Fun in Texas

We recently went down to Dallas for a few days to visit our besties John and Aimee. 90 degree weather, great food, lots of fun, and drive through margaritas (that is a strange story for another time). It was a nice way to spend the limited amount of time I got off between semesters and a fun way to spend Mother's Day.Vivi's favorite sculpture at the Nasher. Seriously she kept running back to it and pointing and staring.
I love Texas!
John and Aimee on our walk home from dinner.
Rosey cheeked. A little sweaty from our time at the arboretum.
Playing in the frog fountain.
Peter Rabbit's house. Do you like my sun hat?
At John and Aimee's loft. I love this chair, it is just my size. Where did that kitty go?
In the tee pee with Daddy.

Vivi charms everyone she meets. She loves people so much. It was a nice trip overall! We can't wait to see J&A again.

Puerto Rico

Well, now July is almost over. Perhaps I am becoming a one time a month blogger! I wish I could say I have been living it up here in the big city and my active social life was keeping me from blogging but that is not the case. I just spend all my time working and when I am not working I am trying my best to enjoy my little 6 week break from school which usual translates to reading a novel for fun before bed or if I am really lucky, watching a television show in real time instead of from a recording. I did manage to take a week off for some R&R and accompanied my friends Suzan and Marcela on a trip to Puerto Rico. We had a pretty great time lounging on the beach, eating lots of great food, and seeing a few sights. Here are a few pictures:
We spent the first 3 days on the island of Vieques which is a few miles off the coast of Puerto Rico. It was beautiful. This is the guest house we stayed in called Bananas, it has a little restuarant/bar out front. Very rustic and fairly inexpensive but this.....was the view out the front. The little town we stayed in, Esperanza, was adorable and had a prominade build on the water. The whole island is overrun with wild ponies that roam around and there were all these random dogs roaming around too but they weren't strays since the shop owners could identify them and knew who they belonged to. The dogs would just roam in and out of the open air restaurants and no one really cared. Needless to say it was very laid back there. This is Belly Button, the only breakfast place in Esperanza but no worries because the food was amazing. We ate here both mornings we were in town. The best thing we had were these......banana pancakes. So so good. I tried to make them at home like this were you grill the bananas and pour batter over them, but mine were not nearly as good as theirs. Delicious! We also spent an entire day at the beach. We chose Sun Bay because it was nearby and we could walk along the coast to get to it. We were a little apprehensive about going there because it is a more developed and popular beach. No worries there. The beach was great, there were not a lot of people and they had planted palm trees all over the beach to provide shade for visitors.This was my view as I laid on a towl enjoying the sun and reading a book. The water was great too, so warm and blue and not too deep in Sun Bay. So relaxing. They also had bathrooms and a little cafe there where we had the best empinadas and tacos of our trip. It ended up being a fabulous day at the beach. That evening we took a Bioilluminscent Bay tour. Puerto Rico has 4 Bio Bays (there are only a handful in the world) and the brightest in the world is in Vieques. I don't have any photos because there was no way to keep a camera dry but it was pretty amazing. The water is full of little micro-organisms that emit light when they are disturbed (as a defense mechanism) so once it is dark the tour guide tosses everyone out of their kayaks into the water to swim around and as you swim the water glows blue green. It was pretty cool. The later is got, the darker it got, the brighter the water glowed. It was a fantastic experience that I would recommend to everyone.

After Vieques we returned to the main island and moved into a condo we rented in Condado. We were one block from the beach which we could see from our balcony.This is one end of our condo's pool where we spent a portion of almost every day we were in Condado. So nice! With the condo as our home base we adventured out to the grocery store (we had a kitchen so we ate a couple meals a day at home), out dancing at the Mariott across the street where they had Salsa night and a casino, to the beach just down a short side street, the girls took a jungle tour which I opted out of, and also a full day spent in Old San Juan.We caught a free bus to Old San Juan to look around a little bit. The city was built behind a large wall but they have built walking paths around it....And in a few places are these huge gates to get through the wall. We roamed the streets and peered into shops and looked at landmarks like this...Banco Popular, the first bank in Puerto Rico which is a great example of Art Deco architecture. Actually there was art all over this city, especially in the form of sculpture. We stumbled upon sculptures at almost every turn. We stopped in a plaza for some shaved ice from a street vendor then continued on our adventure.We ended up here on the top of a hill at the site of the old fort. The photo doesn't do it justice but on the massive lawn there were tons of people flying kites. There was also a craft fair going on to the left of this photo which we walked through. Unfortunately we didn't watch the clock close enough because the fort was closed by the time we go up to it. We didn't get a chance to look around inside but we had a great day in the city. We stayed for dinner before heading home. On our last day in Puerto Rico we decided to live the high life and buy day passes to the Ritz Carlton.With a day pass you get a room for the day and access to all the facilities. Big fluffy pool chairs, free towels and water, poolside food and drink service, and beach chairs and umbrellas set up for you by cabana boys. Here is a big iguana that just mosied out from under a bush and walked past all the guests. Cool! It was a fun day in the lap of luxery. We stayed for a very fancy smancy dinner at their upscale Italian restaurant. Unfortunately, though I had been really careful with my skin the entire trip I did manage to burn my ENTIRE backside that day at the beach. It was beet red and very painful. Good thing we went home the next morning becuase I was not a fan of the sun after that! It was a fun trip. Returning to lots and lots of work was less fun. The only thing I wish was different about the trip was that Greg would have come. He didn't really want to spend a week with 3 girls being girly but I missed him a lot.

Block Island

Last week Greg and I took a mini vacation to celebrate my one week off from school before summer term starts. We headed up to Rhode Island to visit Block Island for a few days. Block Island is 16 miles off the coast of Rhode Island accessible only by ferry from Port Judith (or Long Island, NY in the summer). We got a great package deal because it is still the off season on Block Island which kicks off its tourist season Memorial Day weekend. That was perfect for us since we were looking for rest and relaxation. It takes about 3 and half hours to drive to Port Judith where we ditched the car in long term parking and hopped on the ferry. It was an hour ride on the ferry and then a short walk from the dock to our hotel. We stayed at the Hotel Manesses which, like many of the buildings on the island, is an original dating back to the 1800s. The furnishings and decor are all antique. Our room had no TV or internet connection. We didn't even have a phone. No problem since we were happy to get away from technology for a few days. It was very quiet. In fact the hotel was unstaffed! We actually checked in and had our daily breakfast up the road at the 1661 Inn, another property owned by the same group. We rarely saw anyone else in our hotel though there were some other guests staying there. It was a little creepy at first especially since we are rarely "alone" in NYC with people living and making noise all around us. Here is the rooster who was hanging around our hotel and was kind enough to crow in the morning. He had 2 hens following him around most of the time, such a playa. The first night we explored Old Harbor a little, walked on the beach, and then enjoyed a nice dinner at the hotel restaurant. The Manesses Restaurant is the fanciest restaurant on the island and had just re-opened for business the week before. It was pretty busy which is kind of nuts since the hotel above it was so empty and unstaffed. We were given a $100 gift certificate to the restaurant in our room package. With a bottle of wine and 3 courses we didn't even manage to spend it all. One of the perks of eating vegetarian is that your entre is usually the cheapest on the menu! It was a very nice meal and it was great to sit and catch up with eachother. Then we settled into our room and turned in early. Because it was the off season many of the shops in town were closed. Not a problem for us though because we decided for our second day we would rent mopeds and do some exploring. The Island is only 10 square miles but it has lots and lots of trails for walking or biking. We rented 2 mopeds for the day and motored all around the island. Starting with a stop at the local grocery store to pick up fixins for a picnic lunch. We drove out to settlers rock to park our bikes and walked along the beach to the North Lighthouse. It was closed for construction but we enjoyed sitting out on the beach and having our lunch in the sand. Next we hoped back on our bikes and drove out to the Clayhead Trail. A short hike through the forest brought us back to the beach but this time a beach down below the bluffs. We spent a while hanging out on the beach enjoying the sun (though it was a bit chilly) and the peacefullness of it. Then it was back onto the mopeds to visit the great salt lake and the basin. The great salt lake isn't really a lake, but an ocean inlet (hence the salt) and is the location of New Harbor (they are really creative with the names there!). We drove through on the way to the basin. The Basin is a low area that was carved out by a glacier and is filled with vegetation that happened to be in bloom while we were there. We hiked a loop trail to the lookout spot. It is hard to tell from the photos because some dark clouds had rolled in but it was very pretty up there with the scrub brush in bloom with white flowers and we could see the ocean as well. Greg dropped our map at one point and we got off the trail somehow and had to double back (and found the map on the way) so we ended up walking the loop twice! Then it was back on the mopeds to complete our tour of the island at South Lighthouse. This lighthouse was also closed but we could at least get right up to it. It is fully functional and recently restored. Can't get away from technology completely!Then it was back onto the mopeds to head into Old Harbor to turn them in. Just in time too since the sun was going down and it was really chilly riding at 25 mph. Our 6 hour tour was over and we were pretty exhausted. We enjoyed dinner at a pub in town and recounted our day. We also noticed at that point that we had gotten a little too much sun. We both had red noses and poor Greg had a mild burn on his whole face and neck. Oops! Easy to forget that it doesn't have to be hot to get a sunburn. The next day was spent enjoying a long breakfast, checking out of the hotel and heading home. We had a great time and though the Island was REALLY quiet, almost too quiet we were really glad to have gone on the off season. They say the population swells from 1,000 full time residents to 15,000 tourists during the summer and I can't imagine we would have had such a nice time dodging mopeds on the road and people on all the trails and beaches. If you are ever in the RI area, check out block island. I think it would make a really great day trip no matter what time of year!

Seattle Express

My mom is in town for a few days to visit us in the big apple. Unfortunately she has come in the middle of this rainy stint but luckily the humidity hasn't been too bad. She flew in on the 4th of July in the evening. After getting her settled in the guest room and having dinner we went for a walk around the neighborhood to stretch our legs. As we were walking back to the house we came across a whole bunch of families standing on a street corner staring off into the distance to a bank of trees (this corner is atop a small hill). We figured they knew something we didn't so we hung around and sure enough the Macy's fireworks show started and we could actually see the high flying works over the trees. We stayed for about 10 min but because of the rain we went home and watched the last 10 min on the tv. Who knew we had a fireworks view! On Saturday we went to Woodside to stroll through a street fair. Unfortunately it was a standard street fair and nothing special. Once again the rain started so we headed for the train. My mom had requested a visit to Grand Central Terminal after seeing a PBS special on the building so we spend the rest of the rainy afternoon there checking it out, shopping in the market and having lunch downstairs. Then it was home for homemade pizza (it was cool enough to run the big oven) and a movie. I great first couple days.