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Day #2: Waikiki

Mar 13th, 2016 by

Our day started early (due to jet lag) with the breakfast buffet at our hotel. Being an Elite Marriott member, the $29.95/pp “international breakfast buffet” was free of charge. The food was decent and eating outside was nice. So at a cost of free, it was a great deal, but at $30 bucks per person, umm, not so much.

We spent the morning at the beach on Waikiki, which is really one of the more spectacular and pleasant beaches in the world (at least in a highly touristed destination). This is especially true across from our hotel, where the beach area is fully sheltered by a wall. 

 

Waikiki Beach


In the afternoon, we visited the Waikiki Aquarium. Although it’s modest in size, I was impressed by the aquarium’s quality and emphasis on Hawaii’s native marine life and associated ecosystem. It also seemed that this might prove to be a good introduction to our future aquatic activities.
 

Waikiki Aquarium


Toward evening, we attended the finale parade for the Honolulu Festival, which (knowing nothing about it) appears to be some sort of Pacific Rim cross cultural event. We watched the parade both from street level and later from the 4th story balcony of a Mexican restaurant where we ate.
 
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Watching the parade…

After dinner, I took Emerson to have a proper Hawaiian shave ice. Unlike with a snow cone, top-quality shave ice establishments use syrups made of natural fruits rather than from flavored and colored corn syrup.

Strawberry shave ice…

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Day #1: To Hawaii

Mar 12th, 2016 by

Having completed our country and continent goals, we’re turning our attention to finishing up all 50 US States this year. Thus, we found ourselves on an early morning Delta departure for Honolulu via Los Angeles today. Unfortunately, our connection time in LA got compressed due to schedule changes, giving us only 35 minutes between flights (assuming an on-time arrival). While I do this sort of thing regularly for business travel, I don’t enjoy the stress when I’m on vacation with the girls. 

Sure enough, our inbound flight landed on time but got trapped on the taxiway due to gridlock at LAX. So, I called Delta and reserved us seats on a later flight. The fact that I could secure these seats seemed to cause the airline gods to see the futility in their endeavor to thwart me and thus they delayed our outbound flight by 30 minutes. So, despite the added stress and mad sprinting between terminals, we ended up boarding with time to spare.

The rest of the trip was uneventful, even pleasant, aboard a newly retrofitted Delta 757. We arrived in Honolulu about 30 minutes late and proceeded to our hotel in Waikiki. The Marriott gave us a free upgrade (nice) to a “premium oceanview room,” which was a nice touch. 

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Arriving in Honolulu


After checking in, we dropped off our stuff and headed down to Waikiki beach to explore a little and find dinner. Having not been to Hawaii in about 30 years, I didn’t know what to expect, but my first impression was that is was largely familiar though not unchanged. What do I mean? Well, Waikiki feels like it’s lost a bit of its local flavor, replaced by international (mostly higher-end luxury) brands and chain restaurants. One example: the International Marketplace has closed and will be replaced by a Saks Fifth Ave. department store, which is currently under construction.

After contemplating dining options (Cheesecake Factory? P.F. Chang?), we settled on Roy’s, which at least comes from Hawaii and represents its regional cuisine. Dinner was generally very good (ultra fresh seafood), albeit a bit pricey. We strolled back to our hotel and called it a night, generally feeling good to be (back, for me) in Hawaii. 

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Day #3: NH, ME

Sep 8th, 2015 by

After waking up on this fine Labor Day, we checked out of our hotel and headed into downtown Concord for breakfast: coffee and bagels.

From there, we drove north to the Lakes Region on New Hampshire, which I understand is a popular destination for vacationers / weekend homes. We started our exploration in Laconia, a surprisingly big town given its seeming remoteness. We then moved on to the village of Weirs Beach, which felt the most obviously touristy of areas in the Lakes Region.

 

Weirs Beach, NH

 
From Weirs Beach, we had a pleasant drive around the southern shoreline of Lake Winnipesaukee to Wolfeboro, which is a lovely town that seemed a bit more refined than Weirs Beach.

 

Wolfeboro, NH

 
After strolling the town, we drove north toward the White Moutains and then hung a right for Portland, ME. We reached Portland around 2pm, dropped off our car, and headed to the Portland Museum of Art (which is just down the street from my Portland office at RxAnte). While it’s recognized as one of New England’s best museums, I found its collection a bit uneven and not especially strong in our interests.

After the museum, we headed to Novare Res Bier Cafe for a drink and snack before exploring the quaint shops in Old Port. For dinner, we thought about going go Duck Fat, but the wait was too long and we didn’t like the scene (share tables) generally. Instead we went to Zapoteca, which is one of my favorite Mexican restaurants anywhere. It also makes awesome cocktails, including fruit and habanero-infused margaritas. Ole!

 

Wasting away again in Portland…

  

Awesome salsa trio…

 Today’s box score: +1 state (ME).

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Day #2: CT, MA, VT, NH

Sep 7th, 2015 by

We started our day with coffees and pastries from the hotel’s Starbucks before heading to the Wadsworth Atheneum for its opening at 10am. 

The Wadsworth has an outstanding collection of works and represents a leading and innovative institution. Having visited there before and owning a good portion of their 1964 portfolio Ten Works by Ten Painters, I feel a connection to the place. Today’s visit was especially enjoyable because Libby and I literally never saw another patron during our time at the museum. The highlight for me today was discovering an artist, Ana Mendiata, who’s thought provoking work and premature death (some believe at the hands of famed minimalist sculptor Carl Andre) make for fascinating subjects.

 

Op Art

 
After the Wadsworth, we drove to Amherst, MA to see the UMASS campus and visit the Emily Dickinson home. UMASS Amherst exists in a bucolic setting of seemingly small-ish farms. Despite the rural location, the town of Amherst seems very livable thanks to the university’s influence (note to self: consider buying summer home in college town).

The Emily Dickinson Muesum is located in town on Main St. While not especially large by the standards of today’s McMansions, the houses would have been quite grand in their day. Emily’s life and work–which I must confess I hadn’t contemplated since high school–made for a fascinating subject, especially as we once again were by ourselves on a “group tour” of the home. 

 

Emily Dickinson’s home


From Amherst, we drove north to Vermont to visit the town of Brattleboro, a bastion of aging hippies and alternative hipsters. Brattleboro is located in a fantastic setting and has an interesting downtown filled with an electric mix of antique shops, art galleries, and cafés. We did a little shopping here (window and otherwise) before moving on to our hotel about an hour away in Concord, NH. Though we only spent a couple of hours in southeastern Vermont, we really liked it and want to come back to this state (even the visitor’s center was spectacular). 

 

Downtown Brattleboro, VT


Concord, despite being the capital of NH, feels like a pretty small town (imagine Tallahassee without FSU). So, by 7 o’clock or so on a Sunday night most of downtown was closed. Fortunately, Dos Amigos Burritos was still open on Main St. And turned out to be a great choice for a quick, tasty dinner of unusual burritos (loco chili and buffalo chicken, respectively). For desert, we had donuts from Rao’s that we’d bought back in Amherst. 

Today’s box score: +2 states (VT, NH)

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Day #1: MA, RI, CT

Sep 5th, 2015 by

A while ago, Libby and I figured out that we could get the 157×50 project done by age 40, but we’re horribly deficient in our state count. We’re now on a quest to do this and have three (maybe four) remaining trips to make it happen. 

This weekend we’re visiting New England. All of it. 

Today we flew on JetBlue from Tampa to Boston, leaving around 11am — a late departure but the best we could do for a direct flight. We rented a car at Logan and drove down to Rhode Island to visit the RISD (Rhode Island School of Design) Museum. The collection on display isn’t huge, but it’s reasonably encyclopedic and rather interesting (such as an early, small-scale Pollock drip painting).

 

RISD Museum


After our visit to the museum and RISD campus, we walked around the neighborhood and also checked out Brown University, which is located just up the hill. It was actually a really fun weekend to visit both schools as classes are just getting ready to start: lots of energy on campus with proud parents depositing their precocious offspring. 

It was difficult not to be smitten with Providence: 
 

Providence, RI

 

We left Providence around 5:30 and headed to Hartford, CT. It was a pleasant drive through small towns. Driving along, we found some evidence (confederate flags, aggressively pro firearm signs) of an underbelly of white nationalism / militia-types, which surprised us a bit outside of the South. Indeed, one of the towns seemed to have a small controversy brewing involving a proposed “para-military” / firearms training facility with many residents and businesses voicing their opposition in copious yard signs. 

We arrived at the Marriott in downtown Hartford around 7pm. I’ve stayed here numerous time during my days at IVANS, given Hartford’s prominence in the insurance industry. 

We had dinner at Bear’s Smokehouse, a local southern BBQ joint, that was nearby. They served very respectable, high quality ‘cue and sides in sizable portions: only problem was limited availability of meat selections having sold out earlier in the day. Dessert was awesome: a chocolate, genache-filled, maple syrup, bacon cupcake. 

Bacon on my cupcake!

All in all, a good day!

Today’s box score: +3 states (MA, RI, CT)

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