Travel

Back home once again, it’s been a long day of traveling. I had to fly first to Dallas, then hung out there at the airport for a couple hours while I waited for my flight to Vancouver. It was hot! There I was dressed for winter wearing 4 tops including a big down filled puffy vest. I felt like I was going to melt just walking from the plane into the airport. After peeling a couple layers off I got to know half of the airport really well in my quest to find a Starbucks, which there weren’t any of in my terminal, believe it or not. In my travels I came across an Ipod Vending machine! I guess vending machines aren’t just for drinks and chips anymore. Now you can buy accessories for your traveling companion (your Ipod of course) or a new Digital Camera, if that happens to be what you’re in the market for while waiting for your flight. Ok, am I the only person who has not seen these yet?? My 3 trusty traveling companions include my Ipod, laptop, and Nintendo DS, all of whom could have benefited from some sort of purchase from the high tech vending machine. I did try to take a picture of it, without being too obvious. Sorry for the blurry pic, but I had to take it quick between groups of people walking by.

Anyway, the flight was good, and arrived early which is always a bonus. I had the entire row of seats all to myself – Fabulous! There were TV’s on the plane – which means in flight movies! – Fabulous! In flight movie: Hairspray. Um, not so fabulous. I was kind of disappointed as it had a great cast (although it was weird to see John Travolta playing a woman…). Maybe it was the fact that I was squinting at the small movie screen, or the other distractions of being on a plane, but I could just not focus on the movie at all & all the constant singing and dancing was driving me crazy. Perhaps I will give it another chance one day, I should know better then to watch them on planes, this always happens – I just have such a hard time focusing.

The good news is I finally finished a book! I’ve been reading this book since I bought it in Las Vegas back in September. I absolutely love reading but hardly get a chance to anymore. All I seem to read now are scrapbooking magazines or those celebrity news/ People type magazines while I’m on the elliptical at the gym.

I’ve been in 5 different airports in the last week and I have to say that I think Vancouver is the nicest 🙂

Overall I had a great time with my family in Indy, I can’t wait to go visit them again in March.

New Stores I discovered and love: (and a huge THANK YOU to my sister who took me around and introduced me to all these fabulous places!)

Hobby Lobby: Fantastic! And they had an awesome sale on ribbon which made me very happy!

Cost Cutter: Some cool stuff here

DSW Shoes: Self explanatory

Archivers: Totally awesome

Panera Bread: their Harvest Salad is AMAZING!!!

Wild Oats: LOVE this store! Wish we had one here.

Some of my other fave’s that we don’t have at home:

Petco: Had to go pick up some goodies for the furries!

Trader Joes: No Pudge Brownies, Dried Mango fruit sticks, and think thin protein bars – YUM!

Crate & Barrel: Always a favorite

Borders: I could spend all day here

Bath and Body Works: mmmmmmm…..

Target Superstore: Huge! So much stuff here!

Just a quick post for today – I’ve got only 2 and a half days left here in Indianapolis. I am really enjoying this city and I can’t wait to come back (only a few more months as I’ll be back in March – yay!). Having lots of fun with my sister – she introduced me to DSW shoes yesterday! Wow!!! Got some FABULOUS shoes though, I’m so happy about that! We also went to 2 different malls, Crate and Barrel (LOVE LOVE LOVE this store!), Restoration Hardware (another first for me), oh – and we found a Wetzels Pretzels!!!! Brent and I discovered this place in Downtown Disney when we went to the Anaheim CHA last January. Hands down the BEST pretzels I’ve ever had. Last night my sister took me out for a birthday dinner to this great authentic Mexican restaurant – SO yummy!! Yesterday was a great day 🙂

So, this morning, I’m trying to catch up on my emails. Here are some more blogs to check out!

Kathie Davis

Trace’s Creative Pieces

Emine Pala

Nili Elburg

A Sweet Smackerel

And one more: this is the Tilano Fresco Blog: you can read Nicole’s rendition of our CK trip here 🙂 Tilano Fresco Blog

16 days away

3 nights sleeping in the car

2 nights in a hotel in San Francisco

8 nights in a hotel in Anaheim

2 nights at Jen & Peter’s in San Fran

4 days at CHA

4 days at Disneyland

4 sets of new brake pads for the car

more than 60+ hours of driving and being stuck in the car (and we didn’t kill each other!!)

2 very tired and exhausted people!

Home at last! Woohoo! Although we did have an awesome trip, it is really nice to get home again. Gracie (our cat) was thrilled when we walked in the door tonight and she hasn’t left us alone since. I think she was hoping we’d bring the dogs with us, as I did see her looking around the corner down the stairs as if she was wondering when they were going to run up the stairs to greet her. (She loves the dogs more than anything). No dogs yet though. They are still in Victoria at my parents house, so I will go pick them up tomorrow.

We had a fun day yesterday in San Francisco with Jen & Peter. They took us all over the place again! We started off by visiting the Jelly Belly Factory. I am SO addicted to Jelly Bellies!!! I buy them all the time at the grocery store (but they are so expensive! I try to buy them only when they are on sale) – so it was especially exciting for me to see the factory. It was a free tour as well, then we got to taste whichever kind we wanted to at the end at the “tasting bar”. Funny thing though, to buy the Jelly Bellies in bulk from their gift shop turned out to be MORE expensive them buying them here in Canada. Make sense? Not really. However, since we were there we just had to buy some to munch on. My bag contained my favorites: buttered popcorn (which makes no sense, cause I don’t even like popcorn), strawberry cheesecake, buttered toast (this is a new flavor), caramel corn, sour raspberry, and sour strawberry. Brent’s bag had his favorites: orange juice, rootbeer and sour lemon. What a combo there Brent. hehe.

They had a bunch of new flavors, including the buttered toast which was very tasty. Others though, I could do without, such as “toasted garlic”. Yes, it was as lovely as it sounds. Garlic, um, not in a jelly bean thanks. There was also a new line made especially from the Harry Potter books and weird flavors such as “soap” and “earwax”. Yes, EARWAX. In a jelly bean!! WHAT on earth are they thinking??? Nope, none of us even wanted to try those ones.

Another set of flavors made from a movie (The Ant Bully) included one called Lawn Clippings. Brent tricked me and had me taste it, as I thought it was green apple. I tried it and was like “this tastes like grass!!” and he burst out laughing. Why anyone would spend money on candy that tastes like grass is beyond me. Which brings me to the most repulsive thing I tried – another bean from this line called Ant Hill. This tasted like DIRT. So disgusting, it didn’t even make it past 2 bites before it got promptly put into the garbage, where it belonged. I still cannot believe they created a jelly bean to taste like dirt, seriously, what were they THINKING?

Besides that, we had fun! hehe, then all 4 of us ate candy all the way to the outlet centers which was our next stop. Oh – I tried something new today (besides all the jelly bellies) – I tried a Krispy Kreme donut. We were there right as they were pulling fresh ones off the conveyor belt so I got to try a nice and hot one. Not bad, but not the best donut I’ve ever had. Honestly I can’t see what all the hype was about these donuts. Also, I wasn’t thrilled about seeing them being made right there behind the wall of glass – something about seeing these things floating in a bath of pure fat – didn’t really entice me to want to digest them only minutes later.

We got back to Jen & Pete’s after dinner so we packed up and left San Francisco. We intended to drive all night and be home first thing in the morning but…that didn’t happen. Of course it didn’t. We were so tired, we had to pull over several times to get some sleep in small doses throughout the night. Another night sleeping sitting up in the car, just lovely. I am so looking forward to sleeping in my own bed tonight.

To all you who have been reading my blog and keeping up with our adventures, I hope I haven’t bored you all to tears! Give yourself a pat on the back if you’ve managed to make it through my lengthy posts. lol

Jelly Belly Factory

San Francisco Zoo

I am losing track now of the days… I don’t think I have updated for days 12, 13 and 14 yet. It feels like we have been away for ages, not just 2 weeks.

Quickly a recap of the past couple days: Thursday we spent our last day in Anaheim at the Disney parks – going between California Adventure Park and Disneyland. I could tell we were both just exhausted and (I can’t believe I am admitting this) Disney’d-out. Never thought I’d say that! We didn’t go on many rides but we did a couple things we hadn’t yet like watch the Aladdin show at DCAP, it was a live show in a theatre and it was very well done! I totally recommend it!! We also went to the Animation Academy that was hosted by a Disney Animator and we learned how to draw Mickey Mouse. We kept our drawings and will take them home for souvenirs. That was actually a lot of fun and we wished we had done it sooner, as they rotate between which characters they teach you. We didn’t have time to do any others though.

At DL, we treated ourselves to dinner at the Blue Bayou restaurant which is actually located inside the Pirates of the Caribbean ride building. The atmosphere is so cool as it feels like you are outside but you’re really not of course, and you can watch the boats full of people sailing by on their way to the first waterfall. We made reservations earlier in the day and we were able to get a seat right beside the water – it was awesome! The food on the other hand was not worth the $$. We stayed to watch the parade then we left and walked back to the hotel to pack. Oh, oops, I forgot to mention something – it was our 2nd Anniversary! We had both forgotten what date it was until the day before so we thought it was very cool that we got to spend our 2nd anniversary at the Disney resort! Too bad we were so tired and worn out, lol.

Friday we got up and headed north towards San Francisco. We made a quick stop in Santa Cruz and were really disappointed. It was like a ghost town, completely deserted. I guess it must be very different in the summer when it is busy, but nothing was open, the entire boardwalk was closed down. It was almost eerie. The rides looked very old and in need of some updating. Perhaps we saw it this way as we had just come from Disney, and I believe that Disney modeled their rollercoaster area of the “Pier” at DCAP after the Santa Cruz boardwalk. Well, um, we couldn’t help thinking that Disney did a WAY better job of it!

We arrived in San Francisco at our friends Jen & Peter’s house at 7pm. We stayed overnight and this morning we headed over to the San Francisco Zoo – it was great! Brent took a ton of pictures so I’ll post them later. I put too much in my purse (heavy stuff, I always do this), like my camera, a bottle of water, my big wallet, etc. So we’re standing there viewing the giraffes and my purse strap breaks! I had 2 long thin straps and one broke, I guess because of the weight. Damn. So all day long (we were out until 10:30pm) I had to walk around with this dumb looking purse with only one strap. I did mention to Brent that now I can get a new purse- what a perfect excuse! He says “You don’t need a new purse – you can just sew the strap back on”. Gee, lovely….  He just doesn’t get it….

We had a really fun day though, Jen and Peter spoiled us! After the Zoo, we went to Fisherman’s wharf, then across the Bay bridge to some neat little shops (and the Crate and Barrel outlet store), then back to downtown and to this huge mall (where we hit up the regular Crate and Barrel store as well as lots of other cool stores). Jen and I ditched the guys for an hour so we could go shop without them, hehe. We finished the day off with a fabulous dinner at Outback Steakhouse. Lisa – I thought about you – the whole thing was done in an Australian theme!

Tomorrow we leave for the rest of the drive home, I think we will take the I-5 the entire way so it will take us about 11-12 hours probably. I am really looking forward to sleeping in my own bed again (even if it does mean that I will have to share my pillow with 2 dogs, hehe).