I mentioned in my previous blog post that I went to New York City and man, did I have a good time!! I bought a plane ticket 10 minutes after receiving an email from my best friend from France, whose 40th birthday was the following weekend. Initially she wanted to go to the Bahamas, but eventually settled on NYC and Naples. I could only spare one vacation day to join her, so I booked my flight from Friday to the following Monday, with the plan of going straight to work after landing back in town. I had 5 days to prepare and work on containing my excitement. It had been over a year since I'd seen my friend and these times are always so precious, it's hard to plan around the hours that we spend just being there for each other. Nothing else is as important. So I told myself, I go there with no plan, I will just follow along with my camera and enjoy the moment. My only mission was to run in Central Park and that I accomplished. I know that my friend understands my crazy, she was with me in Paris for my first marathon as well... so I didn't feel too bad taking off for 2h on my own.
Here's how we spent most of our time that weekend, with Instagrams for posterity.
All that Jazz!
I left Toronto in this itty bitty airplane. It wasn't the smallest that I took in my life, but close. You know that is small enough when your carry on bag does not fit in the overhead bin.
We spent the first day exploring an abandoned place called 5 Pointz, which used to be the Mecca of Graffiti in NYC, but alas got painted white all over sometime at the end of last year, then fenced up. See here for all the awesome work that artists had painted and is now gone. What a shame.
Rooftops are awesome
The next day, we embarked on a more touristy exploration and took the ferry to see the Statue of Liberty up close, then visit Ellis island and look for family members on the immigrants wall.
Found mine in L
Freedom, Liberty.
It was a chilly and windy day, but the sky cleared as we were touring the Liberty Island and the sun showed its face to warm us up.
In the evening, we all went for a nice dinner to celebrate my friend's birthday, but not before taking a stroll on The High Line, in the heart of Manhattan. It was quite the photo explosion.
Brick, glass and grass
And a sculpture on train tracks.
Magic Hour Reflections
On Sunday, I ran in the morning, and took more pictures, as you saw in the previous post. Then we went on another adventure, around Ground Zero and over the Brooklyn Bridge.
One web
Two webs
Yeah, that blue sky followed us everywhere!! I can't believe it either. It was a beautiful weekend spent mostly outside, breathing the fresh air (at least I hope it's fresh - shhh, don't tell me), discovering new sights, which I had really never seen before. Sharing meals with best friends. Catching up on life stories and everyone in and around them. It was long overdue. I miss these moments already.
Before I knew it, it was time to pack again and head home, to work, family, workouts, business, stress. And now starts a new wait... Happy Birthday, my dear Fred.
A few weeks ago I decided to go back to Philadelphia to attend my friend Laura Kicey's photo gallery opening show at Gravy Studio, called Lost and Found (if you are local, check it out! - ongoing until April 30). Initially I wanted to drive there and surprise her as I did a few years back for another one of her shows, but I changed my mind and I ended up flying to Philly the night before the show. This little fella and I were on a mission, to spend some quality time with talented friends and forget about stress and work for a weekend.
On Friday, after a scrumptious breakfast, courtesy of Miss Kicey, we got ourselves ready to partaaay and went downtown for a long stroll through the city before heading to the gallery.
Ended up doing a walk a bit shorter than 5k, but quite impressive when you actually look at the map. We covered some distance, yo! We also stopped for coffee in Chinatown and had, for the first time ever, the Cadillac of coffees, Blue Mountain coffee from Jamaica, prepared in a siphon, which was quite the contraption. I only put in some milk, it didn't even need sugar, and I'm the one who cannot drink any coffee without 5 spoons of sugar in it. This coffee was not bitter at all, had such a velvety taste, very unique and purely wonderful. Have one at Ray's Cafe if you ever find yourself in town.
The evening was as much packed with people and socializing as I could expect it, but I was glad that we managed to go to bed before 2am since I was due to run 10k the next morning. The weather was going to be very clement with a bright sunshine and a 16 degrees Celsius that day. I put on my capris and a long sleeve tshirt and off I went to discover the neighbourhood on the go. Told Laura that I should be gone for about 1h and that she could follow me on Runkeeper if needed. I honestly had no plan, I was just going to follow the sidewalks. It went like this:
The houses on this street were too sexy for sidewalks
Found runners and a long sidewalk
Ooooh, a school and a paved trail!
Which turned into dirt trail
Lost the sidewalk again, but found the cyclists
The rest of the pictures can be found here. I got a tad lost, or rather, I wanted to find a way back home that didn't look like a main road without sidewalks. But given that it seemed to be the only way back, beside the train tracks, I decided to adventure myself on it and thankfully found another paved trail shortly thereafter. I also found a bunch of cyclists that were looking happy to get to the end of a very steep climb and I gave them a "Way to go, guys!". I told myself that I envied them for riding outside already. I ended up running a bit longer than 10k, but it was a very enjoyable one, plus I crossed paths with dozens of other runners, so I really felt like I was belonging there. I had found my tribe, and that was rather memorable given that I went on those streets totally at random. Hint, always look for the high schools, they have running trails and plenty of people on them.
In the afternoon we went hiking in Ridley Creek State park, where I almost lost an eye. While bushwhacking to reach an abandoned greenhouse, a tree attacked me and lodged a splinter under my left eyeball. My brave friend managed to grab it with her fingernails and not to pass out in the process. (Forever grateful to you, my friend. You did awesome out there!) A few minutes later a thorn got stuck in my nose and I started bleeding. The day was just starting. Hiked for 6k afterwards, including an almost vertical ascent of 200m to retrieve a geocache. It was all worth it, I swear. What don't we do to find tupperware in the woods...
The next day we did it again. I ran 8k in the morning, then we went to visit another beautiful place, this time in Delaware - the Winterthur Museum and Country Estate, complete with guided tour inside the mansion and photo walk through the Enchanted Forest, freshly carpeted with millions of tiny blue and purple flowers for as far as you could see.
All in all, three days spent mostly outside, reconnecting with the beauty of the nature, the fresh air and my camera. A much needed break and what seems to become a yearly ritual for Laura and I. I am so happy for having been able to go on a little paid vacation before losing my job, it made it all so much more bearable. Now I can open my laptop and pop on the screen the photos I took and relive those moments again and again. Blogging about them too, it's great therapy. Until next time...
Hey hey, whazzup! Took longer than expected to write this post, work and workouts oblige, so I am back to the regular weekend blogging pattern because I just can't find a better time. It's time to take you to Vegas, baby!
As you may remember, at the end of the year we went on a driving adventure to Philly and Disney World, but what you don't know is that the week right after I had to fly to Las Vegas for work. Since I could not find a ticket for Monday, I had no choice but fly on Sunday, so on our way back home from Disney, hubbs dropped me in Pittsburgh and I took a plane from there.
It was really stressful right off the bat because I grabbed my son's passport by mistake and hubbs drove off with mine. Major PANIC, I was shaking, calling, texting, calling, texting and hoping that he'd get my messages before reaching the border. That would have been such a major FAIL, I could already imagine my husband asking for a divorce. Thankfully 45 minutes later, he came back, we exchanged passports and my heart rate calmed down. I must have burned quite a few calories in this panic attack and very likely, as many neurons.
Waited a long, long time in Pittsburgh and somehow my luggage made it to Vegas 3h ahead of me. You can see where this is going, right? Once I got there, my luggage was nowhere to be found and the US Airways agents were all dumbfounded. At the same time, I got a phone call from some limo company saying that one of their guests brought a piece of luggage to Planet Hollywood Hotel and that I would have to go pick it up from there if I needed it. Did I mention it was 11pm and that I was exhausted, cranky and all I wanted was to get into my bed and sleep? When I finally arrived in the room, which was also the suite at The Venetian where my company was exhibiting our products, I had to make one more phone call, to a technician to come and change a light switch that would not turn off. I wanted to SLEEP, dammit!
At least I had an awesome bed!
Next morning I woke up, set up all product demos, had more technicians come by and replace the router because that, too, was busted, and like this my week started, or rather marathon number two, with jetlag as a bonus. The whole week I was trapped into the suite as we had plenty of guests to demonstrate our products to and I needed to run those demos perfectly.
Like in a glass tower, I was stuck on the 36th floor, waiting for Elvis to come rescue me, or any of the other characters that were entertaining the tourists for a buck or two on the strip. By the third day I was going completely cuckoo. See, this was my first trip to Las Vegas and not only I was feeling really lonely, but going "out there" where the lights were shining bright and tons of people with beer in hand and a cigarette in the mouth were going from party to party, or casino to strip club and back, and where so many escort girls were taking you by the hand, it seemed a bit frightening. I saw The Hangover, ok? I didn't want to end up with a tattoo across my butt and a Mike Tyson lookalike in my jacuzzi tub.
Thankfully my colleagues took me out for a few minutes during the day (to buy water bottles, how glamorous) and I could get acquainted with the craziness of this place. I even brought back a nice stash of cards for all kinds of "services" with QR codes, nonetheless.
But one night, I put on my running clothes and ESCAPED. I decided that I would run for as long as there were lights and back, target 60 minutes. Once I realized that the entire strip was only 5km long, I decided to run it all. Total 10.3km, 1h11, one of the most challenging workouts that I've ever done. Not only because of the people, there were many indeed, and I had to dodge them constantly, but because of the stairs. So many of them, not even funny. To cross any intersection, you had to go up and over the street, then down to the opposite sidewalk. Up and down, up and down... I didn't take any of the escalators, but man, my legs were spent by the end of the run.
In the middle you can see the photo I took at The Bellagio, the water show was on. It was really beautiful, but I only stopped for 10 seconds so I can't even remember what song was on. Sounded more like opera than hip-hop anyway.
That was the only workout that I managed to sneak in during my week in Las Vegas. I was there for work afterall and all day long I was in the suite, talking to people in person or remotely. The last day, after CES was done and over with, I managed to take my camera and go on a walk along the strip again (I still haven't downloaded the pics from my flash card, dang!). I picked up some geocaches as well, discovering more places and people along the way. The rest is in the huge pile of pictures below... that's the best way I can remember it.
Ceiling at The Venetian. The Sistin chapel, or almost.
Walking out of the Venetian
Little Venice
You live in a casino because everything is a casino
Surrender Nightclub, with DJ Steve Aoki and George Clooney in the house
Beautiful Wynn
The wishing fountain at the Palazzo
Caesar's Palace
Another hotel room, last night spent at the Mirage
The strip in magic light
Golden children of Las Vegas
Flamingos at the Flamingo, roasting under a heat lamp
This is not Paris
Le Cirque - amazing restaurant!
Sparkly Horse at The Bellagio
And a huge sparkly cupcake at Sugar
The Flamingo
Chinese New Year at The Bellagio
The fake streets of Little Paris
New York, New York... with a rollercoaster on top.
So in case you didn't get it, Las Vegas is just another amusement park, just like Disney but with prostitutes instead of princesses. Everything is a casino. To take the elevator to your room, you have to walk through the casino. You sleep, eat and do business atop of a casino. The gym/pool is only open 3h a day because you should be gambling instead. There are slot machines on the street, in the airport, at McDonald's. At least the food is decent, when you don't eat at McDonald's, that is. Shopping is extravagant, as everywhere where people with money go. If you can leave your dollars at a Blackjack table, you can certainly leave some at Calvin Klein and Dior.
I think it's fun to go there if you have 3 days to spare, but to stay 6 days like I did, it's torture. It was eye candy, but just like a forbidden fruit, too sweet not to gag on it. I didn't gamble, I didn't drink, I didn't bring back a new husband. Phew. Not sure I want to go back any time soon, not unless I have my hubby with me so we can go together explore the surroundings, and not just this money pit.
I am really happy that I ran the strip though because I am not even interested in doing a race there anymore (unless there happens to be one during a business trips, story of my life). I saw most of it, from both sides of the boulevard, with the lights on, water fountains and all. Bucket list item, done!
At the end of the trip I counted 18 days straight spent in hotels. No, you should not envy me. I was so glad to be back home and see my family again. Back to normalcy, to a routine, to carpooling with my funny colleagues and swimming, biking and running with hubbs, to kissing my boys goodnight and feeding my fish Calypso. I survived Disney and Vegas, now I can look forward to surviving the Ironman.
It's time to stop procrastinating and write a real update around here. Unfortunately for both you and I, I like my blog neat and chronological, and I still have a long list of "must shares" before I can even get to this week's happenings. So, let's get this party started, shall we?
Speaking of which, at the end of last year, it was our 15th anniversary, and since we didn't do anything really special for the 5th, or 10th, or any of the others before, we decided to buy ourselves a nice little vacation outside the city and for once, NOT in Niagara Falls. I was thinking Hawaii, but when we started adding everything up, it was definitely way too high for our tiny budget, so we looked at places where we wouldn't have to fly to (that saves about $3000 right off the bat). Second criteria was that it had to be warmer than Toronto. Like a LOT warmer because I am already sick and tired of my Raynaud's and I just wish it wouldn't bother me, at least during this time. The most logical and reachable destination was going to be Florida and since we were going to bring two easily bored pre-teens with us, we settled on Disney World and Universal Studios.
This was going to be a first, so in order to prepare ourselves mentally, we also chose to make a first step on our way there in Philadelphia, where an awesome bunch of talented, kind and loving souls happen to live, which makes it my favorite city in the US to visit.
Renewing the contract for another 15 years
We left on the 26th of December and spent 3 days in Philly, mostly resting, watching movies on SyFy (don't, they're horrible!), eating gelato and walking around downtown because it's pretty small after all and going to the liquor store only takes 2.2k each way. It was the best "pit stop" we could have made, we had great food (as usual), great company and lots of photo opportunities.
Last but not least, we managed to do the "Rocky steps", a bucket list item for sure. We walked, we ran, we jumped, we posed, we Facebooked, Tweeted, Instagrammed and everything else that could make it history. Damn well you should know that some things stay forever on the Interwebz.
Rocky and I
Jump here
It can't get better than this
We left the city with a heavy heart, but excited about what was yet to come. Oh the warmth! I couldn't check the weather reports often enough and for some reason, they kept on changing every hour just to tease us, I'm sure.
To torture our minds even further, we also made the trip last with the challenge of stopping to find a geocache in each state that we crossed: Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida. A few hours after leaving Philly, I was making my 400th find (in total, not that day!), the most humongous ammo box I've come across, complete with a turn-around into a US Marines base by mistake. Never a dull moment with us.
Biggest ammo can ever!
After one more stop overnight we finally made it to Orlando where we parked the car, the bags and our money at Pop Century Disney Resort.
Open Sesame
Room was in this building, behind the Play-Doh
The first picture with the boys trying to open the door should describe well enough the first three days at the resort. The door lock had a software bug and it was late by a day, so no personnel at the resort could understand why our keys would not work. It took countless of trips between the room and the concierge desk to have technician after technician come to unlock, change battery, reprogram the lock, and most likely cross fingers and toes and pray so we can get back to our room on our own. Have you ever walked around those resorts? That's a lot of kilometers added on a daily basis just to go get a coffee or take a dip in the pool. Am I complaining? Not about the distance, but about the unnecessary travel when I could have relaxed, absolutely. Oh well, at least they credited us back a night and gave us a few fast passes. This is all fitness related folks, believe me... I'm getting there.
Anyway, shortly after, we changed into our Florida attire and started visiting the parks. On December 30, when we arrived, we decided to spend the evening at Magic Kingdom. It ended up being the greatest decision ever since there were going to be the exact same shows as on the 31st, with a lot LESS people. It was still crowded, don't get me wrong, but at least we could move around without fearing a stampede.
As soon as we arrived, of course, we were stunned by the lights and the "magical" feeling of the place. Totally surreal and fake, stucco everywhere. Well built though. We got to see the castle light up and blah blah blah, some story was going on (Cinderella?) but we wanted thrills instead, so we didn't bother listening. We walked on.
Okay okay, one more look. Pretty, eh? Wait until you see it in daylight, totally meh. The night was a constant blur, I know we walked, then we waited, we sat for 2-3 minutes, then we repeated the drill. We stopped for coffee at least 3 times. There were two fireworks shows, totally AMAZEBALLS. I am a sucker for fireworks and the midnight show was by far the best I saw, this life, in like... ever. I was almost crying, it was really overwhelming. Good thing is that we stayed 3 more hours after that and I could manage to regain my composure while walking, waiting and riding in tiny cars again, and again, and again. The "Magic Hours" were the best deal that night, we did almost everything we wanted at least once (huh? alriiiight).
The next morning we slept in, d'uh. At 3pm we went to Universal Studios for the Blue Man Group performance (Shake Your Booty, yeah! - I even took a video), then spent the rest of the night at Universal walking, waiting and eventually riding in tiny cars that shook the hell out of our insides. Again, that's right. Just like at Disney, but a bit more violent and at least 4D!
At midnight they had the New Year's show with lights, water, lasers and music, only missing were the Crazy Horses ;-). By then, we were really tired and cranky, but I think we kissed anyway. And I did one more ride because everyone else was busy leaving the park. Here's some footage from the show, it was rather spectacular.
The next morning we slept in, d'uh. This post sounds a bit repetitive, doesn't it? Well, that's because every day was almost the same. Either we woke up really early, at 5-6am so we can get in the park by 7am, or stayed up late and went to be at 3-4am to be able to fit as much fun as we could in our schedule. The lines were always a nightmare, but I don't think we waited more than 1h30 for any attraction, by choice. If it was longer than that, we'd skip it and come back to it later.
This is what 40min of waiting time look like
Sometimes, we stopped for a bit and enjoyed the sunshine, that was a must, and I am extremely grateful for those rare moments.
Lounging by the pool
Water park with fake snow and ski lifts. Why not?
The days went by fast, but overall it felt like we ran a marathon in slow-motion. By my calculations, we walked for over 20h and 30 miles that week. It may not sound that extreme, but our legs were jell-o when we left. We visited Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom (we should have spent way more time there, it was a very photogenic place in its whole fakeness, tree of life, little Asia and all), Holywood Studios, Blizzard beach, Downtown Disney and both Universal Studios parks and their downtown area. The only park that we skipped entirely was Epcot, I am afraid to say that we wanted to leave some for next time... In 15 years, maybe, because overall it was an exhausting trip and it barely qualified as "rest".
Plus, we totally hated the food. We hated it with a vengeance, by the end of the trip, the lack of healthy choices was taking its toll on our mood. The only place where we found affordable and healthy greens was a restaurant called Sweet Tomatoes, but since it was outside the resort, it was not very convenient. The point of staying at the resort was to avoid taking the car out of the parking lot, so there was that. We settled on the croissants, the chicken fingers, the burritos and the tie-dye cheesecake that left our mouths and teeth blue for the rest of the day (hint, eat it before going to bed). In a week we took three trips to Sweet Tomatoes and one to some Argentinian All You Can Eat Meat Buffet to feed the animal in us. There was no way we could have done better with the time we had. I think we all went a bit cuckoo by the end.
How else would you explain this??
Assimilated
Oh well, what can I say, it was indeed a trip of a lifetime. Boys said it was the best Christmas present ever, but I am still dreaming about Hawaii. Maybe if they pick me at the Kona lottery... I should start saving NOW. Anyway, let's go back to our adventures in Mickeyland. Not sure what else I can say about it, maybe I should let the pictures speak for themselves.
Twilight Zone!
Some disturbing looking dudes
As much as I like Hulk, this one had way too long waiting times
Early morning Magic Mist
Hide and seek
Monster hug
Maybe the perfect picture to sum up this trip:
Magic no more
Sad, not. Overwhelmed, yes. Even though here I just couldn't keep my eyes open due to the sun, the feeling was there. I don't know how some people do this every year. I think I'd like to go back there some day, maybe to run those back to back half and full marathons, more for the medals than anything else. Also, if we go back, we won't go as the same time as the half of the planet, the winter holidays are probably the worst. It was well worth for the fireworks, but man... life is too short to spend it waiting in line. Ok, stop bitching already. We asked for adventure, we got it. We asked for warm weather, we got it. We asked for family time, we got it. Overall, we really enjoyed ourselves and have no regrets whatsoever. Plus we got to see our friends in Philly and cross so many states, I can brag that I've seen at least a tenth of the United States. :-)
Happy Anniversary to us!! Happy New Year to you!!
Where to next? There is more, oh yes... come back later this week and you will see.
