Various Travels

I will be in China a week from now. As I said before, I’m not really looking forward to the trip for various reasons. One is the fact that I’ll be away from Dave for 12 days. :( I wish he could go with me, although it would be expensive and he would be so bored.

Anyway, I was thinking about the whole thing and realized that Dave and I have had a lot of great adventures together so far. So I reflected on the vacations we’ve taken in the past.

In June of 2005, we went to New York City to see the musical Wicked. We actually planned that before we were dating, as friends and by the time we went on the trip we were dating. That trip was a lot of fun. Wicked was awesome, and we went to the ticket booths near the singing cowboy in underwear, and got cheap tickets to see Dirty Rotten Scoundrels as well. I also went to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island for the first time.

For New Year’s 2005/2006, we traveled with the Woodland Hills High School marching band to Arizona. I went to the Grand Canyon for the first time. It was beautiful! I was also actually considered part of the staff for the band and I had a lot of fun helping them out. I caught a cold on that trip though and was pretty miserable for a few days, but we celebrated New Year’s 3 times (in 3 different time zones) and I met some really nice people (Jen and Rachel), who were my roommates for the trip.

In September of 2006, we went with Dave and Kristy to Disney World in Florida. We stayed in Pop Century, one of the Value Resorts. We were there eight days, so we ended up spending 2 days in each park. I’m still not sure which is my favorite, but we’re planning on going back in 2009 with the Hotecks, so maybe we’ll decide then. (Our goal is to drink around the world in Epcot.) We rode Expedition Everest, the new roller coaster in Animal Kingdom. The first day we were there, we rode in the very first seat, and the lines were short so we went on it three times in a row, literally! Just walked through the line and pretty much got right back on.

Our next trip was to San Diego in March of 2007. I had just put in notice at my last job and it was a bit stressful, so it was nice to get away. Dave had a conference there for work, so I tagged along and had a few days of fun by myself while he was at the conference. (One of those days I got a pedicure, which was so relaxing!) We went to the San Diego zoo and saw the pandas, which was really cool. And the weather was nice and warm, as it always is in San Diego. We wanted to go to Mexico one of the days, but that didn’t work out. We didn’t bring birth certificates and we didn’t want to get to the border and be turned away. Maybe next time…

For New Year’s 2007/2008, we got tickets on New Years day to see the Winter Classic at the Buffalo Bills stadium. The Penguins played the Sabres outside and it was a great game! Ended in a shoot out and we won, so it was perfect. Anyway, Dave and I decided to make a trip of it and went to Niagara Falls the night before. It was VERY cold but we saw fireworks above the falls, which were amazing! The first set we saw on the Canadian side, and we crossed over to the American side just before midnight, to avoid the rush. (It was the first time I got to use my passport!) Anyway, just as we crossed they shot off the 2nd set of fireworks and we saw them as well. I won money again in a casino (oh the first time was in Las Vegas during our trip to Arizona when we were there for a layover) and got a Hard Rock Café glass with it. I didn’t say I won a significant amount of money, just that I won! The ride back to Pittsburgh was pretty bad- it was in a snowstorm and we saw first hand that New York takes much better care of roads in the winter than Pennsylvania does. There were a number of cars and other vehicles off the road on the way back and it took almost twice as long as it would have in good weather.

In March of 2008 I tagged along with Dave again for his annual work conference, which was in Disney World, for a much needed vacation from everything. We stayed in the All Star Music resort, which was really neat. Dave was there all week and I joined him basically for the weekend because I didn’t have a lot of vacation to spare. It was nice to just relax in the sun and hang out at the parks for a little bit.

Dave and I spent our honeymoon in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, at the foot of the Smoky Mountains in April 2008. Again, that was a relaxing vacation. I loved it. We rented a cabin between Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge. The cabin had a Jacuzzi inside, hot tub outside, big screen TV upstairs with a bar next to it, and a game room with a pool table and air hockey table. We had a lot of fun in the cabin, and even caught one of the Penguins Stanley Cup playoff games on the big screen TV. We stopped at a liquor store and stocked the bar a little bit, and grilled out in the backyard a few times. Two of the highlights of the week were a hummer ride in the Smoky Mountains and a trip to Oak Ridge to see the graphite reactor. Yep, real honeymoon activities, right? LOL. Oh and the Smokey Mountains were absolutely beautiful.

Our latest “vacation” was a work trip for me where Dave tagged along. I went to a conference in Portoroz, Slovenia for work in September of 2008. We flew up on Sunday, arrived on Monday, and the conference was Tuesday through Thursday. I gave a poster presentation on Wednesday and attended the sessions all three of the conference days. Met a nice group of Italian guys I ended up sitting next to for a lot of the sessions and we also went on a boat ride along the Adriatic coast of Slovenia. And Dave and I managed to make it to this cute town, Piran, two of the evenings. I thoroughly enjoyed Piran. It reminded me of what I picture of Italy with narrow streets and spectacular views of the sea and town. (I believe Piran used to be part of Italy but it’s now part of Slovenia.) Then we spent the weekend in Venice, Italy, since we were already close. We ended up getting an apartment for those two nights, which made it feel a bit like we actually lived there. We took a gondola ride, which I have ALWAYS wanted to do, and took in some of the sights. I think my favorite was St. Mark’s Basicila actually. And we saw the building that was used to film part of Casino Royale, which was really neat.

I have a lot of good vacation memories with Dave already. And I’m looking forward to more and wishing Dave could go to China with me. But I’m sure we’re going to have a lot more trips in the future and it’s always fun to travel with Dave.