Category Archives: Travel

New York, Travel

Brooklyn to Elizabethtown

I’ll continue telling you about our recent trip to New York and other parts of the East.

St Louis to Manhattan to Brooklyn

Carrie had some appointments and rehearsals the second day we were visiting her, and it was storming that morning as well. Louie and I slept in a bit (we were both still recovering from the school year at that point, and it was frankly, glorious. I was and still am amazed every morning I don’t have to wake up before 6 am!)

We had mentioned to Carrie that we had not had “New York Bagels” so after she had her morning appointment and the rain let up, we headed to her favorite closest place called Bagel Pub. I had a pumpernickel everything bagel with smoked salmon cream cheese, and it was tasty! We learned how much Brooklyn is like a small town as well by Carrie running into someone she knew (this was a common occurrence). I am always struck by this sort of thing–I grew up in a small town and assumed that big cities were more anonymous and you would walk around and wouldn’t know anyone, and truthfully, you will run into people you know all over the place. Cities are more pockets of various communities, like a small town on every few blocks.

After our bagels, Louie and I headed to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens for the afternoon. We weren’t sure if it would rain, but overall we did get lucky and it only rained a little bit for a short time.

The gardens were smaller overall than we realized, but they were well laid out and really enjoyable. It wasn’t too busy either, which was nice amidst the hustle and bustle outside.

We saw this turtle, just hanging out.

After we finished at the Botanical Gardens, we walked to get coffee nearby, and then walked all the way back to Carrie’s (probably about an hour at that point!). We took a little break, and then caught the train to meet our friend Lauren for dinner in Greenpoint. We went to a Polish restaurant called Karczma and ate entirely too much delicious food (pierogies and stuffed cabbage, but somehow no photos), and then headed to a concert Carrie and her quartet, The Rhythm Method, were putting on.

It was in a super cool venue, sort of in an industrial area, and you wouldn’t even expect a concert there. It felt very “New York”, haha.

It was a great concert, super interesting and thought provoking, and I really enjoyed watching Carrie and her group perform, along with the other guest performers on the concert. Louie and Lauren didn’t stay the whole time and instead went out somewhere in the area, but I stayed till the end, and then Carrie and I took a Lyft (what, no walking?) and hung out at her place until we were exhausted, and Louie came home later.

The next day we did laundry at the apartment and ate leftover Polish food for breakfast, then headed back into Manhattan to meet up with another aunt and uncle of Louie’s. We had lunch first at a place called Simply Noodles (can you guess what we ate?) and then met up with Ralph and Susie at their apartment.

We went to the Met Museum with them, walking through Central Park to get there. New Yorkers get “pay what you want” admission so it isn’t too big of a deal just to go for a short time. Susie wanted to check out the rooftop art, so that was the plan.

We wandered around the museum for a short while, but then headed back to their apartment and enjoyed wine and cheese up on the rooftop until we needed to catch a train back to Brooklyn for our next event.

Carrie had asked awhile back if Louie and I wanted to do a “float”, which was a silent disco: we would all wear headphones and hear the same music, and follow a prescribed route with the group while dancing. It was not at all the sort of thing we do in our normal lives, but Louie and I wanted to experience what Carrie does and also push our own boundaries, so we agreed. We met up with the float people at a brewery, where we ate dinner first (impossible smash burgers, quite tasty).

It was a fun evening, especially as we had no idea what to expect. We were surrounded by many Juilliard musicians (ha!) but also random people, and would go down streets dancing, stop in random parking lots to dance, and it was a lot of fun. We were probably some of the oldest people there, but somebody has to be, right?

We were exhausted after a few hours (they do take breaks) and decided to skip the last segment since we were all traveling the next day. We did stop at a German bar near Carrie’s house to unwind before bed though. And it is worth noting that when I turned in our headphones to the float person, apparently I said that it was fun but it was “really late”. It was like 10:45 pm and Louie said that definitely cemented our status as “old” within the group. Haha!

The next morning Louie and I had a train to catch so we were up early. Our train would leave Penn Station at 9:09 am and we were in Brooklyn, which meant about 30-40 minutes of train rides away, so we left by 7:45 am in order to have time to grab a coffee and breakfast at the station. We had no trouble getting there, and got some nice pastries and coffee and relaxed in the lounge for a bit.

We were disappointed to learn that our train didn’t have a cafe car though, so the coffee we had was all the coffee we would have! We were en route to Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, usually just called E-town, to visit some relatives of mine and stay with my aunt Connie that night.

The train ride. Once we got to Philadelphia, we were told we actually had to switch trains to continue our trip. This was actually a good thing as we had been seated moving backwards, and then we chose seats moving forward, win! We also got to pick our new seats before they allowed the general boarding from Philadelphia to board, so it was no big deal.

The train ride was just over 3 hours, and uneventful. However, that seems like a good time to end this blog post, haha. Next time: E-town, Lititz, and then the train back to Philadelphia.

New York, Travel

St Louis to Manhattan to Brooklyn

Louie and I wanted to have two trips this summer, one at the beginning and one at the end of the summer. The first trip we focused on visiting family, so we planned a trip to New York and Philadelphia (with a little side trip as well.) We planned to fly into NYC, visit his uncle Paul, go to Brooklyn to visit my sister Carrie, take the train to Elizabethtown, PA to visit my aunt Connie, and then finally to Philadelphia to visit his dad, and fly home from there. All of the travel arrangements worked out just as planned, and we had a great time.

Our first stop was New York City, so that’s what I’ll tell you about today. We flew direct to La Guardia and the flight was uneventful.

We landed in La Guardia and were amazed by the airport: both of us recalled LGA being a dump, and instead it was a beautiful modern looking building. Evidently the terminal was new and LGA had had a large renovation over the past few years. We obviously don’t fly to New York much. Anyway, we took a cab to get into the city, and the cab driver was classic “New York”. At several points the driver yelled at other drivers out the window things like, “I’m going to teach you how to drive!” It was like in the old Jerry Seinfeld bit about NY cabbies and how it doesn’t feel real, it’s like it’s all happening on TV.

In any case, we made it to Louie’s uncle’s apartment without major incident, and enjoyed the rest of the afternoon catching up with him.

My sister Carrie came over for dinner that night, and Louie’s aunt Phyllis and uncle Paul made pasta, salad, and we had strawberries with ice cream.

The next day Louie and I hit the ground running for sightseeing. We had coffee and croissants for breakfast, and then starting walking up 5th avenue. If you are familiar with Manhattan, we started near Union Square (well, we did that regardless if you are familiar with Manhattan or not, but it will mean more to you.) We walked all the way to Central Park, had lunch at a place called DIG, walked around Central Park, and then back down 7th, past Carnegie Hall, through Times Square, had gelato, and finally back to Paul’s place. It was a 10 mile walking day, and it was invigorating and exhausting.

We met up with Paul and Phyllis after they finished work and went to Fowl Witch for dinner. It was delicious!

The next morning we had breakfast at Newsbar Cafe, and then in the late morning took the train down to Brooklyn to Carrie’s place. Riding public transportation is super easy now for NYC, just tap your credit card to buy a ticket upon entry. Make sure to use the same card each time, because if you take enough rides to spend the same as a weekly pass you’ll be charged for that instead, and also any transfers will be tracked automatically. We did have a little trouble with our trains and ended up getting off what would have actually been the correct train but got convinced by a stranger it was wrong. No big deal though, it just took a little longer. Lesson: always trust google first for directions rather than people, haha.

My feet hurt from the walking the day before, so ostensibly it was going to be a lighter day, but no, we still walked over 10 miles! We had lunch at a Thai place called Sukh.

We walked down to Brooklyn Bridge Park after that, and along the water. We could see a bunch of bridges, and the Statue of Liberty in the distance, and of course Manhattan.

We had an ice cream stop at one point, and then finally back at Carrie’s for a bit in the late afternoon. We rested before deciding where to go for dinner: we ended up going to Zaytoon’s, a middle eastern place that Carrie really wanted to show us. We ate a delicious dinner there.

Maybe that’s a good place to stop for today. I’ll finish up our days in Brooklyn and the rest of the trip another day: I’m sure you can’t wait!

Travel

Quick Trip to Chattanooga and Nashville

Since we didn’t get to see my parents on Thanksgiving (thanks COVID!) we wanted to try to get together over Spring Break. We met in the middle in Chattanooga.

We rented a lovely Airbnb. I didn’t get any pictures but it was this one and it was very nice, just like you would expect from the pictures. It was easy to find and easy to get around from it.

The first night after we arrived we went to walk around downtown. This wasn’t actually the best idea, but it wasn’t the worst either. We may have picked a less interesting area to walk through, and we got to say hello to a variety of homeless people. We worked up an appetite but nothing we saw appealed, so Louie found a place to drive to, and we enjoyed it. It was called Sluggo’s and served all vegan food. We ate on the balcony and it was a lovely night.

We all sat on the couch and started watching Killers of the Flower Moon after that. It is the world’s longest movie, so we watched a little more than half before turning in for the night.

The next day the weather was nice and sunny so we opted for more outdoor activities. We got tickets for the Incline Railway and headed out. One thing to note about Chattanooga is that all the places you go require you to pay for parking. I used the Parkmobile app since I use it here and it was already set up for our car and everything. It was a little annoying to get to a large parking lot where we paid for tickets and to have to pay again for parking, but thankfully it was only a few dollars. But I digress.

The Incline Railroad goes up the mountain about a mile. It is at an incline, some places more than others. When you get on you are leaning back a little bit but at the top it is much steeper.

We enjoyed the ride up and there is a lot to see at the top: there are two different viewing platforms, a place to see the machinery and some museum like signs, and of course a gift shop. You can’t leave the little station though, even though you can see some nice grassy areas, you can’t get to them.

After we rode back down we were hungry, so we looked on google and there was a restaurant right nearby with high ratings, so we headed out. The Purple Daisy Picnic Cafe was a hit with us, and we would recommend it. I ordered the Rainbow Sandwich because it seemed unique, and it was! I enjoyed it, though I’m not sure that putting chicken salad, cucumber salad, and pimento cheese salad today is better than eating either one of those things separately.

It may look large here in the picture, but it was just slightly smaller than a normal slice of bread, since they cut the crusts off. It was perfect though.

After lunch we had considered going to Ruby Falls, another tourist place, but we decided to just drive around instead. We drove up Lookout Mountain and stopped a few places to walk around and take looks: one place was a college with a lovely grounds and some nice views, and another just on the side of the road. We also stopped at a NPS site called Craven’s House which was part of a Civil War battle at one time.

We stopped by the old Chattanooga Choo Choo building where Louie and I had stayed some time ago –it had been completely changed and was now restaurants and a boutique hotel out back.

Still had the train though!

After a few hours of sightseeing, we were all ready to go back to relax at home for a bit.

We refreshed and then headed out to dinner. My dad loves german food so he found a place called the Brew Haus. It was a nice place to have dinner and had a terrific soft pretzel! We shared that and then each had our individual meals as well. We ended up participating in a little bit of trivia at the place as well, which was a new experience for my parents. After dinner we realized we were right by the Walnut Street Pedestrian bridge, so we walked up over the river a bit and enjoyed the start of the sunset.

After dinner we went back and finished the movie (Killers of the Flower Moon) from the night before. It was good, though it definitely could had been shorter.

The next morning after breakfast my parents headed home. It was raining and they were worried about the drive. It was great to see them and very enjoyable to spend a few days together! Louie and I had decided to stop in Nashville on our way home, so we didn’t head out yet as we didn’t have our hotel there until later. We visited the Museum of Towing and Recovery.

The museum covered the history of the tow truck, which was invented in Chattanooga. It was really interesting–both from an engineering standpoint for Louie and for me: I enjoy seeing old cars and such. One of the tow trucks you were allowed to get into, so we did. I am unsure why it is so small!

After that it was lunchtime, so we got some tacos at Taqueria Jalisco Ania and then coffee at nearby Velo Roasters. We headed to Nashville after that.

We made a quick stop at Stones River National Battlefield en route, but didn’t stay long: we saw the movie and museum, but their bathrooms weren’t functioning and you had to use porta potties and this made me grumpy. We decided just to go to the hotel at this point, so we checked in and relaxed a bit. We stayed at the Millennium Maxwell House Hotel, which we stayed at before: nice location not too far from downtown (an easy lyft) but it was a little run down and in need of some updating. It was fine though, and I don’t regret it. We had dinner at Husk: we’d eaten at the two other Husk restaurants (in Savannah and Charleston) and figured to go for the trifecta. It was delicious.

Trout with grits–not a super photogenic picture, but my mouth is still watering.

After dinner we walked down to Broadway to check out the scene. It was a mass of humanity! We walked a bit, and then popped into a bar and got beers and listened to a bar play some music, including Freebird, which one guy tipped them $100 to play.

We decided we’d had enough of crowds then and headed a few blocks away, where the streets completely empty out (like, where does everybody even come from?) and enjoyed more music at a bar called “Loser’s” before calling it a night. I get tired early due to years of teaching early morning classes, so we didn’t make it much past 11.

The view of downtown from the hotel window, very nice!

The next morning we packed up and headed out for brunch at Audrey’s. We ate, took a short walk around to move a bit before getting in the car, and then we hit the road for home. It was a lovely but short trip, and I’m so glad we did it!

A mural near the restaurant.

Camping, Ontario, Travel

Camping in Ontario, Canada

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I’ve had “write blog post about Ontario” on my to do list for an embarrassingly long amount of time. Sometimes with writing the issue is just sitting down and getting started!

I think the best thing to do at this point is tell you the highlights and share some pictures. We were visiting my sister Leslie and her family in Chautauqua, New York and thought it would be fun to extend our trip by visiting Niagara Falls, and then I got into the idea of camping, and a trip plan was made!

We camped two nights near Niagara Falls at the Niagara Riverside Park Motel and Campground. We had a nice spacious site that was in the back corner. Louie had never been to Niagara Falls before, so we saw the Falls (they are beautiful, but wow the surrounded area is insanely touristy and trashy), and then we did the Hornblower Cruise (formerly Maid of the Mist.) It was fun to be in Canada hearing phrases such as “toonie sized hail” and “sorry.”

A min golf course in downtown Niagara Falls
Wearing the requisite red ponchos for the Hornblower Cruise to the falls
Our campground.

The weather was beautiful as far as temperature, but we did have to dodge a few storms. On our second day we did a hike at the Niagara Falls Nature Glen, went to Niagara-on-the-Lake and had lunch (at the Prince of Wales Hotel, VERY GOOD) and walked around, visited a winery (Trius Winery) and sampled some ice wine, and had a delicious dinner at AG Inspired Cuisine (also VERY Good!)

View from the hike, you can see Louie’s hat there too.
Some Ice Cream in NOTL
We could see Toronto across the lake, this was Lake Ontario.

The next morning it was a bit rainy but we managed to pack up. Our next stop was Selkirk Provincial Park for one night, but we took the scenic route and drove by Lake Erie, visited Ridgway for breakfast, Port Colburn for a snack and to see the drawbridge, and finally to the park, where we walked along the beach and did a hike through the woods before setting a fire and relaxing. The birds were unbelievably loud!

The drawbridge: it went up to let boats through and we were thrilled to see it happen!
Our site at Selkirk
Lake Erie. We dipped our toes in but it wasn’t good for swimming, too stormy in addition to looking very rocky.
Another rainbow!

The next day we drove to Pinery Provincial Park where we would stay for two nights. This park was much bigger and was on Lake Huron. It was slammed with Canadians in trailers having a good week at the beach! We were stuck in traffic for 45 minutes just to get into the park, but after that it was not so bad.

We walked along the Lake our first night, but the second day we canoed on the River, took a hike and then went to swim in Lake Huron. This didn’t last too long because it was cold and we decided we were took old and tired to try to wait out the cold until we got used to it, but it was invigorating and a lot of fun!

We saw this giant larvae near Lake Huron
View from the hike

We relaxed by the fire the second night until the rain came, and then it stayed overnight. After several lovely nights where rain was predicted but didn’t show up, we got rain on our last night and ended up having to pack up frantically in the rain and drive to the first restaurant we could find for coffee. Our drive home was uneventful and overall, it was a lovely trip! We got a really good sense of the southwestern part of Ontario and got to see 3 Great Lakes as well as Niagara Falls, and we had some lovely nights camping and enjoying the fresh air.

Travel

Travels and Returns

We got home a few days ago from a lovely trip to visit my sister’s family in western New York and then into Ontario for camping. It was wonderful to see them! My niece and nephew are 8 and 4 and they are both delightful, inquisitive, and of course, adorable.

My sister Leslie and brother-in-law live in Phoenix during the year, but spend their summers in Chautauqua, NY working at the Institution there. They have a house in nearby Sherman, NY, and we enjoy visiting them and experiencing small town life as well as enjoying the events at the Institution.

The house
We are shared this cinnamon roll at Bemus Point Inn and Restaurant
We attended the Sherman Bicentennial Parade. There is a large population of Amish people there and a family was across the street from us, collecting candy from the floats.
The shriners had a float. Nearly everybody threw candy at the kids and it was a blast watching them pick it up.
Luca and Louie enjoyed working together to have ChatGPT make up stories
We saw the Orchestra play Peter and the Wolf one afternoon
We were very excited about it.
Luca really liked this fan.
He also enjoyed using my phone to take pictures and selfies.
We went to see one lecture by two men who had hiked the Grand Canyon, not from rim to rim, but through it, by the river. Peter McBride and Kevin Fedarko, and they both have written books. It was terrific!
Louie takes terrific pictures!
Pretending to be a pirate who has lost BOTH eyes.
We got to see Augustin Hadelich perform the Sibelius Violin Concerto with the Festival Orchestra. He played Por una Cabeza as an encore.
And we got to meet him (again) after the concert at a private reception.
I participated in an impromptu Suzuki play-in and busking experience with my sister and niece, and other people from the orchestra and their kids.

We had a great time: food, concerts, family time, walks, hot tub time, lectures, parades, and more! It rained more than we might have liked, but that just meant more time playing games and making Chat GPT make up stories and AI make up pictures and lots of cuddle time. With the kids, that is. After that we drove up to Canada (just Louie and I) but I’ll save that for another post, so that I can get some other things done now.

I don’t start teaching until Monday so I’ve been taking care of things around the house and learning some new music I’ll be performing at the end of the month and in September (and October, never hurts to get ahead on learning music when you have the time!). I’ve also been getting everything ready for the fall semester and trying to get my fall schedule at Wash U organized. It’s always a pain getting started but it’s also fun and you never know what each semester will look like, which keeps life interesting.

NM/CO Trip, Random thoughts

The High Points: Breckenridge, Frisco, and Vail

At long last, the last blog recap of our Colorado Trip in May/June. I like to really build suspense.

Oklahoma! Not just an amazing musical.

So many cliff dwellings…they must have seen them on Instagram or something.

Ouray or the (Million Dollar) Highway

Okay, so the Black Canyon is really pretty black

One Night in Crested Butte isn’t enough

Gorgeous Royal Gorge and Lots of Rain in Mueller State Park

We left off in Mueller State Park and then headed to Breckenridge. We were spending the night in Frisco before the conference started in Vail. When I originally planned this trip, we were going to head home after Mueller, but when Louie got invited to his conference, it magically worked out with just one extra night!

In grad school I was lucky enough to be able to spend two summers playing with the National Repertory Orchestra in Breckenridge, Colorado. It truly spoiled me for all other mountains, at least for awhile. I had also been back a few times to visit, but not in over a decade and never with Louie. I had wanted to stay overnight in Breck, but it was more than we wanted to pay (many of the places to stay seemed more geared towards longer stays, so they would have a reasonable night fee but a high cleaning fee which would make more sense if you were there for a week or something), and the places I found to reserve camping were already full by the time we needed to book. I did find some affordable places in Frisco, so I booked a night at the Snowshoe Motel (which when I just googled it now suggested I google “snowshoe motel death” and found that somebody was murdered there in 2014, but I digress, and it was a lovely motel, seriously). But I’m getting ahead of myself.

As always, we had an amazing drive to Breckenridge. The route from Mueller State Park to Breckenridge was all state roads and was beautiful. We went through Fairplay and over Hoosier Pass. We got to Breckenridge and had lunch at the Breckenridge Brewery where I had spent a lot of time in the past. It had changed, but also hadn’t changed, you know what I mean?

Then we found a place to park near the Riverwalk Center and walked around the town. It was a busy day and people were out and about, but I enjoyed looking to see what I recognized, and sharing the town with Louie. Breckenridge is surrounded by gorgeous mountains on all sides, and is really a special place. It’s also totally crowded and expensive, and full of tourists and traffic, but that’s to be expected in today’s world.

The Riverwalk Center is where the orchestra I was with performed. It used to be more of a tent structure and they’ve made it more permanent.
I spent a summer looking at this view from the Tannhauser Condominiums on Main Street. They were still there!
The Blue River!

After a few hours, we were ready to head to Frisco and check into our hotel. We got cleaned up and went to do some laundry in a nearby laundromat (ah, road trip troubles), which was easy enough. Frisco is a cute little mountain too as well, but less busy, and we were still early in the season, so it was surprisingly un-busy. We had dinner at the High Side Brewery (they had a BBQ truck too.)

The next morning we had the hotel breakfast and then checked out of the hotel and headed for a hike in Frisco. I found a loop called the Frisco Peninsula Loop which contained the Lakeshore, Perimeter and Buzzsaw Loops. I suppose it was really more of a biking loop, but we had a great time hiking and enjoying the views.

After the hike, we were pretty hungry and decided Mexican was in order. I remember having a pretty good lunch at a Tex-Mex place in Frisco in the past, but we found something better, a place called Cielo Oaxaca that I highly recommend! They had excellent mole sauce and everything was delicious.

Then we headed DOWN to Vail. it would be a relief to spend a night before 9000 feet, you know!

Louie had a conference in Vail at the Grand Hyatt, so we checked in there. It was a terrific room with a balcony, and it was wonderful to hang out in and relax. Since we spent 5 days there, I’ll just give you some general things we did and some highlights rather than a day-by-day.

The view from the room, not amazing but absolutely lovely

We ate at The George in downtown Vail twice: they had a terrific happy hour special on food and drinks and we loved the vibe. We also ate at La Cantina for dinner once and had breakfast at Two Arrows Coffee. We mostly had lunches and other breakfasts at the hotel, which was naturally quite overpriced but very convenient. The food in Vail was really pricey and though I’m sure there were many amazing restaurants there, Louie’s conference took up his time so we didn’t do an evening out with an expensive restaurant.

We were able to do a few hikes. We hiked the Strawberry Lane Trail, which was mostly just hiking up ski areas, but like we said, we don’t have ski areas to hike up and across in St Louis. We also hiked the Grouse Creek Loop in Minturn (we had to get the car out of the valet parking for this one), which was a lovely hike. We kept running into people who saw a moose, starting with a man at the beginning warning us that just up the trail a moose tried to attack his dog, which we warned other people about, but never saw a moose ourselves. We saw some moose tracks in the mud, and we even heard the story that evening at the banquet, about how some man had been attacked by a moose on the Grouse Creek Loop that morning (except we saw the man and it wasn’t him, it was his dog, and his dog was okay, they were just shaken up) so we really got to experience how rumors get started, but like I said, sadly no moose for us.

Louie’s poster for his poster session
There was a lot of snow still remaining!
We visited the Betty Ford Alpine Gardens one evening.
The closest we came to a moose
The tent where they held the poster sessions at the conference.

Honestly, the hotel was nice, but it was a bit under construction, which was annoying. There was a path to walk to downtown Vail, but parts were diverted due to construction as well. The hotel did have a wonderful free shuttle to Lionshead and Vail Village, which ran quite often, and would also take you back. We took advantage of it several times, and often ended up walking back in the evening as the weather was lovely and we wanted to get exercise (and it was downhill slightly, hah.) I loved our time in Vail, but finally it was time to go home!

We visited with friends in Denver en route, just for lunch, and then drove most of the way across Kansas. I won’t bother mentioning where we stayed overnight, but we didn’t care for it, but we got up early and finished the drive the next day and we were glad to be home!

I hope you enjoyed reading these blog recaps of our trip. I’m sorry it took me so long to get through, but perhaps that just increased the excitement? Please leave a comment if you are reading, I love hearing from readers 🙂