Calgon, Take Me Away

Reading about a blogger friend's trip to Turks and Caicos and looking at another friend's pictures from Jamaica and her daughter's destination wedding has me longing for a visit to Playa del Carmen, the Mexican Riviera. Not to mention this terrible winter that seems to be over.

My father died suddenly in November 2000 and Paul's father died the following January. To say that it was a difficult few months is an understatement. By the time February arrived we were exhausted, emotionally and physically. Beach vacations have never been a big draw for us. I'm a redhead so the sun is NOT my friend. The sun is not a problem for Paul with his Mediterranean heritage but he doesn't hold still very well and sitting on a beach has never interested him.

But that winter/spring we needed a vacation somewhere warm and mindless. I called our travel agent and said "Find us a place to go. It has to be warm. I want a pool and a beach. I want to be able to walk to the beach from my room. I don't want to take a a taxi, bus or donkey to get there, and I want to be able to walk back to my room if I want to use my own bathroom. The only decision I want to make is whether I want red wine or white wine with lunch. And I want top-shelf booze at the bars. I don't want to be drinking Jose's Vodka."

Bless her heart, Donna sent us to the all-inclusive Riu Palace in Playa del Carmen in Mexico, one of the best all-inclusive resorts in the area. It was paradise. There were palm trees close to the water so I could be in the shade and my easy-tanning husband could be in the sun.

Each morning I got up and sat on our balcony overlooking the beautiful resort and read. We would go to breakfast and head to the beach where I would read. After lunch and a little more time at the beach, I'd head back to our suite, get in the tub and read. It was wonderful.

Since our vacations typically include some sight-seeing, we took a day trip to Chichen Itza, a Mayan archaeological site. The day we visited coincidentally was the spring equinox which is one of two days in the year when the sun causes triangles to form on the main stairway of El Castillo pyramid. The sun creates a shadow that appears to be the body of a 120 foot long snake that creeps downwards until it joins a huge serpent's head at the bottom of the stairway. It's a day of pilgrimage for many locals, and we were lucky to be there on that particular day.

We went back to the resort every winter for a few years but it's probably six year since the last visit. So Julie's and Kathy's photos of beautiful beaches and sunshine have me thinking back to these wonderful vacations. Where's the telephone? I need to make a call to the travel agent.

In the meantime, here are some photos I stole from the resort's website. Even though this is basically advertising, this is really what it looks like. You can see why I want to get back there. Now.

Adventures in Smuggler's Notch

Last week we took some time off and got some much-needed rest and relaxation at Smuggler's Notch Resort in Vermont.

Even though the leaves were past peak it was still beautiful. It was pretty quiet in the area since the summer season is over and ski season has yet to begin.

Paul and I think Vermont is the most beautiful New England state and have visited many times over the years. This was our first time in Smuggler's Notch and were not disappointed.

Here are some photos taken from the deck of our condo.



Cresting at 2,162 feet is spectacular Smugglers' Notch Pass, a notch notorious during Prohibition as a smuggling route from Canada when our friendly neighbors to the north sent down some of the stuff they thought we Americans were being deprived of. There are little rock caves all over the notch where the illicit booze was hidden. Hikers today are still looking for long-forgotten stashes.

The drive through the notch on the way to the resort was narrow and filled with windy turns with outcroppings of rock everywhere. We woke to a dusting of snow the second morning we were there. It was sunny but cold and breezy. Paul and I decided to take a walk up the road to the notch. We parked the car at the bottom and found this:

Even though it was just a dusting below the Notch, it was reportedly icy up there and we were told the notch road was probably closed for good this year and wouldn't reopen to spring. Bummer! The drive around the notch road to get everywhere was about a 30-minute drive.

We decided to walk up the road to see how close we could get to the Notch before I collapsed in exhaustion. Here are some of the photos taken along the walk.

A vacation wouldn't be complete unless Paul played mountain goat somewhere. There was that time at Grand Canyon when he climbed down along an overlook and swung his arms out like he was falling. Another time he climbed to the top of some hill in Nova Scotia which was straight up. Here's this trip's adventure:

We didn't get very far up the Notch Road before deciding it was just too cold.

Back into the car for a drive. As we drove down the main street of Morrisville this little piece of heaven caught my eye:

I considered dropping in and leaving my card but since I don't hold a license to sell real estate in Vermont I had to pass up the option. Otherwise I would have been all over it.

Here are a few of the random shots I took as we drove along.

Adventures on the Danube River

In July Paul and I cruised the Danube River in Central Europe. The cruise began in Budapest, Hungary and traveled west through Austria and into Germany ending in Nuremburg. It was our first time in this part of Europe, and the architecture and history are both beautiful and fascinating. Traveling through the countryside with castles, ruins and pretty litle towns along the river, it was most definitely a nice way to see a different side of cities and towns along the river.

We cruised with Viking River Cruises. They cruise all over Europe and Asia, and I would recommend this company to anyone thinking of a river cruise. This is not ocean cruising. The boat we were on, Viking Danube, only holds 150 passengers with a crew of about 20. It's a very relaxed and intimate atmosphere. That's our ship above docked along side the Chain Bridge in Budapest, Hungary where our cruise began.

Here are some of the photos I shot on the river between towns. We didn't have the best weather and consequently the photos aren't that great but they still show how beautiful it was. Don't ask where they are.....I knew when I shot them but I don't now.

We traveled upriver from Hungary to Germany. This is one of 26 locks we went through over the course of the cruise. Some were wide enough to accommodate 4 boats at the same time and some were so small and so narrow our boat had to go through alone and only cleared the sides by inches.

Roman ruins!

Because of all the rain, the river was high at the end of the trip and the captain was not sure we would make it under the last two bridges and to our final stop of the cruise. If the boat was not able to clear the bridges, we would have been forced to dock further down river and be bused to Nuremberg, Germany to spend the last night in a hotel.

No one wanted to do that. In enough time not to disrupt the rest of the cruise, the river dropped enough and we made it under the last bridge by just inches. Then it rained (again!) and this double rainbow came out just before we docked in Nuremberg. A fitting end to a really great trip.

Stayed tuned for more photos from Passau, Melk, Vienna (my favorite!), Regensberg and Nuremberg.

On The Road Again

Paul and I recently made our annual trek to OBX, the outer banks of North Carolina. The photo on the right was a stallion following along behind his mares and a foal on the beach one day we were there. We didn't see too many wild horses this year.

This is our third year at OBX since buying a timeshare in Kitty Hawk on eBay, sight unseen. Not only had we never seen the condo, neither Paul nor I had ever been to OBX.

During the week of the auction I did some serious Internet research but it was still a leap of faith when I kept increasing my bid in those last minutes of the auction and then won. It turned out to be a great buy. The condo is beautiful and in a great spot. We start looking forward to it every March when we've had just about enough winter.

This year we left a couple days early and extended our vacation. On the way to OBX we stopped in Ocean City, Maryland, for what we expected would be a quiet couple days in an oceanfront hotel. Here's the view from our balcony. This is peaceful but it tells you nothing about what was going on in front of the hotel.

We had no idea that the week we picked to stop in Ocean City was the same week that the 20th Annual Cruisin' Ocean City was happening. On the way down we kept noticing classic cars on the road. We figured there was probably a car show somewhere south but didn't know we were heading right into it.

Right into it is right. The town was full of hot rods, custom cars and street machines of every vintage, make, model, color and style. They drove up and down the main drag called Coastal Highway. And anywhere there was a parking lot along the street you would see cars parked with some people sitting in canvas chairs and others wandering from car to car looking under the hoods.

Plus there were people lined up on the sidewalks along the street watching the impromptu parade.

The show is open to cars built in 1979 or earlier. The formal registration is limited to 3,000 but a total of about 7,000 cars show up and the weekend draws 100,000 people. It's based at the local Convention Center but spills everywhere in town.

Paul was in his glory. A 'gearhead' in his teens and twenties when he built, rebuilt, raced and wrecked a few cars, it was a trip down memory lane for him. There's a '90 convertible Corvette in the garage now. And as much as I appreciate wandering around looking, we have been to many car shows over the years, this was definitely sensory overload.

Coastal Highway runs past all the hotels, motels, restaurants, t-shirt shops and other places that want your money. There are traffic lights every block which gave the hot rods and street machines just enough time to go through a couple gears and leave some rubber before they had to shut it down for the next light.

The noise was incredible but it was fun to watch. I much prefer to watch the cars moving rather than sitting in a parking lot with the hoods up. Yeah, that's a lot of chrome but how fast does it go? The smell of testosterone was everywhere or maybe it was just exhaust. I felt like I was in a scene from American Graffiti.

Here are a few of the many photos I took. Whether you care about cars or not, you have to admit that the work and money that goes into these machines is pretty awesome.

So it wasn't the quiet few days at the beach we were expecting but it was fun. We heard there is a Bike Week in Ocean City in September when about 10,000 bikes and 200,000 people show up. We'll skip that. I've been to Laconia, and Paul goes every year.

Maybe we'll make Ocean City Cruisin' an annual event.