of tasty treats and for some reason, the tea tastes extra yummy at afternoon tea! I don't know why, but it always tastes better!

After tea, I discovered that my cruise card was gone! After a bit of freaking out, we went to the front desk and I got a new one quickly and easily. Don't know what ever happened to the missing cruise card - never ended up finding it! The next bit is a blur because we came back to the room and had a nap for a couple of hours! All of that time in the sun makes you sleepy!

After that, we got our formal clothes on for the evening - while I got ready, Poolie watched some stupid movie on TV - "Jumper" - wow, it was terrible. I wore my short black dress and Poolie had a nice suit on.

We went to have our photos taken and waited for 45 minutes to have our formal picture taken! Ugh! Finally we had them done (it took our photographer nearly 45 minutes to take photos of *one* family...it was a little bit ridiculous!), and we went to the Coral Dining Room for dinner.

We got a lovely bottle of white wine, "Nobilo" from New Zealand, sauvignon blanc. We had a salad for dinner to start; I had the fettuccine alfredo and Poolie had vegetable fritters with braised lentils and paprika cream sauce - he really enjoyed it! The alfredo was great, as always, a favorite! For dessert, I had a chocolate hazelnut souffle, and Poolie had a caramelized pear tart.

After dinner, we checked out a couple of the on board boutiques and enjoyed our balcony - the moonlight shining out over the ocean while our ship is at sea, so soothing and beautiful!

Our room steward, Alvin, left a towel animal for us on the bed - a shrimp, or some sort of sea creature with chocolates for eyes! So cute! We were thrilled to find the towel animal in our room!

December 14, 2008 - San Juan, PR (Day 1 of the Cruise)

2008-12-26T11:01:00.000-08:00

9:45pm
What a relaxing and exciting day! I am sitting here out on our balcony on the Caribbean Princess as we dock in San Juan overlooking the Pan-American Pier, with the cool evening breeze coming off the water. Back to the morning...

We had a buffet breakfast back at the Caribe Hilton and took a taxi back to the pier. Our cab drive was awesome - he jumped a curb and drove over a few places that he shouldn't have in order to get us to the ship quicker. We got to the embarkation site at the port a bit after 12:00pm and there were hardly any other people there with no line-ups. Checking in was a breeze and we were happily in our stateroom by 12:30pm.

Our room is on the Riviera Deck 14, room 704. The room has a great big king-sized bed with all of the basic room things (a big closet, as always!) and a fabulous balcony! They freshly varnished the balcony railing before we arrived - it is still a little bit wet (signs are posted). The balcony is fully covered and is very private with walls on either side. Right down the hallway is the Terrace Pool (for adults only), and the one floor directly above us is the Horizon Court / Cafe Caribe buffets. Our room is also in a great location right across from the elevators - very convenient!

We spent the first part of the afternoon exploring the ship - the Caribbean Princess is the largest ship we've ever been on, yet it still feels like a smaller ship with many different rooms and lounges. We also went for lunch today at the Horizon Court buffet. Not very crowded at all, and we had a big tasty salad and a few other things. I somehow managed to get ranch salad dressing on my sunglasses and in my hair...classy! :)

After exploring, we went to the Spa Pool (near the Lotus Spa) that had a swim-against-the-current machine that you could turn on or off. There were hardly any people around - we were the only ones in the pool for most of the time. I had fun "picking up" Poolie in the water and swimming around with him in my arms to embarrass him! We swam around together and sat in the sun for a little while, and then went back to our room to unpack. We met our room steward, Alvin, who is very nice and friendly. He helped us figure out the dry-cleaning since some of Poolie's formal clothes got quite wrinkled in our luggage - Alvin took some of his clothes to be pressed, which was very helpful! At this point, we also decided to get changed before going out to dinner and a show because the Muster Drill was at 7:30pm.

The show was in the Explorer's Lounge and it was called "Puerto Rico Folkloric Showtime" starring Juan Carlos and his Traditional Latin Show. It was such a good show - one night only, while we were in Puerto Rico. Juan Carlos played the Spanish guitar and did all sorts of traditional songs - many people in the audience sang and clapped along. He spoke Spanish, English, and even some French! He had some dancers as well. A fun part of the show was when his dancers wore belts with maracas around their hips/bums and shook 'em - and two guys from the audience were volunteers who had to wear the maraca belts around their bums, too. The one guy really shook it! :) A great show - Juan Carlos played the guitar really well and it was nice to have some authentic Puerto Rican talent on board!

Then, the typical Muster Drill at 7:30pm in Club Fusion. After that, we threw our life jackets back in the room and went to the Dining Room for dinner, at the Palm Dining Room.

I have to say, it is the first time we have ever had bad service in a dining room on Princess - easily corrected mistakes, mind you, but I think we will try the Coral Dining Room tomorrow. We ordered the Vegetable Spring Rolls with Peanut Sauce, a Watercress/Radish/Iceberg Lettuce salad with Balsamic Vinaigrette Dressing, and a shell pasta with broccoli florets in tomato sauce. The salad was great - the dressing was very nice. The spring rolls were very yummy too, although Poolie didn't get his until I had to ask about it - at the same time when I had to ask our waiter for new main courses because our pasta had chicken in it. He wasn't paying attention when I ordered it off the vegetarian menu (Poolie and I are both vegetarians). When he brought Poolie's spring rolls out, they didn't have the dipping sauce. Thankfully, the waiter's assistant was a bit more on the ball than he was, and was able to pick up the slack. The pasta ended up being very nice and light, and the tomato sauce was delicious.

For dessert, Poolie got the apple streudel and I got a Banana and Nut Parfait with Caramel. It was super yummy - almost a frozen banana ice cream in two slices, topped with nuts and little chocolate shavings, surrounded by caramel. It was a unique dessert and had great flavors!

After dinner, we decided to go back to the room and just chill out on our balcony. We'd like to get a good night's sleep before going to St. Thomas tomorrow!

10:45pm
A little party boat drove by with super loud music and people cheering - the boat was called "La Rumba"! Cute!

Here is a video compiled from our first day on the cruise in San Juan. The first part is a ride up the mid-ship atrium elevator. The second part is three clips from the Puerto Rico Folkloric Showtime starring Juan Carlos.

December 13, 2008 - At the Caribe Hilton in San Juan, Puerto Rico

2008-12-26T09:25:00.001-08:00

10:37pm
We had a truly wonderful day today in San Juan! The day just flew by and leaves me feeling that I'd love to spend more time in Puerto Rico, so we will have to come back someday.

After the plane landed at the San Juan Airport - well, first, I should mention that while on the plane, Poolie saw an iguana run across the runway - how cool! We collected our luggage and proceeded to the transportation area. The taxis here are all running on a fixed rate depending on which "zone" you are traveling to, which is nice because you know the fare price up front and there is no need for haggling with the driver. We had a quick drive through town when our cab driver pointed out our hotel in the distance, the Caribe Hilton.

(The picture above is a view from our hotel room balcony of the waterfront). The hotel looked amazing at first sight as it is located right on the ocean. Our impression of the hotel just got better and better. Check-in was a breeze! I emailed ahead of time to inquire about an earlier check-in time (the hotel check-in time is 4:00pm, but since our flight was arriving earlier on, I asked if we could check-in at 1:00pm instead) and we were accommodated without any problems. The main lobby of the hotel is beautiful - an open concept, outdoor lobby/main area. There are a few shops as well as a Starbucks right on site, which is of great importance to us coffee lovers :)

There are stations out front in the lobby with fruit water - water with cantaloupes, grapefruit, etc. in containers of water, and you can dispense only the water with the fruit flavor in it - very refreshing, a nice treat! There are two parrots and a white bird in a large cage in the hotel lobby that are very happy and chatty - the one bird speaks Spanish - when I first said "Hello" to him, there was no response. Then, I said "Hola!" to the bird and he quickly responded back with "Hola!". So cute! You will be able to watch this in the video posted below.

Our room, #539 in the Main Building is spacious and has an awesome balcony! Our room overlooks the ocean where you can hear the crashing waves. There is also the San Geronomio Fort at the back of the property, but unfortunately, we were unable to explore it. Originally, we were planning to explore Old San Juan, but we didn't expect the Caribe Hilton to have so many places to explore right on the property! So, we mainly just stuck around the resort - plus, we were pretty tired after our flight and not sleeping much the night before.

After spending a bit of time in the room, we ventured out to the grounds. There is a tropical bird and fish area where many different birds live, including peacocks and swans. You are instructed not to feed or interact with the animals as they are living in a natural habitat. There is a beautiful pond with koi and goldfish, and the area is filled with lush greenery and palm trees.

We walked around the pool areas that are right beside the ocean. We walked down to a pier out on the water and could see coral reef in the shallow parts. Although we didn't end up swimming, there were plenty of fun activities for hotel guests, including a floating rock climbing wall and a trampoline, as well as relaxing places with hammocks between palm trees.

We decided to go to a nearby Subway for a quick lunch, and then walked outside of the resort for a little while. We walked over to a place where a fort used to be - it is pretty cool to see the remnants of the old forts. We walked around the ocean and along some paths past a large track and field stadium.

We had a nap for a couple of hours after our walk since we were feeling pretty exhausted from not sleeping well the night before and not being able to sleep well on the flight.

I should also mention that the weather was beautiful outside today! It was warm, but not too hot - bright and sunny at first, and in late afternoon, some clouds rolled in with a gusty wind. It didn't rain, and the windy conditions made the waves crash even more - huge waves!

Later in the evening, the wind died down and the sky was clear, the weather still warm and perfect. For dinner, we went to a restaurant inside the hotel - an Italian restaurant called Rotisserie Il Giardino. It is a fine dining establishment with very tasty Italian dishes. We were very happy that the menu included several vegetarian options to choose from. Poolie and I both got a house salad and a pasta - rigatoni with olive oil, garlic, and broccoli. The pasta was delicious - big pieces of garlic, flavorful broccoli and fresh parmesan cheese. The food arrived super quickly and the restaurant provided great service!

After dinner, we picked up a few treats and beverages at the Starbucks - Poolie got a gooey caramel brownie that had layers of caramel upon brownies on top of other brownies! I got a red velvet cupcake and a vanilla latte. Now, we're just chillin' in bed (super comfy bed with tons of pillows, I might add!) and watching TV - we get tons of channels!

Today was the perfect day to unwind after our flight in a gorgeous destination at the perfect hotel! So excited to embark on our cruise adventure tomorrow!

Here is a video compiled from our day in San Juan. Here, you will see a view from our balcony room of the resort and the ocean, me saying "Hola!" to the parrot and the parrot responding, a view of the Tropical Gardens (fish and birds), and a view of the ocean.

December 13, 2008 - Flying from Toronto to San Juan

2008-12-26T09:11:00.000-08:00

09:00am
Finally, our vacation begins! It feels like we have been planning this trip for a long time and the day has finally arrived. After a short nap from around midnight to 2:00am, we woke up and drove to Pearson Airport in Toronto. Our time waiting at the baggage drop-off and U.S. customs went by quickly and easily (although the man in front of us in line got fully searched!) Now, we are on our direct flight, AC-1276 to San Juan, Puerto Rico.

I have a great window seat near the wing, and Poolie is sitting next to me (he always lets me have the window seat!) Since our flight left around 7:00am, we could still see the moon - a big, bright full moon - the moon out the window to the right, and the sun rising on my left. Now, I can see layers upon layers of white, fluffy clouds that look like drifts of snow. Thankfully, there is no snow where we're headed - I am so happy to escape the snowy weather that we've been having back home!

An Introduction: Hello and Welcome!

2008-12-24T14:42:00.000-08:00

Update (August 2011): We are happy to have added to our travels since I first started this blog back in 2008 upon returning from our Caribbean cruise. We will also be headed back to the Caribbean in January 2012 so I look forward to posting all of the details when we return! Thank you for visiting this blog and I am happy to answer any questions that you might have!

***

Hello! So happy that you have stumbled upon this brand new blog where I will be posting about our travels. My name is Lauren, and my fiance's name is Paul - but we call each other "Loolie" and "Poolie" as nicknames most of the time...way more often than using our real names, that's for sure! This is an online travel journal where I will be writing about our most recent vacation to the Southern Caribbean on a cruise, and we will hopefully be updating it as we travel more and more!

We are fortunate enough to have travelled on three cruises to the Caribbean so far, and we're looking forward to seeing the rest of the world when time and money permits us to do so! It is our dream to travel everywhere that we can, so hopefully this journal will be updated over the years so we can continue to share our journey around the world with all of the internets. ;)

For this vacation, I kept a handwritten journal that I'll be transcribing to this site - so these blog postings will be primarily from my perspective (this is Lauren who is writing this). Hopefully you will enjoy reading this blog just as much as I'll be enjoying re-living my vacation experiences!

~Loolie & Poolie (Lauren & Paul)