the neverending strory

remember that movie? we let Aidan watch it this year. i had forgotten how cheesy it was!

Anyway, back to my neverending story. I was just going to stop my trip story back at the photo montage, but my mom and aunt requested more details - which is good - i want to make my blog into a book for Aidan someday, so the more details, the better, right? I am sure he will especially love my recipes and sewing posts.

So, we have talked about the beach, the Statue of Liberty, Rhode Island and our big storm......... That leaves me New York City and our last night at the Inn, so if you are lucky I can wrap this trip up in two more posts. Although I do still have all the photos Aidan took........... they are pretty entertaining. Who knows, this vacation might stretch on for another week.

Well, this post we will dedicate to NYC.

New York City was a whirlwind trip as well. I think I would have loved to spend a little more time there, but I tell you what, we literally covered the entire island of Manhattan that day. Did I mention what a good traveller Aidan is? I guess there are advantages to only having one. I can afford to buy him a never-ending supply of ice cream to combat the heat and keep the sugar high going.

So again I am going to bombard you with photos - I took so many my camera batteries died three times! Do you know how hard it is to find batteries in Manhattan? That story alone could be an entire blog post!!!!

George Washington Bridge. We drove into Manhattan along the Henry Hudson Parkway. So gorgeous! I could have taken hundreds of pictures of the brownstones and gardens along the river. But fortunately for you I was out of batteries.

Off we go. Aidan thought NYC was "so cool" because it looks just like where Curious George lives!!!

I wish I could apologize to all the people who were surprised by a random pigeon in their face, courtesy of Aidan.





How New York is this?

Hot dog in Central Park?




Taking a break while Jakob and Kate buy some falafal.


On the subway. He doesn't look happy, but he did love riding. We felt so urban sliding our "Metro card" and going through the turn styles.

The Manhattan skyline from the harbor ferry.

Chinatown!

Oops, this is out of order. This is the Brooklyn Bridge. I thought the bridges were amazing, as you can tell. I have a lot more bridge pics but I will just keep them to myself.

I just thought this picture was funny. (this is a city parking ramp.) The ramp was full of Mercedes and BMW's and then there was a VW van on the top.

We didn't think Chinatown smelled very good.

I loved little Italy. Really loved it.

I was really hoping to eat there.

When we were on our honeymoon we spent an evening in Boston's "Little Italy." That was one of my favorite evenings ever. We even found a little Improv theater there, and that was the beginning of our love of Improv. But back to this story......

Mmm, homemade pasta, some wine and the Mafia? Doesn't that sound wonderful?

The streets reminded me of "Return to Me," one of my favorite movies of all time.

Home Depot in Manhattan

On our way to Times Square. The crowds were enormous. I also now understand why you can just head to the City to see a show at Madison Square Garden. The subway's and trains can take you right there. Jakob and Kate told me you can catch the train from CT and head down to the City for a show. Isn't that convenient????

Almost done.

We had a long day in the City and ended our night walking through Central Park and we came out on Park Ave and walked through all the extravagance. It was pretty magical, or at least for the people enjoying their dinners in posh restaurants. (Maybe a little less so for us as we trudged the streets in our flip-flops.)

I have to say I loved NYC. I would have loved to spend a few more days there. We covered miles, the garment district, the Meat-packing district, Little Italy, Chinatown, Battery Park, the lower East Side, the Upper East Side, Chelsea.......... I can see why so many movies were set there.

Just for kicks I checked out rent prices.

Yeah, it would take my entire months income to rent a 2-bedroom in Manhattan. Now I see why Carrie was so lucky with her rent controlled brownstone!

playing with lightroom

So I mistakenly ordered the upgrade to lightroom instead of lightroom. (no wonder it was so cheap.) Right now I am playing with the 30 free download to see if it is worth my time and money, and if not I can resell the upgrade as i didn't use the license. It is totally different than my other photo-shopping software and I can imagine it would be a lot of fun! It also has all sorts of fun "presets" to play with, and I love the fact that if you manually use a certain effect on a photo you can alter a bunch the same way with a few strokes of the keyboard.

So, we will see!

I have 30 days to try it out!

You will have to let me know what you think. I already think it is going to be rather addicting. Do I need another one of those????????

More RI

If you drive through Rhode Island on I-95, you might think to yourself, "Who would live here?" East to West the state is only 20 miles, and North to South it is but 40. Most of it feels like freeway, but remember that first impressions are not always accurate. Rhode Island has over 400 miles of coastline (according to Wikipedia) and the beaches there are indescribable.

We spend one day in Newport RI, and found the area to be a new favorite. We took a water taxi from Jamestown RI to Newport , and on the way we stopped and spent some time on Rose Island, which is one of the only working lighthouses left in the US. (they also rent rooms there if you don't mind helping out.) I would love to stay there someday, it was still wild and beautiful.

Newport is a very wealthy town. We fit right in. (not really, but I felt a little more "Newport-like" after I bought my big hat. There were huge yachts there from all over the world, most of them larger than my home. We squeezed a lot of site-seeing into our day trip, and now I am going to squeeze a lot of photos into this one post.

Enjoy your tour of Newport!

Heading out on the water taxi.

Rose Island

Collecting sea glass. They actually "make" sea glass there, so we all went home with a pocketful.

He is a great little traveller!

The island is totally off-the-grid and self sustaining. Here Aidan is helping the guide stir the water in the cistern.

Here they are pumping water into the bathroom for me.

Rose Island used to be a fort before the Revolutionary War, and the barracks are still standing.

Later it became an infirmary, but all who came died. Our guide has been working on the island for years and she swears it is haunted. Apparently an episode of Ghost Hunters was recently filmed here, so she warned us that if we wanted to book a room on the island we better do so before the show airs!

Kate collecting sea glass.
When you are ready to leave the island you release the yellow flag, and the taxi will then come and pick you up!

We are ready to go!


Newport Bay

Of all the things we saw that day, Aidan loved this anchor most and would have gladly spent the whole day climbing on it.

Picking out our lunch.

More of the bay.

Jakob.


The hat. It was very bright out and even with sunglasses I was squinting, so it was a very necessary purchase. Oh - and did I mention the saleslady told me I looked like a glamorous movie star? Maybe that's what sold me on it.........

We ate a lot of ice cream during our stay our East! The weather was always so hot it was the perfect treat.

A gorgeous sunset was the perfect end to our day.

Sand Castles

So our first day in CT Aidan and I went to the Dollar Store to find some sand-buckets and beach toys.

Yeah, we left with some plastic cups and food storage containers.

Hey - we only spent $2.00!!!

His first castle of the trip.

My work of art, (note the Tupperware!)





His skills improved pretty quickly.

Actually, he built this with a random stranger he befriended. A young family with a little baby girl was hanging out at the beach that day and the dad was really into building, but the wife and baby weren't at all interested.




Aidan was.





They played for hours!!!!





Eventually the baby crashed the castle but we rebuilt it later with Uncle Jakob.






Looks pretty good!

vaca part III

We have only been back for a week and a half but it seems we have been soooo busy that we never even had a vacation. Isn't that pathetic?

I had initially downloaded all my photos onto the laptop, but I don't care for the photo-editing software on here, so I transferred them all over to our computer, and now guess what? Our computer is dead. Really dead. So all the edited photos are inaccessible right now. (but we hope they are recoverable!!!!) I did order some different software for the laptop so hopefully it will arrive soon. In the meantime, a little more about our trip, and a few of my initial photos as well.

Jacob and Kate live a few short miles from the beach and Aidan and I went there every day. (All the photos from the montage were from Waterford beach.) Waterford beach was beautiful, calm, and smelled like the ocean, but that whole area is on the Long Island Sound which means that the beach is missing the huge waves that we all associate with the ocean. However, if you drive to Westerly RI, a short 40 minute drive to the East, the cost there is unprotected and you have all the waves you could wish for. That is where Aidan and I went our last day of vacation. The last time we visited Jacob and Kate we went to Watch Hill a number of times because quite frankly, I am in love with that town. Jakob had also figured out where the entrance to the "private, residents only" beach is and we used that, which is an amazing stretch of sand. (fact I learned about the beaches in parts of New England; While there is ocean everywhere, the average person is restricted to little areas of public beach. This means you have to pay an arm and a leg to park and swim at a beach filled tourists. There are also private city beaches that are only accessible if you have proof of residence, or again, you pay. The beach near Jakob's house was for the people who lived in Waterford and cost me $10.00 every time I went.)

So, back to the last day of our trip. We had to catch the red-eye out of Boston Tuesday Am, and return our rental car downtown to the Seaport Hotel before that, so I wanted to stay closer to the airport so Aidan and I could sleep a little longer. We decided to go to Watch Hill then on Monday, and from there we would head to our Inn. Jakob and Kate came with us to Watch Hill, and when we left their apartment the sun was shining. However, by the time we got to to beach some clouds were rolling in, and not even a half hour passed before the sky turned black and we were all kicked out of the ocean. Watching the storm roll in was breath-taking, but not really ideal for our last day. Jakob and Kate decided to head back home, which left Aidan and I in a little bit of a quandary. Should we call it a day as well and try and do an early check in? Or should we wait it out at a mall or movie theater? (although we were totally drenched) We decided to head to Dunkin Donuts for a warm,dry place to mull over our options. While there the sky cleared just enough to give us some hope and we headed back to the beach. And to make this already-long-story-short, Aidan and I swam for about 4 more hours in the pelting rain. His lips were blue, we were covered in goosebumps, but every time a wave took him down he would yell "this is so rockin' awesome!!!!!" and I couldn't bear to pull him away. Finally, in the late afternoon we decided to head north so we could clean up at the hotel before dinner, and of course then the sun came out.

So here are some photos from our last day. I hope you enjoy the storm as much as we did. Amazing.

A view of the big Inn on the beach when we first arrived.

We headed right into the water because the storm was moving fast and we wanted to enjoy it for as long as we could.

This is the same Inn about 20 minutes later.

The lighthouse

Kate packing up as fast as possible.

It is hard to tell in the photos but the lighthouse turned on and the sky was black.

I love the clouds in this photo.

Even though we came back and spent the day I don't have any photos because after the initial storm it just rained the whole day. I wish I could have captured Aidan's expression as he wrestled with the waves all day. I have found one of the most enjoyable parts of motherhood is watching your child enjoy Creation and take it all in with pure wonder.

I can't wait to go back! Although I am thinking maybe the Pacific Ocean next time. No more blue lips for us!!!!