My sister is heading to NYC for her birthday celebration so let’s do NYC cupcake toppers. Statue of Liberty Pins or buttons would be nice. Or maybe you prefer the NYC taxi experience? How about the Empire State Building? I can’t choose because I love it all – which means I’d end up with the basic I love NYC topper. Then again, I’m not a huge fan of the “I ‘heart’…” phrase so I’d probably order these instead.
Daily Dose of Cupcakes Read More »
I’m very glad that I was not tempted into staying at the W. I’ve never been tempted to stay at a W, it’s just not for me. Yes, the awesome beds are a good thing but the “atmosphere” is enough to send me running. The Chicago City Centre had all the atmosphere I needed – very very friendly staff, quiet and quick elevators, very large rooms, free internet, corded in the room and wireless in the lobby, (though when I connected, it asked for cash it never followed through with a charge on my bill or requested a credit card). The little gift shop/convenience store was perfect – a lifesaver on two separate evenings.
There were only two tiny problems with the City Centre – on the last night of our stay, the person wandering the halls sliding bills under the door had a two-way radio and it was loud. And, their coke machines were constantly empty of coke and water. I will also admit that the beds were not “W” quality but I’ve slept in worse – including one horrible sleep experience in Chicago … but that’s another blog post, once I get caught up.
Edited to add a link to Liz’s post – yeah City Centre!
BlogHer Con 07 – City Centre Read More »
Now we are trapped in a hotel in Charlotte. It’s not a great hotel but as Prince J says, at least it isn’t called “The Inn of Charlotte”. Thank goodness we can all be quite amusing at midnight after some pretty rough moments.
There are many things frustrating about this leg of our trip, besides the fact that we are all pretty smelly at this point. And there’s no 24 hour Super Target near by where we can get clothing to cheer us up.
I could call my mom, wake her up, and beg her to come get us and make a quick trip to the store. But I won’t ’cause she might disinherit me or something. I will, however, call her at 7:30 and tell her we are here and to be prepared for us to call in a few hours … just in freaking case.
Boy are we ready to be home.
We should be home right now. We should be doing the things we normally do at 10:23 am – like working, doing laundry, cleaning house – you know, that real life stuff that I actually miss when I’m traveling.
Instead, we’re trapped in Chicago. In a hotel that is not nearly as nice as the City Centre was (more about that once I am home). I’m on the floor because there isn’t a plug near the table except the one Prince J is using to charge his gameboy. TW is sleeping on a pull out couch. Prince J is sleeping in a roll away bed. Michelle is in a room of her own, somewhere high above us, probably griping because you have to pay for internet and I didn’t give her my credit card info when we finally got her into a room just shy of midnight.
To all of the flight attendants in the world, I have some advice for you. Do not open the rear hatch during those last flight checks. The slide will deploy and an already overbooked flight of people will not be happy with you. Oh no, they won’t be happy at all.
Trapped in Chicago Read More »
I don’t know what in the heck is going on with my template all of a sudden – do any of you in firefox see weirdness? I pulled the last post because I know it was fine yesterday, before I published. But pulling that didn’t seem to solve the issue. And I don’t think I did any fiddling with the template yesterday. Weird. Anyway, what was I talking about? Oh yes, more Charleston dining experiences. Last weekend we hit two more restaurants that were new to all of us. Both were very good and worthy of future visits.
First, we hit the Sunfire Grill & Bistro for dinner on Saturday evening. It’s just over the old Ashley River Bridge if you’re coming in from the North Area. I believe it is in the old Steak & Ale building. We arrived at 6pm and it wasn’t the least bit crowded, but it wasn’t empty either. It’s a dark restaurant, “date atmosphere” but there were quite a few large groups and just a few couples.
Jenn ordered Shrimp & Grits and seemed to enjoy it quite a bit. She ordered a chocolate something or other cheesecake for dessert and ate almost the whole thing. Which means it was good since she was stuffed from the main course. Michelle ordered some sort of seafood combination platter with Tilapia and shrimp and she ate a surprising amount (Michelle rarely does more than pick at her food at a restaurant), TW ordered the crap crab soup as a starter and was pleasantly surprised by it and a grilled cheese for her main dish – unfortunately they brought her the child’s grilled cheese instead of the special gourmet grilled cheese but she was happy with it. For dessert she ordered some sort of chocolate chip cake that she liked very much. I ordered a black bean burger and potato salad and both were very, very good. TW forced me to order a slice of strawberry cake and everyone enjoyed it. There was some mango syrup drizzled around the plate and it was a nice touch.
For breakfast on Sunday, we drove around the corner from Jenn’s apartment (and when I say around the corner, I mean it – she could walk there almost as quickly as we drove) to the Sunflower Cafe. Typical breakfast fare and everyone seemed to enjoy what they ordered – everything from Beignets and country ham to pancakes to omelettes. (One thing to mention – when they say something is dusted with powdered sugar, they don’t mean dusted – they mean coated. If that troubles you, then you should consider asking them to go easy on the powdered sugar or leave it off entirely.)
Fine Charleston Dining – Part 2 Read More »
When I saw Marvia’s post about driving in Panama I laughed out loud and then I sat back and let the memories wash over me. There is NOTHING like Panama driving and the only thing I’ve found that even comes close is driving in the Philippines.
Marvia is right – turn signals aren’t to be bothered with. Brake lights and head lights are also not important, (except I did get pulled once by a nice Panamanian police officer who spoke no English and wanted me to know my right brake light was out. Gee thanks dude – the other 300 cars on this road right now don’t even have brake lights, but hey, that was nice of him.) Also, the honking. Honking can mean 50 different things and usually something like “hey dude with the flowers, or the bags of oranges – I want to buy some and I’ll stop right here in the middle of the road while you bring them over, we haggle over some money and then I’ll take off without looking to see if anyone is attempting to go around me because I’ve sat here so long – and then I’ll honk the horn again because my mom’s auntie lives over there and she might have seen me driving by.” Horn honking in the US means nothing and is just an annoyance to me – at least in Panama, it meant something interesting.
That traffic she talks about, hahaha, oh yea. Bad. One of the worst experiences of my life was sitting in the middle of The Bridge of the Americas for 2 hours during dry season. I can’t describe it. It was. not. good. Thankfully, I did not have a child with me at the time. I’m pretty sure I’d have abandoned the car and walked home.
Marvia followed a bus to the bus terminal, hoping she’d get to where she was going – I’ve done that! Though actually it wasn’t a bus, it was a nice American couple and I figured eventually they would drive to one of the military bases and from whichever one it was, I could get home. It worked – took me 20 minutes out of my way, but hey, at least I was not lost.
Ah Panama, how I miss it.
We made a very quick trip up to Charleston this weekend. Our biggest issue, as always, was where to eat. Charleston obviously has some excellent restaurants and we even like some of them but we tend to avoid those normally recommended in travel guides and travel blogs. We like things that are a little different or a little more laid back.
Since we were in the West Ashley/Downtown area I wanted to stay in that area. Driving into North Charleston or Summerville was really not something I wanted to do just to eat. So, I looked at the Charleston City Paper and TW read the hotel travel guide, I picked a couple and called Jenn and Michelle to find out what they wanted – plate food, not pizza. So, we hit The Triangle for dinner on Friday night. Awesome. The fried avocado rolls were, well, the defy explanation. Next time I go, I might just order a plate of those as my meal rather than having to share with the table! The spinach/avocado dip was also good and the main courses were as well. (TW got a bread pudding to go and was not as pleased with that – so if you like bread pudding, you might want to skip that one)
While TW was reading the hotel magazine she noticed Cereality had come to Charleston! The magazine said it was opening in mid-June. The company’s website still had it listed as “check back for grand opening”. Since we had really enjoyed the Cereal Bowl version in Miami last year with the little kids we thought we’d take the big girls to this one – so I called on Saturday to find out what time they opened. The young woman who answered the phone was unsure and had to ask – 10am, she said. So, we arranged to meet the girls there at 10 before they headed to the beach and we headed home.
As TW were standing outside waiting for the girls and pondering the menu, a gentleman from inside came over to welcome us to “the first 15 minutes of the first day” – huh? We had no idea we had arrived for the grand opening. What luck! The girls arrived, we all pondered the options and ordered. Fun! Pop Rocks in Michelle’s cereal were a huge hit. She and Michelle plotted all sorts of combos, just like the little kids did after we took them to The Cereal Bowl.
We enjoyed the communal tables, it’s a little loud and I really hope they turn the music down just a little bit so we can enjoy the cartoons playing on the TV and the conversation a bit more. Other than that, it was a hit with all of us today. And I’m pretty sure it will be a regular breakfast stop for us on our frequent trips to Charleston.
Fine Charleston Dining Read More »
I surprised Michelle and TW with a little detour trip to South of the Border last weekend. They thought we were flying to Charlotte when we were actually driving (a whaley boy car! Prius) by way of South of the Border. Which really isn’t on the way but it worked, particularly since neither Michelle or TW had ever been there and since both have always wished to go.
It was surprisingly fun, even if TW was sick and on prednisone. And even if most of the “attractions” were closed. Michelle, in particular, giggled nonstop for several hours on Friday night as we wandered around the neon and souvenirs.
I think we have to go back, hopefully when everything is actually OPEN – whenever that might be.
Technorati Tags: southoftheborder, pedroland, sob
Some quick thoughts about our trip to “the city” (I still call it that, at least in my head. Years of living in Jersey will do that to you, I guess.)
1. Gas should not be cheaper in NYC than it is in Florida.
2. Pastis has great breakfast.
3. This was our first trip since 9/11 and it was much more difficult to get our bearings without the Twin Towers. I didn’t expect that.
4. I love corner delis where you can get two egg & cheese sandwiches on a hero with two cups of coffee for $5.
5. S’mac makes excellent macaroni & cheese. I had the goat cheese, spinach and olive. TW had the four cheese. Awesome.
6. The Point Knitting Cafe folks weren’t snobby at all!
7. The Gansevoort has great robes and an interesting mini bar (mile high club sex kit!). They also had nice toiletries and decent sheets. The room, however, was cold even before the weather turned cold. The video screen in the elevator – crazy weird. I finally decided it is some sort of tribue to Alex Grey and then I was ok with it. Sort of.
8. 36 hours in The City is not enough time, particularly when 5 hours of that is spent in an office!
I love New York
Technorati Tags: newyorkcity, gansevoort, thepointknittingcafe, smac, pastis
Here are some little tidbits for you….
In Gainesville, they dump those really hazardous bottles of liquids into the water fountain right next to wear you go through security. Do not drink out of the water fountains just in case there were biohazards in those dangerous bottles.
Charlotte has become a smoke-free airport sometime between August of 2006 and today. Who knew?
The B terminal does not have enough seating down at the end where 14, 15, 16 are. They do have electric outlets for laptop charging and wifi.
Newark air traffic controllers are annoying – they have caused my flight to be delayed and I don’t like it.
Technorati Tags: airports