A little trip

It was my birthday this last Wednesday so we took a weekend trip to Key West to get 2012 started with some sun and fun and celebrate my birthday.  It's the furthest south you can get in the USA.  Just a few (whole bunch of) pictures.  I think we took over 160 pictures.

 Bahia Honda State Park between Big Pine and Marathon.  Mile Marker 37.  The broken bridge is the old railroad built down through the keys in early 1900s.   The piece on the left is actually new and built to match the old part.  It's open to the public so you can walk up there and see out over the island and the ocean.  The bridge is falling apart and there are danger signs warning boaters who go under it.

 The Keys Credit Union where Bryce can work when we move there.

 The local restaurant we ate at...

...and saw a Key Deer outside of.  There's a reserve for them a few miles down the road.  The Key Deer is an endangered species.

 Our hotel room.

Looking out our back door and off our back porch.

 Look to the right.

 Look to the left.

 Luckily our hotel was next door to a Walgreens so we picked up some snacks.  The best deal on Diet Dr. Pepper and some tropical Mike & Ikes for our tropical day.

 Our saweet street cruiser.

Found this while walking around.  I wanted to be Ariel when I was little, but maybe not this version of her.

 The pier where we watched the sun set while sharing a shrimp quesadilla.

 Just after sunrise the next morning.

 nice line up of mopeds when we left for the airport.  A lot of people rented beach comber bikes or mopeds if they were staying on Key West.  It's only 3 or 4 miles long and a couple miles across.

Back to the seriously small airport.

Savannah, Ga

A friend from work got married on Tybee Island a couple weekends back and I decided we should spend some time in Savannah since we'll probably never be down that way again.

I was excited in particular about three things:
- seeing Spanish moss hanging in trees
- eating some good seafood
- the history of the city and all the squares  The cemeteries are supposedly pretty cool, but we didn't go check them out.

We woke up at 5:00 am left the house a little after 6 and drove 4 hours to Savannah, Georgia.
The route from here to there takes you through Macon where Bryce lived and worked in a past life so we decided to drive by his old apartment there.  He didn't recognize the place at first - they've upgraded it a bit and there's a really nice shopping center/strip mall across the street and they've added more roads.  He thought it would still be all trees and fields just like it was 7 years ago.

It was Bryce's lucky day because we had somewhere to go and we'd be driving back on Sunday so there would be not time to shop at the cute shops...

We checked in and walked through City Market to scope things out and then headed down to the cobblestone 'Riverwalk'.  There's a neat replica of a pirate ship and we watched some ships come up and down the river.

We just barely missed the wiener dog races (bummer) but decided to stop for lunch at The Cotton Exchange.  Awesome food.  I had shrimp and grits and Bryce had talapia with noodles, shrimp and scallops on top.  We also both had our first fried green tomatoes.  Delicious.  I started to take pictures of the food, but I couldn't make it not flash so then I was embarrassed and Bryce was probably even more embarrassed so I stopped.

We decided to walk down to Forsyth Park and so we grabbed some gelato from City Market (spotted on the first walk through) and on the way hit a couple of the smaller squares that are scattered through Savannah.  One we walked through had a Bride and her Bridesmaids getting their pictures taken before the guests arrived to sit in the pretty white chairs by the fountain.

Forsyth Park is very pretty.  It was the first park created in Savannah and styled after Paris with broad boulevards and has a fountain that's a copy of the one in Place de la Concorde. The fountain was placed in 1858.    The park was 10 acres set aside by Oglethorpe as a park and is the only bit of land (from which I understand) that was set aside for this purpose in the early days of settlement and has stayed the same and hasn't been broken up or rezoned.

Plus the houses around the park are really cool too.

I really liked the feeling of the historic district. 
We walked through the design district and then happened upon a street of shops so we wandered around those on the way back from the parks.

That evening we headed out to Tybee Island to the oldest lighthouse in the south (the first one built in Georgia since it's at the mouth of the Savannah River) and watched my friend get married on the beach.

Aloha-ha

view from our cottage

Short recap of our trip to Hawaii.  It was awesome.  It was beautiful.  It was restful.  Getting home was not easy.

Link to a few or my photos.
Link to extra beautiful photos by Mat.

It's all Greek to me

Bryce and I visited Athens, Greece for 2 days over the Valentine's Day and Presidents Day weekend. We flew out Friday afternoon, landing Saturday morning and flew back Monday morning, landing Monday afternoon.

The pictures you can link to (it's been updated and there're lots more along with comments) by clicking here: Awesome Greece Pictures!

A few videos we put on YouTube:

Guard Dance 2 of 5 and Guard Dance 3 of 5....the whole thing takes about 10 minutes. The two videos are 2 minutes. Just a taste. :) They start under the awning (sp?) and end up back at the same awning. then two guards in army uniforms checks them and make sure the two guards are in order and that their tassles are straight. :)

You can catch this sweet ride through town...

You can see some of the left over partying in the square. Live band. dancing donkey toys, and little girl in an outfit. :)

A 360 of some of the Acropolis grounds. The theatre you see - according to the plaque - went up the wall. I'm sure it was something to see.

Thanks Jose Lopez!

Bryce and I enjoyed 1 1/2 days in San Juan Puerto Rico earlier this month all thanks to Jose Lopez. Who, you may ask, is this Senor Lopez? As noted in the previous blog, Bryce bought new wheels. He sold his stock wheels on ebay and a nice gentleman in Puerto Rico bought them. We did actually make $9 after his new wheels were mounted and balanced, all ebay fees, paypal fees, shipping, and the actual price of the wheels are taken into account. Good job Bryce, keep it up and I'll have a new pair of shoes in no time. :) We shipped the 4 wheels - acutally, let me stop there and say I mailed the wheels. Bryce put them in my trunk. On my lunch break I was lucky enough to go to the Post Office ask to borrow a dolly and push the wheels in myself - while wearing heels! You read that right. I like the people in the parking lot watching me as I pulled boxes out of my trunk and pushed a pretty janky dolly into the post office. I had to make 2 trips because the dolly was not tall enough to lean all 4 boxes against the back. It would've been too heavy for me anyway since I am a little girl. Each wheel weighed 25 lbs packaged. So, I got them inside and they took them away into their back rooms. Done right?! No or our story would not have such a happy ending. One of the 4 wheels gets lost and never makes it to Senor Lopez in San Juan. Bryce now decides it would be ok for us to buy a replacement and fly to Puerto Rico, spend part of the weekend and give Jose the wheel in person. And so our journey begins: Jose met us at the airport he brought along his 16 yr old daughter (he kept referring to her as his husband, but we got the point) He was nice enough and clean, and he drove a nice, new Mazda 6 (he got the point across that he bought it a few months befoer) so we took him up on his offer to drive us to the hotel saving one taxi fare of $17. Note: taxi drivers add in their own tip to the base fare in San Juan. The guy we took back to the airport apparently thought he was worth $2. 1st thing we learned: Bryce likes to pick a hotel by price and overall cleanliness ratings. 10 minutes and I'm done upon finding it on a map. Cecily likes to look at mpas, read reviews, read about the districts and areas of where she's visiting, come to the point of recognizing roads of where they'll be and then look and read some more. We went with the Conrad. The site has a neat aerial shot of the hotel and a couple lobby pictures. The first day we spent in Old San Juan - it rained all morning while we were at the airport and with Jose. a map of Old San Juan. The view to the left (southeast on a map) of the island. the fort walls on the northern side of the island another fort in Old San Juan the main fort on the tip that you see pictures of. Christopher Columbus statu in a square where there are lots of vendors set up. The guy had parrots and such on his shoulders. the view from our window. 10th floor city view - the body of water there is the lagoon. The white van and car taxis lined up in front of this hotel and we could walk over and take the next in line. I liked the taxis because they were playing tapes of some sweet mexican music. It was the real deal. sculpture in Old San Juan sculpture down from the hotel, near the beach and where we ate lunch/dinner. blue cobblestones of Old San Juan while we were at the fort in Old San Juan - a full rainbow. at our hotel's beach. Where we spent the morning before heading to the airport. the other side of our view from our hotel. The traffic over the bridge was backed up all night. Got busy. There was lots of nice shopping just down the street. Gucci, Cartier, and others of the sort.