Vieve's Place...Enjoy Your Visit
You guys, it has finally come. I don’t remember if I’ve talked about this at all on my blog (and I’m too lazy to go check), but today, I am going to Europe on a vacation. My sister-in-law Fall (not her real name obvs) graduated from high school, and a senior trip is her gift from her parents. Since they’ve sadly passed on, Husband and I were tapped to bring her and her younger sister Bonanza there. It’s been months of planning, and today we are leaving! I’ll definitely be keeping a detailed travel log here, so check back for fun updates and pictures!
We’re off for 24 days!
So today, I have gotten a start to go to Colorado. I went with PJ and we are doing our yearly jaunt to Denver to watch RSL play. We drove this time instead of flew, to save a little bit of money. This is our sweet rental car.
We got to Parachute tonight, and spent the night here, before finishing on to Denver tomorrow. We stopped at a place called Mama’s Café, and I got a chicken fried chicken.
It was literally the best one I’ve ever had, and then I finished off with desserts. We ordered a peanut butter cheesecake and a peach cobbler, and shared them.
Yum. Can’t wait to see my boys in red play!
This morning, after waking up, Chelle and I went to the gym. When we walked in there, we were surprised to see how lackluster it was.
Yes, all that you are seeing there is 1 exercise bike, 1 elliptical machine, and a weight machine. So, she hopped on the bike, I chose elliptical, and away we went. After our workout, we went for some breakfast.
Isn’t that the most delicious pancake you’ve ever seen? It was. We spent the day walking around downtown Durango, and seeing the entire town and everything we did there took a few hours. It snowed, it rained on us, but it was still a blast.
We went into a billion small stores, and bought some really random things, that even as I was buying them, I thought, I’m not sure what I’m going to do with these, but they’re cute, so I got them anyway. We went into a bakery there, and bought cupcakes. 7 dollars is how much that cupcake cost, can you believe it?! I have never paid that much for a single cupcake in my life. I still haven’t even eaten it! Any minute now, everyone. Any minute now.
Stay tuned for part two!
After Wednesday, our DW vacay was over. We spent Friday visiting various families we had in Florida, my brother and his wife live there, as does Husband’s grandmother. As I was visiting my brother, his daughter made me hold their guinea pig for a while. Her name was Princess. She seemed terrified of my niece, ha ha.
We visited the beach in Sarasota
I am trying to look neither cold nor sick there. My sickness had come in with a vengeance on Thursday, so I was sick. My throat was killing me, my sinuses were out of control, and I just felt awful. But on the way back from the beach, I found a cupcake place, of course, called Cupcakes a Go-Go. The cupcakes weren’t that good, so I was sad, but still, at least I got to enjoy one!
Friday was spent traveling back. On the flight to Denver, I sat next to an older gentleman who offered to buy me a scotch. I politely declined his request. And I was trying so hard not to seem sick! But I don’t think I did very well there. After a quick flight from Denver back to good ol’ SLC, I was home. And ready to be home. Vacations are nice, but like the saying says, there’s no place like home.
On our last day of Monterey business, Husband had to work from the hotel, so I just hung out with my sister, and we just sort of took it slowly, hanging out, didn’t do much, just chatted. My plan was to hang out with her until noon-thirty, and then go pick Husband up from the hotel, and head over to the airport. She has cats, and this one seemed pretty obsessed with faces. I usually don’t let cats get close to me, but he was small enough.
I got a call from him at like, noon, telling me they had delayed our flight. He was going to call the airline and make sure that we could still make our connecting flight. After talking to them, we found out that we wouldn’t make our second flight, so we had to now fly out of San Jose to Denver, then from Denver to SLC. Our flight to Denver was earlier, so off we went to the airport. On our way there, we ran out of gas. Husband was trying to return the rental car with as little gas in it as possible. So, naturally, we ran out of gas. We coasted off the freeway (yup, freeway) and then Husband had to push the car to the side of the road, then went to get gas. I hung out. We got to Denver pretty well, and found out as soon as we arrived that our flight to SLC was delayed by 30 minutes. Sheesh!
After eating and waiting for what seemed like a long time, we were off. A 6 yr old boy sat next to me, and boy was he chatty. Even as I was reading my book, he decided to chat, so instead of super paying attention, I just sort of said “uh-huh. yeah” and things of the like as he just talked. After about 20 minutes, he turned to me and asked “What’s your favorite thing that we’ve talked about so far?” Uh..I didn’t expect a quiz! An adult wouldn’t have quizzed! So I just said the last thing I remember, pink vampire bunnies. He nodded, then said “My favorite is when we talked about my Halloween costume.” (a vampire) When we finally landed, at 11:15, I was pretty tired. We got to the car at about 11:50, then arrived home at 12:26. I was in bed by 12:29, and asleep pretty much immediately. I skipped running this morning (with a half marathon this weekend, so good) woke up at 6:50, and I’ve actually not felt very tired today! I am looking forward to going to be early though.
What a fun trip I had, with the only thing I hated was the travel time, and how late we got in. But if a 6 year old can land at 11:15 at night not tired, I need to learn to do the same thing!
Well friends, the Monterey adventures continue. After a pretty casual Saturday (that consisted of mostly driving to-and-from the airport, picking up Husband’s lost luggage) we decided to see the sights of Monterey. We ate lunch, sandwiches, by the ocean. As we ate, a seagull came up to us, and slowly made his way up to us, acting casual. We invented a whole backstory for him, that he actually wasn’t that interested in our food, but he was there to make sure we weren’t littering, his name was Officer Giggles. The reason for the Giggles is because someone mispronounced seagull. He was a good bird, I ended up giving him a bunch of my sandwich.
We went to the Monterey Aquarium, which was awesome. It was HUGE and there were so many great things to see. I started off strong, taking lots of pictures of things, but after a bit, I got more into the animals and stuff, and didn’t bother taking pics anymore. Oh well. Here are pics of some of the stuff I got.
Here’s Husband and I trying to squeeze into the penguin shell, made for kids:
And here’s us trying to get out again, and he’s smooshing my foot
When we were done with everything, but still trying to milk out the $35/person fee, we decided to take in a tiny presentation about Great White Sharks. After we had sat there for about 10 minutes, and still had a couple to go, the fire alarm went off. We all got up, walked over to the exit, and then it stopped. We stood there, not sure of what to do, then the gal working said it was fine, after talking on her walkie, and said we were good to just sit down and do the presentation. It was interesting.
Then, we walked around Monterey for a bit, on the pier, around all the touristy stops. The railing here said not to stand on it, so of course I did, I’m a rebel.
All in all, a pretty fun trip in Monterey was to be had. I’m glad I got to see my sister, and glad to see a new city that I’ve never been to.
I’d love to be more spontaneous. I would. I’m just not very good at it. I like to plan. I like to know what’s going on, and how things are going to be. I had such a spontaneous weekend this week, I of course had to share it all. It started on Wednesday. My younger sister is going through a hard time, and is a billion miles away in Monterey, CA, where her husband is stationed. Since she’s having a rough go of it, the decision came to mind that maybe I should visit her. So after a couple of days of checking prices, and times, and all that’s involved, on Thursday, Husband and I booked a flight, a car, and a hotel, and Friday evening, we were off. It was a secret, though – I didn’t want anyone telling my sister we were coming. It was tough to keep such a fun secret hidden.
We flew into San Jose, because according to Google Maps as I was booking the flight, it’s only an hour away from where my sister lives, and we got such a cheap flight if we went there. Husband and I didn’t get to sit by each other on the way to Seattle, which was fine, because I had just planned to read the whole time. I sat by a gentleman, whose name I never caught, and he was pretty chatty, so I didn’t get to read. At some point, we were chatting about reading, and he gave me a book – said it was a good one. I took a look at the back, read a bit, and said it looked interesting, and I’d have to look it up, and he told me to keep it. Told me to read it, enjoy it, and then pass it along. So, I read that on the way to San Jose, and finished it in the time it took to travel, then gave it to a guy, after telling him it was good and he’d enjoy it. He looked at me pretty oddly, ha ha!
When we landed at San Jose, it was late. We landed at about 11:00, tired and ready to just lie down. As we were getting our luggage, one of Husband’s didn’t come. He originally had just the one checked bag, and his carry-on, but on the flight from Seattle, the plane was too full, and they made him gate-check it, and it had his laptop in it, so of course, that makes me nervous. And then when it didn’t show up in San Jose? I was like, freaking out! So, after we figured out where it was (still in Seattle, WTH?) I was trying to get directions from my phone about how to get to their house. I don’t know if I put in the wrong airport, or what, but the time it told me it would take was 6 hours, and I was almost in tears, trying to figure out what the heck was going on. Finally, I got things figured out; we got our car (A Chevy Cruz!) and off we went.
We took the hour long drive to their house, and I had hatched a plan. I was texting her the whole time, making sure that she had no idea what I was doing. When we got near her house, I had texted her and said “Wanna know a secret?” because, I anticipated her answering it with a “yes” and then I was going to knock on the door right then and then I would laugh, but it didn’t quite work that way. When I texted her, she didn’t text back…so I just knocked on the door, and away we went. The look of surprise on her face was amazing, and after some hugs, we went to our hotel – which my sister’s husband had to come in to check in with us. We were staying at the Navy Lodge, getting a really good discounted rate because he’s in the military (that’s actually the only way you can stay there too, is have a military sponsor) and so he had to check us in, it was pretty funny. Finally, off to bed for me, because by this point, I think it was nearing 2 in the morning our time. I was exhausted after all the travels and fun!
Well, the vacation is over. Yesterday morning, we were getting ready to run. and we sat there, watching men’s tennis, the battle for the gold. I meant to just watch for a few minutes while we got ready to run, then all of a sudden, the game is over, Andy Murray won the gold medal against Roger Federer, and 2 hours had passed. It was fun, though! So we didn’t get to run, because we needed to get ready, to check out.
After a breakfast at Hot Cakes (sorry, no food pictures this time) we went and took a tour of Margaret Brown – or as she’s more commonly known – The Unsinkable Molly Brown. It was awesome, and interesting, I learned a lot about her and the Titanic. I recommend this tour to everyone. After the tour, we grabbed a quick cupcake from a place called The Shoppe (it wasn’t a very good cupcake), we hit the airport and came home. Returning to the Provo airport was awesome. It takes no time at all to get off, get through the airport, get your luggage, and get home. I was home 30 minutes after we landed. I loved it.
On Saturday night, on the way to the RSL game, I realized that I didn’t have my house keys with me. This normally wouldn’t be a big deal, but Husband had left to Boise this weekend, since I was gone as well. I realized, the possibility of the house being totally locked up was a possibility, so I gave him a call to get the status of the locked stuff in the house. Luckily for me, he had left a door unlocked. (Let’s not talk about how crazy it is to have a door unlocked while there’s no one home…that just makes people nervous.Things seem ok and in their place here) As I walked in, and got a drink, I realize, there is not a lick of food in the house. No bread, no yogurt, no milk, no…anything. So, I did a bad thing, I shopped on a Sunday. I know, I know, we shouldn’t, but I couldn’t figure out how else I was going to eat, and have stuff for breakfast/lunch today. But I’m forgiving myself, since it was a necessary evil.
And there it is. My weekend, in a 3-day recap. I had a great time, but of course, at the end, I was ready to come home, relax, and sleep in my own bed. With the exception of a loss of a soccer game, it was a pretty awesome weekend.
Ok, sports fans, here we go. Started this lovely Saturday with a run on a Colorado running trail that I didn’t really care for. But it was fun in that there were a hundred million prairie dogs on the trail, all hiding in holes. That helped distract from the distance and sun. After finishing, we got ready, watched some Men’s volleyball (sorry, team USA) and went to breakfast at a place called Sam’s No 3. It was pretty good. When I ordered a banana, they served it to me sliced up!
It tasted better this way, I swear. After eating, we headed over to the Denver Botanical Gardens. It was really pretty, and oh-so-hot. The weather forecast we saw gave us lower temperatures than we had. I thought it would be lovely weather, but it was hot. Here are some of the flowers:
They were pretty. As we walked by a tree, there was a squirrel eating nuts. I tried to take a picture, but I couldn’t get it focused close enough. This is me, sitting under a tree. Lookin’ good.
After the Gardens, we went to dinner at a bar (we didn’t know it was a bar, it was recommended to us from a friend) and onto the RSL game. Sadly, sadly, sadly, we lost. It wasn’t a fun game either, the RSL drummers showed up, so they drowned out any singing we did, and it was just loud and I didn’t care for it. After the game, we grabbed our customary ice cream. I got a large, I thought I was hungry.
I only ate until the cone, then had to throw it away, I was SO full. That made me sad. But after everything, and the long drive back to the hotel, yet another crashing commenced. Being on vacation makes me tired!
This year, our (mine and PJ’s) yearly trip to Colorado came a little early. Usually, RSL plays Colorado in October, so we go then. This time, the beginning of August. Weird, right? So we got to plan all sorts of different activities, since it was going to be warm, not a freezing-cold-lets-stay-in-the-hotel-all-day kind of trip. We flew out of Provo, which I really love. That airport is tiny! I like how easy it is to go through security there. So, we get into Colorado, and immediately picked up our rental car:
A Fiat! I’ve never even driven one of these, and I gotta say, I’m not that impressed with it. We stopped for breakfast at a place called Snooze, here’s my breakfast:
The one on the left is a pineapple upside down pancake, the middle is a donut pancake, and the right is a carrot cake pancake with cream cheese frosting. SO GOOD. Then, up to the top of Mount Evans – the highest paved road in North America. Here’s a pic from the top:
It was so nice up there. It was cold though, so I’m glad that we remembered to bring our jackets.
Here’s us at the top, thank you random stranger for taking our picture for us. We returned the favor, and took a pic of him and his son. On the way down, we ran into a giant group of these, and tried to get close to take a pic. Here’s an action shot:
There were so many mountain goats, it was awesome. Then we made the trip all the way down the mountain, and our car pinged, telling me it was overheating. I pull over, and hung out by the side of the road for 5 minutes, then got back in. When we were farther down the mountain, it pinged again. So we parked, and walked up and down Main Street, Idaho Springs. Fancy! It was like a mini Park City, full of expensive places, but with a mountainy look. We ate at this hole in the wall restaurant, but it was delicious. I had the meatloaf.
By the end of dinner and a gelato, the car was fine. After finding the hotel, we crashed. A pretty good first day, I’d say.
