Vacation Scare, Free Car?

While on our latest trip (Italy), Jen received an unusual text that sent us down a panicked rabbit hole trying to determine if our house at the least was broken into; at worst, hosting squatters while we vacationed.

Thanks for letting us use the pool. Who's white Cadillac SUV is in your driveway?

We don't own a white Cadillac SUV. No one we know owns a white Cadillac SUV.

Antiques, Beaches and Canals

We took the kids to Italy again, this time to Florence, Venice and San Miniato in Tuscany region to see the sights and enjoy the Mediterranean beaches on the northern west coast.

To Hell and Back

Of all the bands of my youth, the one I regret not seeing live was Helloween. By the time I was going to concerts, Kai Hansen and Michael Kiske had already left the band and although I liked and listened to some of their new material, the classics live without Kai and Michael just wouldn't have been the same. Knowing they all reunited and were playing huge festivals in Europe, I was eagerly awaiting a North American tour. The 40th Anniversary tour was it and they were coming to my state! The only problem ... I was going to be in Sint Maarten during their local show!

Luckily, Canada is "close", so the Toronto show it was!

St. Maarten Second Honeymoon

Jen and I and three other couples took a trip to St. Maarten to celebrate one couple's 40th anniversary. They had all come with us to celebrate our 20th anniversay, and since this couple originally honeymooned in St. Maarten, we all revisited with them to celebrate! We stayed at the Sonesta Ocean Point Resort in Maho Bay, a beautiful, adults-only all-inclusive.

Germany and Austria Christmas Markets and Krampus

This Christmas season we took the kids to see if they were truly good or bad - to the Krampuslauf in Salzburg, Austria. There, St. Nicholas and the Krampus would sort it out for us.

Niagara Falls

I took the kids to Niagara Falls to see the wonder and majesty of water falling off a cliff. I downplay, but it was pretty cool to see how excited that can make a person [video], especially when you're up close and personal like in the midst of Horseshoe Falls on Niagara City Cruises or literally behind the falls in the eponymous Journey Behind the Falls.

We stayed on the Canadian side, a few blocks up from the falls, but within a mile walking distance to the falls and local excursions. We took a 15-minute ride north for a Whirlpool Jet Boat tour up the Niagara River and saw the falls light up a night .. under fireworks as well!

On the way home, we walked on the American side park before the long car ride home.

Oui Si Paris, Barcelona

When Jen told me we could take the family on a week-long trip to Paris, France and Barcelona, Spain with three full days in each city, during February vacation .. for less than the cost of a trip to Disney, I was incredulous. When we did it, I was amazed. When we got back, exhausted. And now wondering how we pull off something like this again!

Of course getting flights and hotels this cheap meant not direct and single family room for four, but we could work with that.

Warm Up in Iceland

A mid-winter trip to Iceland sounded chilly, I was apprehensive until I saw the cheap flights and hot excursions Jen found. Luckily, the week we went, it was sub-zero temperatures at home and mid to low 30F in Iceland .. we actually found warmer weather than staying home.

And with Sky Lagoon a balmy 104F, we really had it made!

Curacao Second Honeymoon

Jen and I celebratd 20 years of marriage this November so took the family .. and four other couple friends (they paid their own way) to Curacao! We originally honeymooned in Dominican Republic, but wanted to go somewhere new so kick off the next 20 years. We stayed a the Zoetry, quieter and more secluded, and had access to the next door Dreams resort right on the beach.

15.5 Year Anniversary

For a 15th wedding anniversary, the traditional gift is crystal, so I thought it would be creative to book an overnight in a lighthouse for Jen and I since traditional lighthouses often have a crystal fresnel lense to focus the lamp. Romanitic right? I know!

Does this sound familiar? It should ...

Crystal Ball

For a 15th wedding anniversary, the traditional gift is crystal, so I thought it would be creative to book an overnight in a lighthouse for Jen and I since traditional lighthouses often have a crystal fresnel lense to focus the lamp. Romanitic right? I know!

Unfortunately, Poseidon and the weather had different plans.

Labor Day Run Around

The Saturday of Labor Day weekend, I ran my yearly tune-up for Reach the Beach, the Charleston Distance Run. The 15-mile course is pretty flat and fast, save for the 1000+ foot climb in a little over a mile and the subsequent 1000+ foot descent in the next mile and half. With high 70 degrees and high humidity at race start time this year, it proved to be a pretty difficult 15 miles.

Nonetheless, I ran my pace and finished quite well, in 1 hour, 53 and half minutes - good enough for 61 place overall out of 550+ runners.

I ran a consistent 7:30 minute / mile for the first 3 miles, 7:40 for the fourth mile as that started the brutal climb up Capital Punishment Hill. From there, my pace fell off a bit on the uphill as expected. I crossed 7 miles on the downhill at 54 minutes and hit 8 miles crossing the bridge into the last flat 7 miles at 1 hour, 1 minute (7:38 pace).

I ran the next few miles pretty inconsistently - a 7 minute mile followed by an 8 minute mile followed by a few 7 and change miles. The heat - now well into the 90's, made it difficult to find a comfortable pace. With 2 miles left, I dropped down to 7:05 - 7:10 pace and finished strong.

Other than the oppressive heat, it didn't cause me any issues - I stayed hydrated taking water at every aid station and ate consistently. Recovery was pretty easy too - 6 miles the next morning with no issues.

I'm certainly ready for RTB, and a week later, the Vermont 50.

WV Weekend

We just returned from our West Virginia weekend.  I completed the Charleston Distance Run 15 mile race and finished 129 of 491, 15 of 44 in my age group.  Not too bad.  I ran 7:55 pace overall - negative splits as my pace was 8:20 for the first 6 miles including up "Capitol Punishment Hill".  After figuring I was at a 2 hour 1 minute ETA at about mile 11, I picked it up as I passed mile 12.  Of course, this wasn't a half marathon and the expected 1.1 miles to finish was actually 3.  I gutted it out and beat the 2 hour mark - not my original goal, but I had a good day, so why not?

We also learned Cornhole.  Being that this is West Virginia, this may bear further explanation.  A web link is provided.  Pictures are also found on the aforementioned WV Travel page.  That's about enough of that.

We're back home now, and I'm keeping to my RTB training schedule.  A hard 7.5 miler today in 57:30 (7:40 pace) leads into a longer (and easier paced) 10 miler tomorrow.  I'll cool down on Thursday, rest Friday and do another long easy trail on Saturday.  I'm looking beyond RTB, so my taper isn't really significant.

Bermuda Cruise: Day 7

Yet another early morning room service breakfast followed by a full buffet breakfast. We’ve grown quite accustomed to this and will expect it upon our return home. Who will be cooking all the food remains to be answered.

More trivia. With Jack, Jen and me (Jill was absent), we crushed the competition (17/20) earning ourselves NCL flashlight key chains. Next was more Bingo. The last game to give away all the money and raffle a free cruise. We read our books in the back, playing the 1 free game we had a card for and listened to the raffle. Not as lucky as Jen’s blackjack exploits, so we headed out.

A little lunch, a little gambling, a little rain. The afternoon slowly passed by.

We hit the art auction for the free champagne for last time and Jen won a free bottle of champagne to take with us! So, we decided to dress up for dinner, head to Windows and get – what else – a window seat. We drank our bottle of champagne with dinner looking quite dapper I may add.

We stopped back by the room to dress down a bit then headed to the Galaxy of the Stars room early to get front row for the Second City complete improv act. This was much better than their first show as it was entirely improv. We enjoyed it so much, we stayed on, listened to the band sing some tunes – among them, ABBA’s “Knowing Me, Knowing You”, to which we sang along, and then watched the Second City’s second performance. Being improv, it was entirely different and entirely enjoyable.

We went to bed on our last night.

Bermuda Cruise: Day 6

By this time we were in full vacation mode and regularly sleeping late (that is to say, after 5:30 AM). This day, we missed leaving Bermuda. We awoke around 7:30 AM and saw water outside our window as opposed to pier. This would normally have been an issue – say if we were at our house, but alas, we didn’t worry and took our time getting up and about. We ate breakfast and spent some time lounging on the promenade deck (7) reading and waiting for the 10 AM trivia game. With the help of our cruise buddies, we won (19/20 questions)! We collected 2 NCL mugs as our prize.

Some more reading, then lunch, then another art auction. We really aren’t that interested in art. We are interested in free champagne. You think they’d catch on. We decided we’d do another Grey Goose martini tasting with our cruise buddies. We grabbed some to-go food (chicken fingers, fries) at the pub and headed to the tasting extravaganza. Five new martinis, including an espresso martini and a bonus sixth martini with Blue Curacao! We ordered more drinks afterwards before I finally switched to beer and Jen and Jill took to the casino.

Jack and I decided it was time to find the girls after listening to the live music for a while. I found Jen at a blackjack table – she’d been there over one and a half hours. I asked her how much she was down (assuming the worst). She said she started by putting $20 in and then handed me a $100 chip and told me to hold it. She did this a few more times throughout the night as I mingled and talked with others around the table.

I finally had enough and decided we had to see the “risqué, adults-only burlesque” show put on by the cruise director staff. Jen cashed in about $275 that night ($20 to $275 in about three hours - eat it Bernie Madoff) and we headed upstairs. The show was not quite what we expected and so left midway through for bed. We ordered late night room service, although I don’t remember if we got it or not.

Bermuda Cruise: Day 5

After a late night filled with beer and chocolate, it was nice to sleep in … until 8 AM, when we woke and headed to breakfast. We were planning an all-day island excursion so we wanted a head start. We got off the boat around 9:45 AM and bought our all-day public transit tickets ($12 all access/person) and got on the pier’s trolley as we were assured this would get us to the ferry before it left at 10 AM. Had we known where the ferry docked, we could have walked there in about 2 minutes, but we opted for the scenic tour of the pier as we picked up passengers from the Royal Caribbean ship that was docked in back of ours. This did give me the opportunity to jump off the trolley, grab a Bermuda guide book (which we already had, but had forgotten in our room) and get back on. We hopped to the ferry as it was pulling away and we were on our way to St. George’s.

We arrived in St. George’s with no real itinerary except to see St. Peter’s church. So we did that, looked around and decided to move on. We caught a bus and decided on the ride we should see the Crystal Cave. So we de-bussed at the proper stop, bought our tickets and waited for about 30 minutes for the tour to start. The wait was tempered by the friendly Canuck we met. The cave was nice to see, but far too crowded (with people, not stalactites - we didn't mind them).

After exiting, we walked around the corner in search of food. We found a nice restaurant that wanted $18 for a club sandwich. We decided to starve and get on the bus for Hamilton. At the bus stop, we met our Canuck friend again and he told us to get on the number 3 bus because the number 11 bus was going to “f--k around” in the golf course area on the map he showed us. We kept our laughter at his American colloquialism to ourselves.

Once in Hamilton, we could no longer wait for food so ate at the Pickled Onion on Front Street. The food was good, but certainly not worth the $40 for a chicken sandwich, nachos and spinach dip. As our Canuck friend would say, “C’est la vie”.

Hamilton quickly bored us and it was time to lounge on a beach – after all, what else should we be doing on vacation? We hopped on a bus to Horseshoe Bay Beach. Jen led us down a sand dune trail off the main road assuring me that we’d reach the beach. We did, at the far end. It was actually better that way: shorter walk, avoid the crowds and quickly get to lounging around. The water was warm, sand was pink, sun was hot – all in all, a great way to end the day. That is, until we needed to get back to the boat.

A long uphill slog was followed by an overcrowded, non-air conditioned bus (mind you, all other buses we took that day were half full with fully functioning air conditioners). After arriving at the ship, we decided dinner and a movie was the night’s plan – no shows tonight.

Bermuda Cruise: Day 4

Woke up and was ready for a run. We ate our room service early-breakfast and Jen dozed off while I hopped off the boat and ran to Somerset Bridge. Somerset Bridge is the world’s smallest draw bridge - they say don’t blink as you drive over it or you’ll miss it. Rest assured after dodging traffic, dealing with the heat, eating road dust and a few miles up and down hills on the way out, I was very prepared when I saw it. I was welcoming the break and looking forward (read: dreading) the run back. I finished the round trip in about 1.5 hours. A quick shower, wake Jen and it was off to a real breakfast.

We lounged by the pool and read until we headed off at 2:00 PM for our 2:15 PM snorkeling adventure. Our trip left from the pier so not much walking and easy to find. We took a nice leisurely cruise out of Dockyard, under a bridge (not Somerset) to the west side of the island near the wreck of the HMS Vixen where we did some barrier reef snorkeling.

This is certainly my element, but for Jen, it’s not quite her milieu. After donning her mask, fins and snorkel and fully inflating her buoyancy compensating vest, she did a cannonball towards my head rather than the proper diver entry. After a few minutes of sheer terror and panic and the requisition of additional flotation tubes, we eased to the shallower waters of the reef where fish actually came into view. At this point, she mellowed out and started to quite enjoy the experience.

She returned to the boat after about a half an hour in the water and I stayed out for another half an hour. We fed the fish at the HMS Vixen on the boat trip home.

We did dinner on the ship that night at the Raffles buffet to get in and out quick so we could catch the Richard Burr magic show. We bumped into our cruise buddies so we ordered a bucket of beers and took front row seating. After show one, we headed to the Battle of the Sexes game show for show two (and bucket of beer two, too). We decided to participate and under dubious officiating and protest, the girls won. We adjourned to Raffles for the late night chocolate buffet before heading off to bed.

Bermuda Cruise: Day 3

Awake to land ho! I sped up to the promenade deck (7) to get a glimpse and some pictures of us arriving in Bermuda. We passed by Fort St. Catherine in St. George's first. Bermuda is very holy.

I woke Jen, we ate breakfast and then headed to the "Galaxy of the Stars" room deck 12 forward to watch us dock at the Royal Navy Dockyard. We killed some time and then went ashore to browse the few overpriced shops that were open on Sunday. A quick return to the boat for lunch and a quiet afternoon.

Around 3:30, we decided to go to the beach - Snorkel Park - a short walk from the boat. I took my snorkel gear and Jen just enjoyed the sand and sun. Her lower legs enjoyed the warm water, but nothing more - we turned and headed back to the boat for dinner.

The show tonight was the Second City improv comedy troupe.

Bermuda Cruise: Day 2

We woke up promptly at 5:30 – Jen swears she heard Misty barking. I finally let her in on the secret that it was me. We woke up promptly (for real) at 7:30 AM as room service delivered our first breakfast. We went for a run on the Deck 13 track at 8AM. Jen did a mile. I did about 7.5. Who’s counting? It was quite difficult as the track was only 1 lane, people were walking, there were walls and rails really restricting space at some points and I am an explosive runner. In any case, we finished, showered and ate breakfast … again … at 9:30 AM.

At 10 AM, we attended the Shore Excursion Presentation to find out which snorkeling trip I was going to drag Jen on. We quickly booked, exited and made it up 4 floors forward and sat for Bingo. This was not your Foxwoods Bingo. Only 4 games at a reasonable cost of $69. Jen insisted it was a good deal until she didn’t win anything, save for the $1 pull tab. She did redeem herself with the matching $10/$10 Casino slot machine coupon she got with the Bingo purchase. A few spins on the one-arm bandit and she spun the “Wheel of Fortune” collecting a cool $87 dollars. Screw you Bingo!

Loads of excitement, still no whales or land sighted, we ate lunch.

At 1:30 PM, we became art connoisseurs again – and alcoholics, although that didn’t actually kick in until around 3 PM after we downed about 6 champagne’s each, won free art and a free bottle of champagne for our room. We also bumped into our nursery rhyme friends who had a great idea for the rest of the afternoon.

After art overload, we four headed to the atrium bar for a $15 per person Grey Goose martini tasting. We each got 5 full martinis for $15 – that’s a great deal at any bar! First was the cosmo, followed by an apple martini. Next was the French Kiss – Gran Marnier and Chambourd. Fourth was a Lemonciello martini, which Jill taught us to do as a tequila shot, but with sugar instead of salt (she’s my hero). All followed nicely by a chocolate martini.

With bellies full of liquor, it was time to add some absorption; dinner it was for the four of us. We realized we had some time to kill before the Newlywed Game Show, so we watched a tribute to Broadway shows in the theatre. Aside from singing along with Abba tunes, it was a non-event.

Finally, the Newlywed Game didn’t disappoint. Bed time on another fine day.

Bermuda Cruise: Day 1

Friday morning went mostly according to plan. We left the house on time forgetting nothing. Erika and the kids had us to the Black Falcon Pier with aid of Garmin by high noon. Jen got out of the car, put her water bottle in “my carry-on backpack” and we took our luggage to the porters.

While waiting in line, Jen suddenly realized that the water bottle was missing – I must have dropped it when I picked up the backpack. So I dutifully went to look for it while she called Erika just to make sure it still wasn’t in the car. Luck with neither option – someone must have seen our coveted water bottle and stole it and its precious contents. Jen was incensed. The vacation was ruined.

Nevertheless, we boarded around 1PM, drank some free champagne and went to lunch. We walked around a bit killing time before we could go to our stateroom when Jen realized she had a message on her voicemail. Erika had phoned to thank her for putting the water bottle in Erika’s backpack and she had been hydrating her kids as they walked around Boston for the afternoon eventually realizing that she didn’t actually own the water bottle which was providing such nourishing contents. Disaster averted – the trip could go on.

We read the schedule to find out where our next best bet for drinks was. The casino was offering free Rum Swizzles for the first 30 minutes after opening (5:30 – 6PM). After drinking about 5 apiece, we walked through the lobby where a “try before you buy” Duty Free alcohol presentation was happening. We pretended to be highly interested in each beverage they were peddling thus allowing us free samples of each spirit. Thoroughly liquored, we headed to Trivia in “Henry’s Pub” only about 5 minutes late.

We did fairly well – 14/20, the winner had 17 right, but alas, they cheated (they must have to beat us). We met and chatted with a nice couple – Jack and Jill (no, we were not drunk, this was real) and then adjourned to dinner.

At 8:30PM, we went to the Art Gallery to admire the Monet’s, view the Van Gogh’s and of course, drink the free champagne. Finally, the 9PM welcome show with the cruise director was a laugh riot and we were ready for bed.