Archive: ‘travel’
July 2010: Alaska
Friday, July 23rd, 2010Anniversary travels, Part 1 of 2
Saturday, June 26th, 2010Every year the hubby and I try to pick a new travel destination to celebrate our anniversary.
We were married in 2006 in Sedona, Arizona. So while technically this wasn’t really an anniversary trip, it was the first place we visited new together while married!
In 2007, it was my turn to pick a destination (we decided we’d alternate years), and I chose Savannah, Georgia – a new to both of us location.
In 2008, we headed to Boston, Peter’s pick. I had never been, but Peter visited once for a work-related trip. We stayed at a beautiful hotel that featured a Chocolate Buffet and saw a ball game:
In 2009 I decided it was time for us to head somewhere tropical, and we spent a week in Bermuda. I visited once the year before while cruising with Mom and read about amazing cottages on stilts over water. I knew we had to visit!
This year, 2010, we headed to Paradise Island in the Bahamas to stay at Atlantis! This was new for both of us. Well technically, as I had been to Nassau on a cruise once with Mom but only for a few hours. I had never been to Paradise Island though.
In Part 2 I’ll share pictures from our Atlantis adventure!
Summer 2010: Upcoming trips
Saturday, May 15th, 2010Looking forward to traveling this summer!
1. Peter’s 31st Birthday Trip
Disney World, Lake Buena Vista, Florida
2. Our 4 Year Anniversary Trip
Atlantis Resort, Nassau, Bahamas
3. Mom and I go cruising!
Alaska cruise on the Sapphire Princess
Sunday Sampling: Prague Zoo
Sunday, January 31st, 2010I’ve decided that I want to start sharing more of my photography because I love taking pictures but I realize that not everyone will like posts with lots of images and not a lot to read. So, I’ve decided to start something I’ll call “Sunday Sampling” where I’ll share a bunch of images from a particular place/event/etc… that I’m into right now. Unless otherwise indicated I use Photoshop CS3 – I’ll be switching to CS4 soon – to play with my images. I try not to do too much to them as I’m working extremely hard to get good pictures when I initially take them. Despite this, I love playing with actions. I use Totally Rad Actions and particularly love the following actions: Boutwell Magic Glasses – I use this to on nearly every image with varying degrees of opacity – and A Better Web Sharpen.
While in Prague over winter break, Peter and I had the chance to visit the Prague Zoo with my father-in-law, Pavel. We had talked about making the trip over (it’s technically in Prague but requires a metro ride and a bus to get there), and towards the end of our trip, with a bit of fresh snow on the ground, we did.
A couple of thoughts about the Prague Zoo…
- It’s huge – we were there nearly all day and never ran out of things to do. You can go on an interactive tour here.
- It felt like we could get much closer to the animals than in any Zoo I have visited in the States.
- The Zoo cafeteria was quite tasty – full of Czech food (I know, duh – we were in the Czech Republic after all – but even Peter commented that it was impressively tasty.
- The kid wagons – for the parents to pull the kids around in – have Mercedes Benz logos. How cool is that?
- The animals all looked healthy, well cared for, and happy.
I want to go back in the summer so we can see some of the animals better. As it was quite cold, many animals that are usually outside (Elephants, Giraffes, etc…) had been brought inside for the winter.
This set of images were also processed using an action called Get Faded (winter) and I love how it enhanced the wintery feel. You can learn more about the actions on the Totally Rad Photoshop Actions Blog.
TravelMuse
Sunday, January 24th, 2010I discovered this website and it is totally addicting.
I’m currently in the process of planning a spring break trip for my Mom and I. Normally we do an annual cruise, but this year our time and budget is limited – I’m teaching a college course that meets during the time I have spring break from teaching high school so I don’t want to miss that and we are planning a family trip to Hawaii this summer which will require some extra budgeting.
On the TravelMuse website you enter the airport you’d like to depart from, how many travelers are going with you, the time of year you are traveling (you can enter exact dates – which I did), the duration of your trip, what level of accommodations you are looking for, the activities you’d like to do, and how long you are willing to fly.
Here are some of the choices I was presented with:
I thought it rather interesting that Carmel, California, and Santa Fe, New Mexico were listed because those were two spots I was already thinking about!
I joined their site so I can save spots that I’m interested in and ultimately share them with my Mom so she can choose what she likes as well.
New York City, Reaching goals, and Interviewing a Leader
Tuesday, November 17th, 2009New York, New York!
To kick off the holiday season, my Mom and I rode Amtrak up to New York City on Saturday and saw the Radio City Christmas Spectacular show. Despite the rain, we had a fabulous time seeing the show, munching on cupcakes from the Magnolia Bakery, window shopping in Saks 5th Avenue’s Shoe Department, waiting in line at the Nintendo Store so I could get some fabulous goodies for Peter, and having dinner at the Tavern On The Green restaurant in Central Park (it’s closing – how sad!). While I was there I took a lot of pictures with my little point and shoot and camera phone, and took a few videos with my phone as well. I loved being able to back everything up with Microsoft’s new MyPhone service. Because of it I’m able to share this photo since I could download it from the site (I left my hard drive at work – oops).
Our $5 umbrella from the NYC street vendor yelling “UMBRELLA, UM – BRELL – A!” reminded me of trips to New York with my parents as a kid. It kept us nice and dry!
Goals
I just found out that I was selected to be the Department Chair for a group of departments known as the Information Technology Academy at my school. I am so excited about this! This means that I have to update my goals list for the next 5 years – you can read about my goal plan here.
Interviewing a Leader
I had the opportunity to interview my school district’s Director of Business today with another colleague who is participating in the Aspiring Leaders Program. It was really cool to have the chance to sit down with him and hear his thoughts about leadership. This was the first time I tried recording a interview (with permission, of course), as I thought I had to transcribe our conversation. That requirement has changed so now I just have to write a summary but I think having it to listen to will be helpful.
Keeping Travel Plans Organized
Monday, August 3rd, 2009One of the best things about living in Delaware is that we are close to many places to visit. We are less than one hour from Philadelphia, and about two hours from Washington DC and New York City. Better still, all three of these locations have major international airports which has been quite useful for quick weekend getaways or to the other side of the world. My favorite European country to visit is the Czech Republic.
TripIt is a website I discovered a couple of years ago. It’s a fantastic resource for organizing and sharing your travel plans with anyone you choose or to no one at all if you just want a place to store all of your details online! Have you ever booked any part of a trip online? These days I book nearly everything online – hotel, plane, car rental, etc… The best part about TripIt is that you can forward the email with the travel confirmation that most travel websites send you when you book to a special e-mail provided by TripIt and the details are automatically entered into the trip itinerary on TripIt – much faster than type airline details in by hand!
Here’s my TripIt. When I log in, I see a main screen which details any upcoming trips. Sadly, I don’t have any upcoming trips. This is because we go back to school AKA work in less than one month so I planned our mega trips for the earlier part of the summer.
But, if you were to click on the Trips link at the top of the page, you would see past trips, the dates they took place, and who (if anyone) they were shared with. I typically share my trips with my hubby (unless he created the trip) and my Mom. Now that my Dad is online, I will probably share them with him as well. You can see that I also have the option to set a trip as “Private” if I don’t want anyone to see it. For example, the New Year’s Adventure trip in 2007 was a surprise for my hubby so I didn’t want him to know about it in advance.
When you click on a specific trip, you can view all the details that were entered. This is the most complicated TripIt itinerary that I’ve created yet. My Mom and I took a cruise on the Queen Mary 2 out of Southampton, England for almost two weeks last month. There were a lot of details for this trip that we wanted to be able to access quickly and easily while we were traveling – flight confirmation numbers, hotel phone numbers, phone numbers for the various U.S. embassies in the countries we were traveling through, etc… – we also wanted our spouses to be able to access this information as well.
Once I had e-mailed all of the travel confirmations to the special TripIt e-mail address, added a few extra details about places we wanted to visit, we were all set! I loved that I was able to access the itinerary while we were traveling from the internet browser on my mobile phone.
