Category Archives: Travel

A Glimpse of Atlanta…

…with more to come!

 

Oh what fun to see Katie and Andrew. We made the most of our 24 hours together and I’ll share a lot more with you. It’s Sunday night and Katie and Andrew are at the airport. Dear is at his company meeting. I’m alone in our nice room watching Amazing Race. Tomorrow Dear and I have a few more hours to site see before we head to the airport.

The Marriott Marquis was a great place to stay. Looking up made your head spin…

This will be another week where I start behind…but it was worth it. God is good…all the time!

Atlanta, Georgia

 

On Saturday Dear is headed to Atlanta, Georgia for a business meeting and I’m tagging along. We are staying downtown in the Peach Tree area. The exciting thing about this trip is that Katie and Andrew are meeting us there for overnight since they are just an hour away from Atlanta by air. We are still waiting to see if the Marines will allow Andrew to stray that far from the Base. Katie will come regardless. We hope that both of them can come. We haven’t seen them since the wedding in March.

The burning question is how much we can jam into our 2 days and how much we’ll be able to experience that is “Atlanta”. Any suggestions from any of you would be appreciated! Did I tell you I’m excited to see our East Coast kids???

A Little Glimpse…

…of Vienna. Or…what happens when the photographer doesn’t go on the trip!

I am thrilled to have my Dear back home with me. I uploaded his photos from Vienna. He had a total of 18 photos with 11 of them being of his hotel room. It was a very nice room, lots of space and filled with nice amenities. I’m chuckling because I loaded my camera for him to take with an 8GB memory card.

I will give him a lot of slack because he was working during the day and the one half day he had off it was raining heavily so there wasn’t a good opportunity to take photos! The photos he did take were a good representation of the city. He’s got a good eye!

My Pharmacist spotted the Apotheke. Doesn’t the city look clean?

Dear’s company booked rooms at this nice hotel, the Radisson Blu Palais.  I was really impressed with the size of the room and all the great features. Dear said that they stocked the refrigerator with beer, water, apple juice, orange juice and a sparkling drink. If you used anything from the refrigerator you weren’t charged and it was replenished the next day. I like that concept.

Did I mention how happy I am to have Dear back home? His next trip I’ll be tagging along. I’ll tell you more soon.

Old As The Hat!

This past Mondayafter visiting my folks at their apartment in Brea I headed for the freeway and spotted The Hat. I enjoy a good pastrami sandwich so I decided to pull through the drive-thru to order one.

The Famous Pastrami Dip Sandwich was my choice for the day.

They don’t skimp on the size and the pastrami portion. I could only eat half.

I got my sandwich in this bag and noticed The Hat is as old as I am. It seemed fitting for this old girl born in California in 1951 to enjoy a sandwich from a company that’s survived and thrived for over 61 years in California.

I’m back from Canada and the Border Agents going and coming were very nice to me as usual. My time in Canada was filled with lots of good conversation and good food, oh my! My Dear is in Vienna right now and I’ll be interested in hearing about the food he’ll be eating. He’s there for a conference and won’t have much time for sight seeing but he does hope to see as much as his free time allows.

Have a good weekend everyone. I’m recuperating and laying low for the rest of today.

Boy Oh Boy!

The reason I originally made travel arrangements for Southern California was to attend a lifelong friend’s baby shower. Her mother and I were best Russian buddies in our college years and onward. Our families attended the same Russian Baptist church in Los Angeles. We sang in the Russian Youth Choir and in the 70’s we were in a Christian Rock Band that toured England in the summers. Heidi sang at Dear and my wedding. Lots of history.

The theme that my friend Heidi and the new mom-to-be, Nikki, decided on was a nautical one. Perfect for celebrating the soon to arrive little boy.

Heidi and Ken have a beautiful home in the Orange Hill area of Southern Calfiornia.

This is the mother-to-be, Nicole. When she was born she lived across the street from us.

My friend Heidi and Nicole.

The food was delicious and listed on a fun Nikki Cravings Menu.

These are all my sisters with me.  My SIL and two of my nieces were also at the shower.

My girlfriend Jeanie who married my cousin Jim was there, too. Our friendships intersect with a lot of people from church, the rock group and extended families.

We arrived for the shower in bright sunshine, sat down to our meal in the shade of the early evening, and left when the sun was setting…

It’s nice to be back home with Dear. I was upgraded to first class again and had a nice conversation with an ER doctor who sat next to me on the plane.

My Wednesday will be busy as I’m getting ready to travel to Canada on Thursday. I’ll be scarce till Friday. Hope all is well where you are…

Whimsy’s Flea Market

On Sunday morning I met up with Cori G. from Brambleberry Cottage for some Kean Coffee and a stroll around Whimsy’s Flea Market in Old Town Tustin.

The Whimsy shop was fun to stroll through out of the sun…

It was sunny, muggy, and very hot but we persevered and managed to see most every vendor’s wares. I even bought 6 pink goblets. Hmmm…I have to pack them in my suitcase. I hope they survive.

Cori was a good sport and posed for my camera at the little chapel in the Flea Market lot. It was very good to catch up a bit with my bloggy friend.

Another fun looking shop in the the Old Town area of Tustin.

 When I got back to my niece’s townhome I ended up going out to lunch with her and her fiance. They will announce their wedding date at our family gathering tonight. After lunch I was picked up by my sisters to head to a baby shower for a lifelong friend of ours. I’ll post about that tomorrow. Tomorrow I fly home and it looks like they upgraded me to first class again. Oh what a treat that is.

Fall Treats!

My first night in California my family got together for a build your own taco night.

I decided this was a good time to spring this new dessert idea on them.

Have you seen these caramel bits? I found them at Target and it’s great not to have to unwrap each individual caramel to melt them. The recipe for these treats is at Very Culinary. I used pecan pieces instead of cashews or peanuts. I wasn’t in my own kitchen when I made these. The next time I make them I’ll chop the nuts finer and the result will be prettier. They still were delicious chunky and disappeared quickly.

My parents made their first outing since my mom’s stroke and came to the taco party. It was nice to have them there and it was good for them to get out of the apartment.

The evening ended with this beautiful sunset in Orange, California.

Sunday was a full day and I’ll share later. Hope the beginning of Fall has been good to you.

Goodbye to Summer…

…and a look back at one more stop off the road from the Washington Coast.

We stopped at the Willapa Interpretive Art Trail…

The Willapa Interpretive Art Trail was created to commemorate the restoration of a small stream near Refuge Headquarters. The art trail is a one quarter mile curving boardwalk.

Artwork located along the boardwalk helps to tell the stories of the stream and the many species who live there.

Students from the University of Washington Public Arts Program designed, constructed, and installed the artwork for the trail under the direction of professors John Young, Ian Robertson, and Jim Nicholls.

From a distance we thought this little guy was real and you should have seen us approach it very very carefully so we wouldn’t scare it away.

We got closer and closer and it didn’t move…

When we got this close we realized it was part of the artwork along the trail. We laughed till we cried about how careful we were not to scare this fake frog!

These feather sculptures didn’t trick us.

These salmon sculptures in the trees didn’t fool us either.

This dragon fly table was designed by UW Art student Gary Carpenter. The quote on the table is from a poem by e.e. Cummings ~ …the world is mud luscious and puddle wonderful.

The moss on the trees was so soft…

It was a treat to stretch our legs here on the way home from the coast.

Tomorrow I head South for some more adventures. I’ll be back in the Fall y’all! I had to say that because I’m watching Paula on the food channel while I’m preparing this post.  See you next week.

The Oyster Capital…

…of the world is right here in the state of  Washington, at least that’s what the sign says.

We couldn’t leave without trying some of these oysters from the oyster capital. They were good, plump, and fresh. I’m not the biggest oyster fan and even I thought they were good. Here are more sights from around the small town of South Bend on Willapa Bay.

Seafood processing plants were in abundance. We went into one of the retail shops at this plant and bought some canned garlic jalapeno wild caught albacore. Haven’t tried it yet but I’m thinking it will make a great filling for a sandwich.

We spotted this great building looking up the road from the main drag and drove up to investigate.

A wonderful view from the courthouse. It was worth our stop in South Bend on our way home from the Long Beach Peninsula.

Tuesday I was back to Women’s Bible Study and it was nice to see friends from our last study again after our summer break. Looking forward to the new season and deepening some friendships.

How will you be spending the waning days of summer?

Out of the Ordinary…

During our time in and around the Long Beach Peninsula we saw some things that made us pause long enough to take another photo.

This store was a hoot with quite a variety of junk stuff to sell and strange things to see. Your kids would be able to find a souvenir here.

You don’t see many cities that fly all our military flags. I was impressed!

Along many of the roads to the peninsula and on the peninsula there were tsunami escape routes clearly marked.

There was a great combination of goodies at this shop. We made our only purchases beside food here. A copy of Pilgrim’s Inn by Elizabeth Goudge and a part we needed for an old glass door knob set.

It was fun to see this in the front window of a specialty shop in South Bend. We stopped in South Bend for fresh oysters on our way home.

Happy Saturday to y’all.