Showing posts with label east coast. Show all posts
Showing posts with label east coast. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Travel Photo Tuesday: Brooklyn Bridge


One of my absolute favorite places in New York is the Brooklyn Bridge. There's just something about it - the light posts, the wooden planks, it's just really neat. I took the train from Manhattan to Brooklyn, then walked back to Manhattan. The skyline views were awesome, and you could even see the Statue of Liberty in the distance!

Monday, March 14, 2016

Someday, I'll catch up.

Wow. So things have been absolutely insane over the last few years. We've been doing our fair share of traveling, and I've been very neglectful of writing about it!

What have we been up to the last couple years?

2013:
I made a New Year's resolution to do at minimum a small trip every month, and I did pretty well! Not only did we do some really fun weekend trips, including a road trip to Arizona, and a quick overnight trip to Savannah while I was in Atlanta for work, but we also snuck Europe in there in October when I went to a business conference in Cannes. Hubby and I tacked on London, Bruges, and Paris to Cannes, and it was really fun.

Bruges, Belguim, October 2013

Friday, July 11, 2014

Travel blog fail.

Well, it seems that I've done an absolutely terrible job in the last year and a half with blogging about my travels!

It started with a sort of lackluster trip to London in October 2012, and then I just, well, I don't know, I guess we just got busy with life. In addition to being crazy busy at work, I also got engaged and married! Meaning that from here on, "BF" will now be called "Hubby... :-) 

But! I'm back to make a renewed effort to bring this travel blog up to date.

Here's a quick rundown of what we've been up to in the last 20 months or so:

October 2012: Trip to London

February 2013: Monterey weekend
March 2013: Long weekend in New York
April 2013: Work trip to Las Vegas
June 2013: Road trip to Arizona
September 2013: Work trip to Atlanta, paired with an overnight in Savannah thrown in
October 2013: Work trip to Cannes, paired with a week in London, Bruges and Paris

February 2014: Work trip to New York
March 2014: Bachelorette weekend in Palm Springs
April 2014: Work trip to Las Vegas
May 2014: HONEYMOON in the Cook Islands
June 2014: Work trip to Miami, then a quick weekend in Arizona
July 2014: Work trip to New York

Whew! Seems like I've been up to much more travel than I thought! I also have a couple of additional trips coming up this year, which I'm pretty excited about.

August 2014: Quick two night trip to Portland for a baby shower, plus an additional work trip to New York
October 2014: Work trip to Cannes with a few nights in London on the way over
November 2014: Work trip to Atlanta

I'll come back to this post and link some things once I've blogged about them! Here's hoping I can get up to speed soon....

Thursday, January 31, 2013

New Year's Resolution

It's a little late, but I finally came up with a New Year's resolution... drumroll, please...

Make 2013 the year of day/weekend trips!

There are a ton of places that I want to go that are close by or fairly local. And I've been severely neglecting taking advantage of the awesome travel available in the US!

Here's my plan so far:

1) January: Day trip to Santa Barbara and Solvang with X while she was visiting from NY. - DONE!

2) February: Two night getaway to Monterey, CA with BF for his birthday. - BOOKED

3) March: Three night trip to NY with M! (She's going again for work, I'm going again for fun!) - BOOKED
     March: Overnight to Indio for a concert with Shorty and DK. - BOOKED

4) April: Two night trip to Vegas for a work conference. (I'm trying to get BF or M to come with!) - BOOKED

5) May: Potential return to NY for work. - PLANNED

6) June: Overnight in San Diego to visit BF's family.  - PLANNED

And right there, we're halfway through the year! Here's hoping it all works out!  

Friday, May 4, 2012

New York: Dylan's Candy Bar


Where do I start? 

This place is quite possibly the best candy store I've been to in my life! Three floors of deliciousness, and so much variety you barely know where to start! By the bulk, by the bar, by the chunk, it was a wonderland of childhood dreams. 

Let's go by floor, shall we? 

The entry level floor was like a Sweet Factory on crack. Cases and cases of candy - sour candy, chocolate candy, chewy candy. The best part? You could buy gummy bears BY. THE. FLAVOR. Yep, that's correct. I got an entire bag of pineapple gummy bears, and enjoyed every single one of them.

Color wheel of chocolate - each color was a different flavor! I ended up grabbing a pack of bars to bring back as souvenirs! 

Thursday, May 3, 2012

New York: By Night!

Since M spent a good portion of the trip working, we did a lot of our wandering and sightseeing at night. Which actually worked out really well for us, because New York by night is really awesome. For some reason, most nights we ended up eating dinner on the Upper East side, so we walked back down to Chelsea to our hotel more than once, and got lots of chances to check out the sights by night!

FAO Schwarz!  Kind of bummed we were never there when it was open to check out all the toys!

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

New York: Central Park

I knew from the moment I booked my trip that I would be spending an extensive amount of time in Central Park. I had a huge list of things I wanted to see there, and actually made it to most of them! 

I made two rounds around Central Park on my trip - one with X after a Sunday brunch, and one with M when she was finally off work on Monday... and both trips were awesome and different. 

Strawberry Fields and the John Lennon Imagine mosaic - it was ridiculously crowded and took me a good 5 minutes to get a shot of just the mosaic without any weirdo tourists sitting on it. Why do you need a photo WITH the mosaic??

Monday, April 30, 2012

New York: The Sights!

Admittedly, I had a very ambitious list of things I wanted to see while in New York last month. While I didn't manage to do EVERYTHING, I think I covered a good amount of stuff, plus some extras that were unexpected! 

I was in New York for 5 days - Thursday through Monday. The first two days, I spent the majority of in my office, then meeting up with M when she finished work. We went sightseeing at night - it was a really cool perspective of the city.


Wednesday, February 29, 2012

New York City - What To Do & See?

I leave for New York in a week! I can't believe that I'm FINALLY going to be able to scratch NYC off of my "must see" list... But now that it's almost here, I'm having a really tough time pinning down what I want to see and do while we're there. A couple friends have been helping me refine this list, and here's what we've come up with so far!

Central Park
There are about a thousand things I want to see in Central Park. Fortunately for me, Central Park has an awesome, comprehensive website, full of things to see and do, activities, and even a list of the trees and flowers you'll see there. Maybe I'll rent a bike so I can see more of the awesome things the park has to offer. Some of the things on my list? Belvedere Castle, the Azalea Pond, the Blockhouse, the Lake and the Loch and the Gill and the Pool Grotto, Harlem Meer, the Charles B. Stover "whisper" bench, Nutter's Battery Site, the Mall and Literary Walk, Strawberry Fields, and the Turtle Pond. And that's not even getting started on the bridges: the Oak Bridge, the Bow Bridge, the Gapstow Bridge, and the Balcony Bridge! Whew! Yeah, pretty sure I'm going to need an entire day to dedicate to the park.

Thursday, February 16, 2012

In the works...

I've been feeling the travel bug lately - like crazy.

And, I'm happy to say that I've got not one but TWO trips in the works now!

The first is a super quick, overnight trip to San Diego for our anniversary next week. We're going to spend to go down, see BF's aunt and uncle, check out the museum where BF's uncle has some items on display, and spend the night in my favorite part of San Diego - the Gaslamp District!

I booked our hotel today, and it was awesome because I used my Hotels.com Welcome Rewards credit towards our hotel - so we'll be paying less than $100 for a night! The Welcome Rewards program is pretty cool - you book 10 nights in a hotel through them, and you get 1 night free (based on the average you spend on the other nights)! We decided to splurge a bit and booked a more "luxury" hotel, so the credit went towards the total, then we paid the balance. Works for me!

The second trip is one I've been daydreaming about for years - New York City! I've been traveling for years, have been to four continents and lord knows how many countries, heck, I've even lived abroad... but I've never been to New York. The closest I've come was our East Coast Road Trip from a few years back when we drove on the outskirts of New York on our way from Boston to Virginia. And now, my opportunity has finally arrived!

M is going to be in New York for work, and I found a round trip flight for $240 (American Airlines, JetBlue and Virgin America ALL had this fare) - so I immediately booked it. I'll be there for 5 nights, and the best part is we won't have to pay for hotels! The first three nights are covered through her work, and then we'll stay with my friend for the last two nights! I can't think of a better way to see NY - a great mix between visiting friends and working.

What trips do you have coming up that you're excited for?

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Atlanta Part Deux Redux: The Food!

We're back from Atlanta, and it was a great trip. And while I still didn't fully explore the city, I got a good taste of it! We did almost nothing but work and EAT the whole time we were there. I'll get to the stuff we actually did do later, but here's a breakdown of our culinary tour.

- Fried pickles, fried okra, a BBQ plate with beef brisket, ribs, "Fritos" pie (a bag of Fritos with chili and cheese on them), spicy green beans, sweet tea, and banana pudding at Fox Bros BBQ. I'd never had fried pickles or fried okra, and both were tasty! And the BBQ - well, I guess there's a reason they're ranked #1 BBQ in Atlanta - it was so good! We definitely ordered too much, though, we all had leftovers, which is a bummer when you're traveling.

- Two awesome breakfasts (Thursday, then Saturday) of eggs & turkey bacon, then a "Southern scramble" of eggs, turkey bacon, cheese, and greens, both along with "creamy dreamy grits" and an amazing biscuit from The Flying Biscuit Cafe. The grits and biscuit were out of this world. I would have eaten there every morning if it had been possible. And the "southern scramble" was one of the better egg plates I've had in a while. I also love the use of turkey bacon!

They had all kinds of cute "The Flying Biscuit" stuff!

Friday, September 10, 2010

ATL Redux

My trip to Atlanta from a few weeks ago was pretty uneventful - it was for work, and I was literally there for about 30 hours. But I liked the city, and packed in tons!

Hotel room - 7th floor and nicely air conditioned!

Friday, June 11, 2010

The Great Philly Cheesesteak Adventure

One of the best things we did while on the East Coast in October was extend our stay in Philadelphia in order to check out the best places for Philly Cheese Steaks. A college friend who has relocated to Philly took us around to the two most famous places, along with HIS favorite place. KK and I split a cheese steak at each location, and at the end decided which one was our favorite based on overall taste, meat, bread, and location.

The three places we visited were: Pat's, Geno's, and Jim's. (Apparently, in order to have a good Philly cheese steak place in Philly, your restaurant has to be named after a person.)

PAT'S
Pat's was first on the list. The first thing we had to learn was how to properly order a Philly Cheese Steak. Fortunately, we had this handy dandy "how to!"



Friday, January 9, 2009

East Coast Road Trip: The Recap

I just realized I never got around to posting on this site about my East Coast road trip! We had a fabulous time and saw so much of the East Coast, it was fabulous.

Me at Chatham Manor in Virginia

We really packed in as much as possible!

Saturday, November 1, 2008

East Coast 10 Day Road Trip: Photo Recap

I finally got it together and sorted through my thousand photos, and picked one from most of the places we visited! Without further ado, our East Coast adventure!

Here's a recap of our itinerary:

Day 1: Arrive in Boston, Freedom Trail tour, Sam Adams Brewery tour
Day 2: Boston, half day trip by train to Salem
Day 3: Boston, pick up rental car, drive to Providence RI, then to Waterford CT
Day 4: Waterford, CT, more wandering
Day 5: Drive to Philadelphia, by way of Amish country
Day 6: Philadelphia, drive to Fredericksburg, VA
Day 7 - 9: Fredericksburg, PA for our friend's wedding!
Day 10: Drive to DC, drop off rental car, explore DC

Boston, MA

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Boston - What To Do

I was going to write about food and drink as the follow up to my Boston hotel entry and the next installment for Demonic Blonde (and Alex), but DB has requested places to go. Again, no Boston expert or anything, but here are some places I've been and things I've done while there, and some more I'm wanting to go and do!


Trinity Church

Monday, September 22, 2008

Boston - Where To Stay

Recently, my friend Demonic Blonde requested a travel post about Boston, since she and some friends will be traveling there in November. Now, I am no expert on Boston by any means. But, I have been there several times and it's my favorite East Coast city by far.

I love Boston. I love the feel of the city, the people, the transportation, pretty much everything except for the fact that my delicate California-born-and-raised self cannot survive in cold weather. In fact, I would love to live there at some point, if it weren't for said issue. Anyway. I'll be traveling there again next month for my own trip, but I figured I'd post a few blogs with some of the places I've been and will be planning to go. Here is the first, about hotels.

I've only stayed in two hotels in Boston on my trips thus far. The first time I went, my friend Miss M and I were a little late in reserving a hotel room (we were traveling at the same time as Harvard's graduation, oops), and the best we could find was the Holiday Inn Express. This hotel? Not recommended. The hotel itself is fine, exactly what you'd expect from a Holiday Inn Express. There's a Target within walking distance and a little diner next door that has good pie. But the neighborhood is hardly ideal for tourists. The T stop is a 5-10 minute walk, and not particularly appealing to two young women after dark.

Every time since then, I've stayed at the Boston Marriott Cambridge. Which rocks as a hotel as well as a location. It's on the pricier side, but if you get it at the right time of year you can get good deals. Basically, it's a dream come true - soft, heavenly beds, comfortable rooms, and the Kendall Square T stop is literally steps from the hotel. A close T stop is my biggest "pro" for a hotel in Boston - because with that, you can get anywhere around the city with ease (and a few minutes walk).

For this upcoming trip, we're staying at a new hotel that I've not been to. Again, we waited far too long to book our hotel, and my favorite was over $300/night, well out of my price range for this trip. If we were only going to Boston, I may have sprung for it (it's THAT good of a hotel), but since we'll have an additional 7 nights in hotels after Boston, we had to stick with our budget of under $200/night. So, with very little available and our departure looming, we turned to Priceline. We named the hotel we wanted (four stars), our location (Downtown, Waterfront, etc) and our price ($175/night). And then we rolled the dice. We are booked at the Seaport Hotel on the waterfront, and from the looks of the reviews on tripadvisor, I am super excited about our good fortune.

Thursday, July 3, 2008

2008 & 2009 Travel Plans

I am very ambitious with my 2008 & 2009 travel plans, after going on very few trips (by my standards) in 2007. I have resolved to spend more time traveling, since I don't currently have kids or a mortgage or a car payment. All of these things are bound to catch up with me soon, so I feel that I need to take advantage of this year and next year to get some travel fixes in! My plan? One big trip and a handful of smaller trips this year, and 1-3 big trips next year.

2008 Already Traveled:
- Mayercraft Carrier cruise to Grand Bahama, Bahamas
- Central/Northern CA road trip to Morro Bay, Monterey, Santa Cruz and San Francisco

2008 Planned And Booked Travel:
- Work conference in Dana Point
- East Coast road trip to Boston, Connecticut, Philadelphia, Virginia and Washington DC

2008 Planned, But Not Yet Booked Travel:
- "Break from CA" trip to Portland
- BF's work conference in San Francisco

2009 Planned And Booked Travel:
- Mayercraft Carrier cruise to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico

2009 Planned, But Not Yet Booked Travel:
- Europe: Austria & Italy, or Ireland