Sentimental Seadragon

Family Vacation

This week we drove six hours each way to get to Williamsburg and didn't ever step foot in the historical Colonial center. In fact, we hardly left the grounds of the timeshare complex.

Then we went to DC for a night and also saw nothing.

Normally when J and I travel, we spend as little time as possible in our hostel or hotel. We are usually there for the destination, and have yet to take a vacation where the goal is relaxation.

But family vacations are different.

My dad arranged for our extended family (my mom's side) to stay in three apartments in a timeshare complex for four nights. The apartments were incredibly spacious (the bedroom and bathroom combination that was just for me, J and Squeakles was close in size to our Philadelpia apartment), and the complex included two pools (one just for adults) and a miniature golf course.

Actually, I think that J and I did the least amount of sightseeing of the group. Some people went to the beach (an hour away), others went to Colonial Williamsburg (and came back complaining that it was so boring that they couldn't bear to finish using their two day passes), and some went to Busch Gardens (which I hear was a lot of fun but also really expensive). But Squeakles and J and I just hung out with family at the timeshare and also did a little bit of local outlet shopping. And it was fun!

I also had fun taking pictures (big surprise, I know).

I have been recently been following the Wall Street Journal Photo Journal and I've found that I really like the style of photography. It's not just the subject matter (though of course that matters), but I think what I was noticing is that a lot of the pictures are shot with a very wide angle lens and taken very close up. So you feel like you're right there, but because it's wide angle, you're not just getting a close up of someone's face - you can see everything. So on this trip I tried to shoot primarily with wide angle and I tried my best to get up close, though that turns out to be somewhat uncomfortable to do sometimes - I found myself popping up and then slinking away. I also found it difficult to take pictures of Squeakles splashing in the pool - he managed to spray water all the way across the kiddie pool so it was a little dangerous to be that close with my camera.

Some highlights from our trip:

• We played miniature golf. I came into the game when they were halfway through (because I'd stayed behind while Squeakles was napping) and, even if you didn't adjust for the fact that I'd only played half of the holes, I still lost. I even lost to my sister who was playing in high heels.
   
  
   
• We took Squeakles to the kiddie pool where he waded around and splashed water. We also took him into in the big pool, which he loved.
   
  
  
  
   
• We tried to teach Squeakles everyone's names and he was more than willing to try to pronounce them all. The best was the pronounciation he gave to my sister Erika and her husband Tony: "Kaka" and "Dudu".
   
• We went out for sushi and it was the best I've had in a long time.
   
• We went out for ribs and it wasn't the best I've ever had, but it wasn't bad. I don't think my family was too impressed with it, but Squeakles loved the cornbread and was "mmmm mmm"-ing over the corn on the cob.
   
• I'm not sure if this is a highlight or a lowlight actually. There were ducks and geese everywhere. The timeshare complex had people whose job it was to go around all day and scoop up the poop on all of the walkways. J and I went out for a run (at the hottest point of the hottest day because we're smart like that) and we had to dodge poop and birds as we ran. Digusting. However, there were baby ducks and they were very cute.
   
  
   
• Squeakles has suddenly started saying a lot more than he had been a month ago. It's like he's had a cognitive explosion and now he uses adjectives and prepositions and he loves to describe not only things but situations. These are my favorite new words: "silly" (when he or anyone else does something he finds amusing), "ahh" (it means hot, and he says it for anything that is warm, like food or the buckles on his car seat), "wheel", "oh no!" (wailed pitifully whenever something goes wrong, like when my dad closed the bathroom door so he couldn't get in), "whee" (while looking up and circling his arm and outstretched finger around like the overhead fan), "lowey" or "logey" (Lucas), "gasses" (glasses), and "down down down" (usually in response to us lowering something from above).

And now we are home and need to unpack, clean the litter boxes, sweep/vacuum, and go grocery shopping.

Florida Beach

As we're enjoying the lovely cool temperatures of early fall here in Philadelphia, I thought I would post pictures from our trip last week to the Florida gulf coast.

We stayed in a house right on the beach, courtesy of a friend of J's mom.

It was a lovely private beach, and for some reason it was almost entirely empty the entire time. (Maybe because it is September?)

Squeakles walked on the beach,

and delighted in the water as it came up over his feet.

But as you can see, because of Hurricane Ike just a few days before, the waves were a little big for a six and a half month old.

It only rained once, ending with a beautiful rainbow. (Actually, it's a double rainbow. Can you see the second rainbow on top?)

We also saw a beautiful sunset.

The End.

Brazil: Paraty (II)

I wrote this post at least a week ago and for some reason never actually published it. I may not finish with all of my Brazil pictures and stories... Will you be disappointed? I think it's fun to talk about a trip right when I get back, but then life goes on and I have other things to talk about. Anyway, here's what might be the last post about Brazil.

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Since the historical center of Paraty is so small (and did I mention touristy), it's not somewhere you'd (I'd) really want to spend days in. But it's in a beautiful location on the coast of Brazil between Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. On our first full day there we went on a schooner tour of the islands just off the coast. I think there are supposed to be at least 300 islands, but of course, we didn't go to them all. We sailed past many of them as we headed out and then stopped at two islands (ostensibly to swim, but it was too cold for that) and stopped near a couple of others (presumably to swim and snorkel, but no one on our boat was having that either). Still, the views were incredibly beautiful and it was a wonderful relaxing few hours.

The day started off perfectly sunny, but with nice fluffy clouds in the sky.

If you are doing any web research on Paraty, this is the view of the town that you will find displayed on every website. (Well, it's usually a bit closer up than this, but I didn't bring my telephoto lens.)

Shortly after heading out, the boat owners or drivers or whoever they were started announcing some things in Portuguese. Since I don't speak Portuguese, I wasn't listening very closely, but then I heard my name and soon someone came over a thrust a caipirinha into my hand. J got one too. Apparently we had won the free drink raffle.

The first beach we stopped at (Praia Vermelha) looked very small, but once we took the little inflatable raft to shore, we found that we only had time to walk up and down it once before being called back to the boat.

This couple in the first picture is not us, but I took it mainly because of the woman's bikini. Well, that and the view of the beach. But with regards to the bikini, I was interested to see that everyone wore a string bikini, regardless of body size or shape. J and I looked out of place in our practically full-body suits in comparison.

The rest of the afternoon was filled with the same. Stopping at a beach, stopping near a beautiful island, having lunch on the boat, etc.

After a while, the sun and fluffy clouds disappeared and the sky became very overcast. But it was still beautiful.

Brazil: Paraty (I)

Moving on from my love of the Pousada Guarana, I'll show you a little of what we did while we were in Paraty.

The colonial historic center of Paraty is very cute, but a bit touristy. We enjoyed walking around, but I could imagine that if the streets were thronged with other tourists that I wouldn't like it at all. One of the nights we were there was a Saturday night, and I felt like it was a fake town. No one seemed to actually live there - it was just restaurants and gift shops and pousadas and tourists walking around on the cobbled streets. (Cobbled streets is generous. Some of them are just plain rocky, and after a while, it gets tiring to walk around!) At one point we wandered outside of the center and discovered the "real" Paraty, which was much poorer looking, but also much more real. We didn't go that far into it though because I was carrying my dSLR (in a bag) and we just weren't sure how safe it would be (read on the internet about safety in Brazil and you'll never want to step foot in the country!).

Anyway, the historical center is very cute, so here are some pictures I took while we were wandering around (again, click to enlarge)...

when high tides flooded the streets and then receded

shopping

            

and, walking around at night.

            

Brazil: Pousada Guarana

After J and I finished the work part of the trip, we headed to Paraty for some relaxation and prettier scenery.

We stayed just outside the historic center of town at the Pousada Guarana. We picked this place because we'd read reviews saying the owners were extremely nice and helpful that the breakfast was fantastic, and it was all true. Also, since it is winter in Brazil right now, there weren't a lot of people in town and at the pousada, only one other room was taken besides ours. So it was definitely peaceful.

Here are some pictures around the pousada: the shutters that they closed every night for privacy and so the sun wouldn't wake us up (not that there was anything they could do about the nearby rooster that crowed early every morning), delicious eggs in the morning cooked up by the pousada owners, the obligatory pousada pool (which we didn't use), hammocks on the back patio, and one of the four friendly cats (this is Matisse).

          

Just a word about the cats. Since I've been missing my own cats, I was really thrilled when I discovered that one of the cats (I already forget his name) at the pousada was a real cuddler. We only saw him at night when we got back from wherever we'd been out for the day, and I would squat down to pet him and he just loved it and soon jumped into my lap (I learned the second day to sit down if I was going to pet him). It was very cute.

In addition to this pousada being a very nice place to stay, the owners really went out of their way to help us out. When we decided to walk with our bags from the bus station and got lost, they came and picked us up. (We'd stopped at a laundromat where they called the pousada for us to help us find out where it was.) They also booked a spot for us on a schooner tour, and when we were running too late to make it to the boat on time, they drove us down to the pier. And they even helped us book our next hotel in Rio.

I'm sure this little review is not all that interesting to regular readers of this blog (sorry!), but I guess I'm kind of hoping that someone interested in this pousada will stumble on this post and will be more likely to stay there! (P.S. If anyone is reading this who is considering staying at the pousada, the only "con" I would say about this place is that it's not right in the historic center. It's about a 20 minute walk into town. I really liked this because the historic center is very touristy and it's kind of nice to be able to visit it and then walk away, but if you really want to fall out of your hotel and into a restaurant, then this pousada requires a little walk or a $5 taxi ride each way.)

Brazil: Santos

We're back from Brazil and I thought that I would use the momentum of having literally hundreds of photos from the trip to start posting here again. I'll start at the beginning of the trip since those are the pictures I've got ready to post...

So the original reason we planned this trip to Brazil is because J was presenting at a conference there. I talked to a few people at my grad institution who sent out a couple emails on my behalf, and soon enough I was invited to give a couple talks myself. So first we went to the town of Santos, Brazil for J's conference, and then we went to São Paulo for my talks. The first pictures I have are from this first half of the trip, and there aren't many of them because we were both busy most of the time.

Also, I had read a lot about crime in Brazil and I was pretty much terrified of bringing my camera out in public. I read a lot of reports of people getting mugged at knifepoint for their cameras or wallets, and even though the likelihood is that they would just take our stuff and leave us alone, I still wasn't thrilled at the prospect of handing over my baby (my camera). So the pictures below were taken from the plane and then from the bus we took from São Paulo to Santos. (I broke out my camera later, as you will see.)

So first, here is the view from the airplane as we neared São Paulo. I know aerial views from the plane are cliche, but it was so beautiful I couldn't help it. (Click the pictures to enlarge them.)

And here is a picture of an empty billboard, which I know, by itself is pretty boring. But if you didn't know, São Paulo banned billboard advertising last year. I took this photo from the bus we took from the São Paulo airport to the town of Santos, about an hour south. (Or well, it's about 65 miles south of São Paulo. But the bus trip took three hours because São Paulo has no beltway so we spent a lot of time sitting in traffic, and it made a stop at the domestic airport before finally leaving the city.)

Although I was excited to see Brazil after a very long overnight flight (and a several hour layover in NYC before we even left the country), I just couldn't stay awake on the bus to Santos. But every now and then as we passed by a particularly pretty area of forest, or a view of the valleys that fell away immediately at the edge of the road that our bus was speeding on, J would squeeze my leg to wake me up. I'd groggily appreciate the view, take a couple pictures, and then fall back asleep. I can only assume he woke me up to see these shanty houses because I really don't remember where along the trip they were. He tells me they were as we approached Santos.

And finally, I have very little of Santos to show, which is a shame because they do have a very pretty beach. But I didn't take my camera when we went out to see it, so instead I have to show you this photo I took from our hotel window. On the rooftop of a building adjoining the hotel, we heard some squawking and soon discovered a rooster, two geese, and three white rabbits. They just hung out together on the roof all day and night, and in the morning, of course, the rooster crowed and crowed and woke us up.

I don't have that much more to say about Santos, except that it's kind of a dirty city and there wasn't all that much to see. We actually didn't even go to the historic center, though J's boss went and he seemed to think we hadn't missed much. There were two highlights of our stay there. One was the hotel, with its lovely rooftop pool (though I didn't go in because it's winter in Brazil right now and it wasn't very warm). And the other was J's conference dinner party, which was held in an old (no longer functional) casino at the top of a hill overlooking the city. They had live Brazilian music, which I feared would be annoyingly touristy, but actually, it was the Brazilians who loved it. They hardly sat the whole time - they were dancing and singing the entire night, while it was the Americans who were upstairs on the roof just sitting and talking with their beers and caipirinhas.

The only other thing I have to say about Santos is that this is where I discovered and fell in love with sucos. This is "just" fruit juice, but wow, it is amazing. Basically they take fresh fruit and throw it in a juicer with some water (or ice) and you get the freshest juice ever. Every place we went had at least ten different juices to choose from, such as orange, pineapple, mango, strawberry, lemon, lime, passionfruit, watermelon, other kinds of melow, cashew (seriously), etc.