Six Wonderful Days in Southern California - Part 1: Los Angeles & Santa Monica

Santa Monica Pier

As I'm sure I've mentioned, we have 4 children (now ages 11-20). As each child graduates from 8th grade, it has become our tradition to have one parent take them on a vacation of their choice, by themselves. I took Hannah to Disney World, Tom took Will to Key West, and a few weeks ago Annika and I went to Southern California (Ally is already busy planning her trip!). We had 6 days and 5 nights exploring some of what this amazing part of our country has to offer, and I want to hit the highlights for you here. We went to LA/Santa Monica, Disneyland and Palm Springs, and had a wonderful time!

We started our trip in Los Angeles, and decided to stay in Santa Monica, which was a great choice. It is a very pleasant area to be (although a bit chilly and gloomy in June), with unlimited options for food and shopping, and it is very easy to get from Santa Monica to some of the most interesting areas of Los Angeles. We stayed at The Shore Hotel, and I highly recommend it for anyone staying in the area. It is a brand-new, LEED-certified, very comfortable and trendy hotel, and we really enjoyed it. Here are some photos from our stay:

The first thing we did after some lunch and getting settled in our hotel was go on the Hollywood/Beverly Hills Tour at Amazing LA Tours. We were picked up right in front our our hotel at 1:30, were able to check off many of the top sites in LA and get oriented, and were dropped off back at our hotel before 5:00. Our tour guide was terrific (sadly I don't remember his name), and it was a fun and relaxing way to see the city. We saw the Hollywood sign, had a half hour to explore Hollywood Blvd (Grauman's Chinese Theater and the Walk of Fame), did a drive through West Hollywood and then through Beverly Hills. We also had a stop at Rodeo Drive, but other than the awesome brownies we picked up there, that was really boring! The highlight was seeing the handprints and footprints at Grauman's Theater - that was inspiring and fun to explore. Don't miss it! Highlights from our tour:

Our main activities in Santa Monica were shopping and dining - there is plenty of both! We were just 2 blocks from the Third Street Promenade, a pedestrian-only outdoor shopping area - heaven for a 14-year old girl. We had a couple of really great meals there, and Annika really enjoyed all the shopping options.

The next morning we had reservations at IFly Hollywood, for "indoor skydiving." Wow! What an experience! It is an indoor vertical wind tunnel that mimics the experience of skydiving without actually having to jump out of a plane. It is actually much more challenging than it looks, and somewhat athletic (our shoulders ached for the next day or two). After 2 sessions we got the hang of it, and boy what a rush! Totally worth doing!

IFly is located at Universal Studios CityWalk, so we decided to head into Universal Studios for a couple of hours. This was the only real disappointment of our trip. We really enjoyed the brand-new Transformers ride (totally amazing!), but other than that the park was not that interesting. There is a huge difference between Universal rides and what we experienced at Disneyland later in the week - they just didn't seem to work that hard to engage the rider in what was happening. Both Jurassic Park and the Mummy ride just sort of petered out at the end. I would have enjoyed doing the studio tour (and maybe that would have changed our feeling about the park), but Annika was not into it and we still wanted to do more shopping and see the Santa Monica pier. So we left after a few hours and headed back.

A quick note about driving in the LA area. I was actually somewhat nervous about tackling the freeways out there, and dealing with the traffic and drivers. But once I got a bit oriented (the tour the first day was very helpful for that, and I spent some time studying maps), it was actually pretty easy to get around. And we were VERY lucky with traffic. On a few occasions we saw a huge traffic jam going the other way on the freeway, but we never got stuck in one ourselves.

Anyway, we headed back to Santa Monica and spent some time on the beach and the pier. It was too cold for swimming - they aren't kidding when natives talk about June Gloom in Southern California!

Then more shopping, and the best meal we had in Santa Monica, at The Border Grill. I've decided that Margaritas are definitely my drink! We soaked in the hot tub at the hotel for a bit, and then headed to bed, because in the morning we were going to Disneyland!

There were a number of things that I would have liked to have done that we didn't get to, in particular:

• visit the Getty Museum (we thought we might do that on our last day, but that didn't work out as you will see)
• see Venice Beach - we drove through that area and it looked really interesting
• drive up to Malibu

I always say that when you don't do everything that gives you a reason to go back, and we definitely feel that way about the LA area!

Next blog post: Disneyland and California Adventure!

Getting caught up

I've been a bad blogger again, and while I could resolve to be better, I'm not sure what I can promise right now! I'm finding myself so busy between work, my kids, running and my business, that lots of things have fallen by the wayside. This includes housework and blogging. Add my facebook addiction to that mix, and you have a recipe for neglect.

Let's see, shall I try to summarize the past 5 months?

There's the trip to Disney in August I never blogged about:



We had a financial windfall, which was great but strange since it came the same week as the failure of AIG and Lehman Brothers.

I ran the Philadelphia Distance Run (which I did blog about, see below).

Halloween and another beautiful fall in Philadelphia:





The Phillies won the World Series!



A certain election happened here in the US!

We went to Maine for Thanksgiving.




Annika & Ally danced in the Nutcracker.




We went to New York the week before Christmas, and then we had Christmas.



In early January Tom and I ran the Disney Half Marathon, and had a blast! I plan to post a full trip report in the near future, but here are a few teaser photos.






We finished up January with a one-night "Cruise to Nowhere"out of New York with my wonderful sister and her husband, and 2 of our best friends. Sorry, no pictures of that - I just forgot to take any.

In the middle of all that I found out I was pregnant and had a miscarriage, which was a big deal (to say the least!). Also during the past few months: we had both of our cars hit by our neighbor - one totalled, the other fixable; Hannah started at a new high school; I went to several travel industry conferences and learned a lot; joined BNI which has been amazing; took a 10% pay cut and (hopefully very temporarily) lost our family's health insurance; booked a summer trip to Europe for all of us; Will applied to high schools; we bought a new car, drove the kids to a million activities, and generally were in a whirlwind of activity.

There, now you're all caught up!

Trip to Maine - Part 2

After I spent 2 nights seeing my brother, father, aunt and cousins in Rockport, Massachusetts, and getting a lot of good work and planning done, I drove back to Maine to finish my vacation there. It was a pain to interrupt my vacation, but ultimately it was worth it. Rockport is a beautiful spot too, and we need to do everything we can to keep the house in the family. Some photos from that trip - the first is a sunset over the Folly Cove Lobster Pound where we had dinner, and the second is the view from my aunt's house on the water:



The other cool thing is that my rental car was a Mustang! It was fun driving that back and forth - about a total of 12 hours of driving in 3 days.

Anyway, let me show you a bunch of other pictures from the photo journal of our Maine vacation.

These photos are from a hike up Day Mountain that I did with Will & Ally (Annika wasn't feeling well, so Tom took her home). It was a pretty easy hike, with wonderful views as a payoff. Also there were lots of ripe blueberries along the way! You are looking at the Cranberry Islands in the pictures.




On July 14th I turned the ripe old age of 44. Usually I have my birthday before I get up to Maine, so it was a treat to be celebrating while we were there. My in-laws treated us to dinner (which unfortunately was at a restaurant that had gone severely downhill since the previous year), and we had a celebration. Some photos of the festivities, including some of my mother and father-in-law:





And since I have included photos of sunsets in Arizona and Rockport, here is an example from Southwest Harbor from my birthday evening:


We went on another, longer hike with everyone in the family on Parkman Mountain and Bald Peak. We had done this hike one time before, but while we were hiking a bank of fog blew in, followed by a rainstorm (this hike is actually famous in our family lore!). We hiked down in the rain, and we could not see the view from the top since we were surrounded by fog. So we definitely wanted to try this hike again!

The view of Somes Sound from the top of Parkman Mountain:


Our little picnic in the coll between the two peaks:


Yours truly at the top of Bald Peak. It was a hot day, so the breeze was really appreciated:


Finally, the absolutely extraordinary view from the top of Bald Peak. You can see Upper Hadlock Pond in the foreground, then Lower Hadlock Pond, and then the Cranberry Islands extending out past Northeast Harbor. We kept commenting on how the top of this mountain looked like Middle Earth (or at least like Peter Jackson's version of it).



Unfortunately, as we were hiking down some pretty treacherous sections, I slipped on some loose gravel and cut myself up and gave myself a nice bruise. I ended up missing some running during the next week since I was pretty bruised up. I can't believe that a few years ago we did that hike in the rain with a toddler!

We did one more sail the following day, but we ended up cutting it a bit short because of a huge fog bank that rolled in while we were on the water. Look at it - it looked like a mountain of fog.


This next set of photos is from a boat trip we took out from Bass Harbor. We have done fishing trips and whale watches - both of which we enjoyed - but I think this little nature cruise was the best boat trip we have taken on Mt. Desert. It is called Island Cruises, and the man that runs the boat is a lifelong resident of the area, and really knows his stuff.

We went on the boat with one of Tom's oldest friends who brought her kids and her niece and nephew. Here we all are looking at something:


The lovely Bass Harbor Lighthouse:


And SEALS - I have never seen so many seals in my life! In these pictures there are both harbor seals and gray seals (which are larger):




We also saw a loon, a beached humpback whale (I'll spare you my picture of that), and spent some time looking at a salmon farm. It was a very pleasant two hours!

At this point it was almost time for us to head home to Philadelphia. While we had come up to Maine in one day, we were taking two days to drive home. We spent the night at the very nice Comfort Suites in Sturbridge, Mass., and caught the final episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender there (which was very important to everyone - we're all big fans!). We then drove down to Hartford where we visited with Tom's sister, her husband and their son for a couple of hours. Usually we see them in Maine, but they did not make it up this year.

We left Hartford at 3pm, and made it home by 8:00 (after an unfortunate wrong turn onto the NY State Thruway!).

It was another terrific vacation in Maine. Next year we really hope to stay for 3-4 weeks, and get really relaxed!

Trip to Maine - Part 1

This is not going to be a real trip report, but I am going to post a bunch of photos from our visit this year. For us, a couple of weeks in Southwest Harbor, Maine (on Mt. Desert Island where Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park are) is an annual tradition. My husband Tom spent his summers here as he was growing up, and even though his parents have retired to Southern Maine they still trek up to Southwest Harbor every June and stay through September! In fact, most of his childhood friends from summers here return as well, now with their spouses and children.

So our trip to Maine each year is our chance to see Tom's parents (and usually his sister and her family), as well as visit with old friends, and relax in a familiar setting. For many years we were able to stay for 3 weeks, but for the past 2 years I could only leave my job for 2 weeks at a time, so that is the length of our trip this time. And I know I am INCREDIBLY lucky to be able to go to Maine for 2 weeks - but I have to admit that it still seems short to me!

Despite the fact that his parents have a large house, for the past 10 years we have rented our own house for everyone's sanity! Lately we have been staying in a cute house just around the corner from his parents. It has a lot of advantages - it is big enough that everyone gets their own bedroom, it is within walking distance from town, and his cousins and their children are across the street. It is a funny house (we call it a "hobbit house") full of old-fashioned furniture and tons of knick-knacks, but we are very comfortable there.

Here are two old photos (I didn't take any of the house this year):


So here is a quick visual tour of our trip.

This is us visiting at my in-law's "summer cottage." It is an absolutely beautiful house, right on the water with its own dock. This is really the only time each year that we spend time with Nana & OG, and we try to get some good visits in.





These next pictures are some nice photos that Hannah took when she went out on a walk. She was only able to be with us in Maine for 4 days this year since she was going to Spain, so we tried to fit in a lot of stuff while she was still there.





Aren't those photos nice? Hannah wants to be a journalist, but we keep telling her she should consider pursuing photography.

The 2 things at the top of Hannah's list were going to Jordan Pond House for tea and popovers, and going for a sail on our boat.

Here is Jordan Pond House. This is an annual tradition for our family - I can't imagine going to Maine and not eating here! The popovers are wonderful, and so is the seafood chowder. The view is also amazing:



The sailboat has been in Tom's family for about 60 years. It is a wooden day-sailer that was built on Mt. Desert Island in the 1920s or 30s. Only about 15 were ever built. It is beautiful condition, and Tom sails it beautifully! We did about a 2-hour sail, and the highlight was seeing a small pod of porpoises as we were sailing. It is always so relaxing and fun to be out on the boat.






The other 2 things Hannah wanted to do before I drove her down to Boston to fly off to Spain was swimming off the ledges on Long Pond:




and eating a lobster at Beal's Lobster Pier (highly recommended!):


I am going to break this photo journey through Maine into 2 separate posts so that this one doesn't get too long. It makes sense - it was after this that I drove down to Boston and put Hannah on an airplane to fly to Spain for 4 weeks.