Entries Tagged 'Travels' ↓

Seattle & Vancouver

Had our first visits to Seattle and Vancouver (Canada) the last few days. Sara & Lucy were up that way so it was our turn to fly up and visit so they didn’t need to detour through San Francisco. The trip will be memorable for seeing them but also for the heat wave. Yikes! Warnings on weather sites about ‘excessive heat’ – not my kind of weather. Seattle was sticky and disgusting and mid to high 30’s – we had clothes and shoes for mid-high 20’s. Blisters!

Seattle was a pretty nice town, a lot like Portland really. I was quite intrigued by the volcanic cones we saw out the window in the last 20 minutes or so of the flight. The city is leafy, has lots of good coffee (more on that later) and quite a compact downtown area – rising up from the pretty harbor. Obviously a huge draw card for visiting, besides the coffee, was the Space Needle painted in orange (officially ‘harvest gold’) for its birthday so a visit to see that was a priority. Although I was quite disappointed to discover that when you got up close and rode up it, you couldn’t see the orange! Only from afar. A company we’ve got to know through work (Avalara) has their headquarters at Bainbridge Island, just off Seattle and a friend from their California office was in town that week so he showed us around – good coffee, Space Needle, Chihuly glass garden, ferry to Bainbridge Island, more coffee, tour of their very ORANGE offices and dinner on the island. A great day … well … except for the heat. Sorry to harp on about it but you could tell the city was largely unprepared for the heat, like San Francisco: cafes and restaurants didn’t have air conditioning, so they’d all run out to the Home Depot or Target stores and got portable fans that cluttered surfaces and door ways!

Our next day and a bit in Seattle we visited more coffee shops, found a knitting shop, had lunch with a friend, met Sara and Lucy then set off on our road trip with them to Vancouver – had to drive across the border!

Volcanic cones near Portland

Volcanic cones between Portland & Seattle

Space Needle

Space Needle! Where’s the orange?

Space Needle

And I thought it always rained in Seattle?

Space Needle

Chihuly garden & glass

Orange glass in the Chihuly Glass Garden

Ferry to Bainbridge Island

Ferry to Bainbridge Island

On the ferry to Bainbridge Island

Orange Avalara offices

Lovely orange offices – Avalara

Orange Avalara offices

Even had orange toilet paper!

Pike Place Market

With Sara & Lucy in Seattle

Vancouver was less charming. No offense intended. And thankfully a little cooler but also at the tail end of the heat wave. It was a huge city and the bits around the harbor very pretty. Actually reminded me of Europe at times – driving through the warm countryside lanes (took a rather scenic route after we got through the border) and seeing the harbor with pine-clad hills rising sharply upwards almost straight out of the water. We had a great view from our hotel. We were in the historic part of town, quite a few tourists around and people bothering us for money and to go back to the ‘less charming’ comment, I think it was just a bigger city and when coffee (pfifff! not so much more on that later) and wi-fi turned out to be rather scarce, I got a little ratty. However we did some very cool things there.

Sara and Lucy took us up to the top of Grouse Mountain – in the gondola – for amazing views. We learned about the Grouse Grind which is a walk up the side of the mountain instead of taking the gondola which a lot of locals do as regular exercise – Mother Nature’s Stairmaster – all I know is they’re mad, and they all stink when you’re jammed into the gondola with them on the way down! We dined outside – beautiful balmy evenings and lovely food. My eyes rolled into the back of my head when warm bread and butter was brought to the table one night – bread that wasn’t sweet and butter that was yellow and salty. GOD it was good.

The Mister joined Sara and Lucy when they did the Grouse Grind on Monday morning! They’d done it before and told him stories of legs crumbling and butt cramps but he was up for it. They got Grouse Grind t-shirts with ‘Fast’ on the back of them and set off at 8am. While I went out for coffee and a croissant of course! The Mister survived and did it in 51 minutes which is very impressive – he’d read about it and was hoping to do about an hour and a quarter. What a star!

Vancouver waterfront

Pretty Vancouver waterfront

Vancouver waterfront

We spent a lot of time sitting on the waterfront watching the float planes

Grouse mountain

Gondola to Grouse Mountain

Grouse mountain

Grouse mountain

Grouse Mountain

Gastown

Gastown

Dining outdoors

Room with a view

Room with a view

Grouse Grind!

At the base of the Grouse Grind

All in all it was a nice few days away (except for the heat!) and SO so great to see Sara and Lucy again.

Shuttle piggy back!

I was super-excited to actually lay eyes on the shuttle riding on the back of it’s 747 as we were arriving at JFK on Sunday. You have to look hard at the photo, under the road sign but you can see it – I’m impressed The Mister managed to capture it out the back of the crazy cab window!!

Shuttle!

One in a million

Spotted this little tag on a tree in New York last weekend – there’s a project to plant one million trees. They’re almost at 600,000.

milliontreesnyc.org

Planting a million trees in NYC

Orange girls

Girls showed New York a bit of orange last Sunday – Nichole wore some orange to keep me company! Had brunch and a wander and came upon a cool looking orange bike at a random store in Tribeca.

Orange girls

Orange bike

Also got to see proof that Triburbia as Tribeca is often colloquially referred to because it’s one suburb on Manhattan that attracts families is true! All these strollers parked outside a Tribeca cafe at brunch time!

Triburbia

I saw Nathan Fillion!

Very exiting moment for me after a tall man stepped around my luggage at JFK this evening – I noted his luggage was the same brand as mine and that he was being escorted somewhere by someone in a slightly flasher United Airlines uniform than the people at the departure podium so I kept watch. He was taken through the barrier and by then I began to realize it must be someone important – side profile and bingo, I recognized him. Tugging on The Mister’s sleeve I whispered “it’s Nathan Fillion!!” – to which The Mister gawped, not sure to believe me until he realized I was right! We didn’t get to see much more of him. He let a United staffer take a photo of him in the gangway before he was off and boarding the neighboring flight to Los Angeles. I felt quite star-struck! For those who don’t know the significance, he’s the actor who plays Richard Castle, one of our favorite shows.

Screen Shot 2012-05-13 at 11.36.20 AM

From IMDB

Dog tired

Was SO excited to see this lovely puss sound asleep in the warm window of a doggie accessory shop on the Upper East Side today. Kneeled in front of the window for quite a while but he didn’t show any signs of waking up and I wasn’t willing to tap on the glass and give him a fright.

Sleepy kitty

Sedona – land of the orange rocks

Such an amazing orange place! After driving a couple of hours through the desert from Scottsdale where we were staying, orange rocks and canyons start to appear – and they really are orange. A high concentration of somethingorotheroxide … whatever rust is! I was on a bus tour for the wives while husbands were at JSConf and the bus driver took us to a few different view points below and above the rocks and for lunch and a spot of shopping in Sedona.

Orange rocks in Sedona

Orange rocks in Sedona

Orange rocks in Sedona

Orange rocks in Sedona

Sedona

Sedona

Orange rocks in Sedona

Orange rocks in Sedona

Orange rocks in Sedona

So the rocks were amazing but the bus trip had its moments. Way more people than the wives’ bus trip last year had kids and they yahooed and screamed on the bus for 2 hours, one woman got motion sickness and kept throwing up in the bathroom at back of the bus right near where I was sitting. It was basically the nightmare trifecta for me – bad cellphone reception (it was the desert after all), screaming kids licking the windows and wanting to play peek-a-boo with me (I maintained a stare and pretended I was European and didn’t speak English so didn’t understand what they were saying … although I’m sure “hello. hello! Hello!! HELLO!! HELLOHELLOHELLOHELLO!! translates in any language) and someone vomiting after we all ate lunch at the same place. As soon as I got off the bus I jumped in the shower to scrub myself clean then drank a liter of bottled water. I survived. But didn’t go on the wife activities the next day. I worked in the coffee shop and beside the pool 🙂

A few days in Scottsdale Arizona

My first trip to the desert came and went without me melting from the heat – a great time of year to go with temperatures in the high 20’s (C) during the day and around 10 at night. The Mister was attending JSConf (the same conference that was in Portland last year that we went to) so I went along for a change of scenery.

Scottsdale is very near the much larger, well known Phoenix (where the airport is) and it was a great town/city! In the middle of the desert these towns just sprawl with patches of irrigated green.

Phoenix from the air

I didn’t realize I would be so excited to see a cactus growing in it’s natural habitat – I practically squealed the first time I saw one. Didn’t see one with the perfect 2 arms like this one:

RGILF00Z_cactusflickr

They just grow on the side of road, in traffic islands, people’s front lawns and beside the canal in town – so cool!

Cactuses!

Cactuses!

Cactus!

A very chatty taxi driver told us all about them and I was fascinated!

  • they live for about 300 years
  • the ‘arms’ don’t grow out until 75 years
  • they only grown in that fairly concentrated area in Arizona, and in fact they stopped about an hour out of town when we traveled north to Sedona
  • some of the smaller ones look very cute and soft to touch but aren’t – very hard and spiky and one bit The Mister!
  • there’s a law against molesting them (yes that’s the official term) that carries a $10,000 fine – only Native American Indians are allowed to – I actually think this means cut bits off for medicinal purposes etc

Scottsdale was quite different in that no-one was around, everyone drives, no pedestrians, except us walking to town and on the way we saw no mail boxes (quite a feat to find somewhere to mail Father’s birthday card), no trash cans, and a huge shopping mall with underground parking or valet so you only have to take 3 steps in the heat from the door of the car to the door of the store.

Scottsdale

Scottsdale shopping

When I wasn’t visiting the orange rocks in Sedona I worked in a fantastic coffee shop we found, Coffee Cartel, and beside the pool eating pineapple and strawberries. Might be worth an annual visit – only a couple of hours away by plane.

Working poolside

Coffee with some orange rocks

Bad sound quality but I was rather embarrassed sitting on the cafe’s patio recording myself … I was the strangest girl on the bus tour I’m sure so talking to oneself probably acceptable, but still, I was muttering and not projecting. Sedona is COOL – more photos later.

Camera+

Had some fun with the Camera+ app that we’ve both downloaded to our phones recently while we were in New York over the weekend. The Mister quite likes the minimize feature (which pops the middle and blurs the edges) and I use the clarity feature a lot which just makes everything sharper. Here are a few photos from Sunday.

Tribeca

Tribeca/Canal Street

Bryant Park

Bryant Park Hotel

Empire State Building

Empire State Building

Times Square

Times Square