May 28, 2015
eemusings called me out for not having more pasta in my last posts, and she was right, I just forgot where I’d stashed the pasta pictures!
Am I the only one who is always disappointed when ordering ravioli? Not because it’s not tasty as all get out but because everyone thinks that six-seven ravioli is a meal! Don’t look surprised when I then consume 3 loaves of bread to fill up because six ravioli, no matter the size, is hardly a snack. Seriously, what adult is satiated with 6 bites of delectable filled pasta?
Italia: The less frugal adventure
Food and fun in Italy: Part 2
April 22, 2015
We recently experienced a little improvement in quality of life, and so decided to take on another challenge.
Since none of my family had met the newbie yet, and his family was ready to take another crack at it, we loaded up a rental and drove down the coast. Here’s how it went….
Night 1: we left an hour and a half behind schedule. I blame Enterprise. They botched pickup, they didn’t have the car at the location even after I confirmed with them two days in advance AND they didn’t have a clean car ready to go when PiC finally arrived at the 2nd location where the cars were allegedly ready. They threw us exactly 1.5 hours behind.
We rented a minivan because STUFF and we wanted to be safer w/Seamus and LB. I hate not being able to crate him for the drive but there is no way to fit a Seamus-sized crate in the car. A truck, sure, but I’m not a fan of popping the dog in the truck bed, exposed to the elements. And LB, of course, requires a car seat and numerous other accoutrements. We tried to minimize as much as possible and consider this a learning experience for future packing.
I haaate running out of diapers and paying full price so I packed nearly 100. For 5.5 days away. It’s called pooperation, alright? I also packed twice as many doggy poo bags as Seamus could use. Very little worse than being stuck in a shitty situation with no clean up available.
Surprise: LB still hates being strapped into the car seat and hates sitting still in the car but loves freeway driving. We prepared our souls for multiple stops and screaming, instead ze slept the whole first 4 hour leg.
Day 2: we made an extra stop on Leg 2, making it 2 of 3 stretches before we made it the Home Base and that 45 minute delay put us in the middle of hellish traffic. 2:30 and like a bloody spider, GPS showed traffic stretched out every direction from the body of LA. Of course. It was a quick tutorial in why we can never move back. Every trip would take at least 45 minutes, if not 2 hours, because our friends and family are scattered everywhere.
LB ran out of “sitting in a car seat, putting up with freeway” steam at the tail end of Leg 3 so we rode the rest of the way serenaded by hir increasingly ragged roars. We slept pretty well that night, when we slept. It was a parody of our routine at home: sleep til ze wakes, one stumbles to get the bottle and the other weaves over to the sofa with hir, both collapse while ze is fed and patted back down. Stay on the sofa the rest of the night.
Day 3: Most of the morning and afternoon was spent recovering from the long drive and then ze finally met part of my family that night. Ze was full of chatter and what we call “crab bubbles” and then crashed hard.
We got to visit with some friends briefly that evening, and wind down almost like regular people, except we had to keep checking on LB since we didn’t bring a monitor.
Day 4 was the most intense day. We had a morning to early afternoon engagement, a small reunion, and ze decided that since we had to be up at 715 anyway, why not get up at 620 and stay up?
Thanks to, again, SoCal traffic, we didn’t get home til after 3, and then it was back out again for a dinner. This dragged on far longer than was civilized for a tiny infant and ze passed out in the car. Blessedly, this was the night of the long sleep. Ze actually stayed asleep for 8 hours. Hadn’t happened before, hasn’t happened since. But boy did we need it.
Day 5 was one last hurrah gathering of family and arguably the best one. LB was whisked away by Grandma, only to be seen again when hungry, then whooshed off to a cuddle and feeding with Grandpa. Aunts and Great Grandma finished up the rounds of baby passing and ze fell asleep in PiC’s arms. I don’t see this branch of the family often enough and boy do I miss them. Ze was also surprised with a handful of amazingly timed baby gifts: all things ze needed and I hadn’t even thought to mention them to anyone. Psychic family, I tell ya.
Logistics!
Packing. We were pretty sure that we overpacked but didn’t want to take the risk that going too minimalist would be to my detriment. I can only handle so much manual stuff, before you factor in the stress of travel, disrupted routines, and the energy drain of socializing.
Turns out we didn’t need: the spare cozy blanket (we brought two heavy/cozy and one light blankets, 2 were used regularly); the baby carriers (we were too tired to wear hir); a picnic blanket. I could also have packed about 10 fewer diapers but let’s never skimp on packing diapers because I don’t want to pay full price or live with regrets.
Feeding the Bean. I planned to do combination pumping and formula for hir feeding so we could be flexible. Turned out we didn’t need most of our handy formula packets. When I didn’t have enough prepumped milk packed, I nursed hir, and most days I was able to get nearly 20 oz in just two pumping sessions. Really quite convenient.
Costs. The car rental was nearly $400, and of course we had to fill up about three times. We stayed at places with breakfast provided and packed enough food and drinks along in our cooler so that we only paid for takeout twice. The convenience of not having to cram everything into our smaller cars and risking things falling over on Seamus or fighting with squeezing stuff into every inch was so worth that outlay.
March 16, 2015
By special request, more pictures from Italy! In no particular order ….
February 25, 2015
Long have we been talking about going to Italy, long has it been out of reach. Until we recently made it happen.
I wanted to take a leisurely time to sightsee in Florence and the Cinque Terre region, but our time constraints put paid to that notion. We did a bit of criss-crossing through the country to keep it interesting instead.
We skipped the rental Ferrari experience, instead opting to put the Italian rail system through their paces for all the big hauls. I bargain hunted for train tickets, carefully mapping each stage of our journey so we could buy tickets on discount sites before departure. Cheaper AND nicer trains = two thumbs up (but not that cheap, it still cost almost $300 for the two of us just for that part of transit).
The rides varied from excellent to terrible.
Italo, privately owned rail: Ferrari inspired design, air conditioned cars with free WiFi, ability to reserve seats and second class was as good as first from what I could tell. SUPER fast. Bonus: space agey bathrooms! Clean and sleek.
Frecciarossa, government owned rail: standard type commuter design, air conditioned cars with free WiFi, comfortable and relatively quiet. Didn’t use the bathroom so not sure how that was.
Regional rail: terrible. Just terrible. We were crammed like sardines in a botulism ridden tin, our car had no air conditioning for a 2+ hour ride in 80+ degree heat. People were sitting on the stairs in an effort to avoid passing out. Bonus: we survived. We saved a lot of money as these were the cheapest of the lot but I would have been happy to pay the $200 for a private car had I expected that. (Then again… I’m notoriously cheap sometimes…)
So obviously we compromised where we didn’t care much about the thing to save money but NOT on food. I simply wasn’t going to make the effort to go on such a big trip while uncomfortable AND deprive myself. We brought a lot of snacks for travel days and lunches, planning to have breakfast at our hotels where they were providing breakfast without extra cost, and eat dinner out.
Experience-wise, that was the best choice I think, as I picked places with pretty fantastic breakfast spreads.
We, not even kidding, breakfasted for three hours one morning! We might have looked like gauche and greedy Americans but I never got that feeling from the amazing and so-very- friendly breakfast servers. My money is on they were humoring the then visibly pregnant lady. 🙂 By the time we left, we had bonded with Maria who was super excited about LB and had to give us hugs before we left. We were both disappointed that we wouldn’t see each other (and that glorious breakfast!) the next day.
We got to know some awesome restauranteurs of smaller establishments, and were repeat diners at the best of them. Dinner was a serious business. 🙂 I didn’t enjoy any wine but I rarely care about that. I did, however, feel deprived over the prosciutto! Still: pastas, fresh fish, pastries, pies, random “fast food”, pizza … So. Good. So very good.
Travel Costs
We managed to cash flow both trips even though we spent more than annually budgeted for travel back in 2013 and a also bit more, well, not recklessly but more freely than usual. I chalked it up to the Pregnancy and “when are we going to do this again?” Tax.
Like the London trip, using our biggest pot of miles, British Airways, was pointless.
I did redeem a truckload of Chase Rewards points. I had the option of using them to book flights, hotels and car rentals directly for an extra 20% in points value but none of their options were any good for our destinations. We weren’t driving and none of the areas we planned to stay had anything useful on the list of redemption hotels.
The best value was booking lower cost, family-run hotels, then redeeming the points for cash to pay for them. All told, we cashed in enough points for about a thousand dollars which nicely defrayed the cost. And we earned yet more credit card points for charging the hotel bills – the circle of rewards points life!
We also used a big whack of our Starwood points for two luxury hotels priced at remarkably low redemption costs for the category rankings. I’ve never stayed at a Category 7 hotel and I’m not sure if we will again any time soon.
That was about twelve hundred dollars of value. If we didn’t pay with points, though, I’m sure we would have just stayed at cheaper hotels.
Fancy: that is indeed CNN you see in the television built into the mirror.
The weather was miserable for much of the trip, going from an unbearable sweltering to a grey gloom and downpour. Packing extra lightly meant I was ill prepared for both extremes, and even more so because I had put on another few pounds before leaving. I never knew what a difference a few pounds around the waistline made and I’ll never take my reasonably stable weight for granted again, if that ever comes back.
January 26, 2015
PiC and I finally went to London!
It was a short trip but we’d been talking about doing it for years and an opportunity came up that we couldn’t resist. Besides, with LB on the way, I don’t anticipate international trips figure large in our immediate future.
We had a good wander about: we explored Covent Garden, had fish and chips, and visited with some friends we don’t see often. I loved that display of Paddington Bears – for years, as a child who only explored other worlds through books, the adorable bear in a yellow hat represented England.
Due to my very limited energy, we saw a lot of things in passing but didn’t stop in for a full gander: Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, a statue of Abraham Lincoln (???), The British Museum. We waved at the London Eye, feeling too cheap and pressed for time to actually go up, that’ll be for another time when the weather is more certain.
We spent some time in a smaller neighborhood, exploring the local cuisine and shops, picking up more than a few specialty chocolates to bring home. I’d told PiC for years that chocolate from across the pond was different and he was more than willing to indulge in taste tests with me.
Next time – and there will be a next time! – I’d want to do a little bit more than we did this time but it was a good relaxing visit.
Usually when I travel internationally, I make it a point to learn to like a new food but this time was more about sharing my favorites with PiC.
Travel Costs
We flew British Airways coach, and while it was no great shakes back there in coach class, it was still better than our usual domestic airlines by a good stretch. Maybe not better than Virgin America Main Cabin Select, but we don’t often splurge on airfare, especially on international travel. Someday though, we’ll have enough money that first class won’t be but a drop in the bucket. SOMEDAY!
I tried to use miles for the flight but as it turns out, BA miles are pretty worthless for international flights. They’ll charge a fuel surcharge that is very nearly the same as the cost you’d have paid for the ticket out of pocket. I saved them for another time.
I did redeem a truckload of Chase Rewards points though. I had the option of using them to book flights, hotels and car rentals directly for an extra 20% boost in points but they weren’t any good for our destinations. We weren’t going to drive and none of the areas we’d planned to stay were on the list of redemption hotels.
The best value was to book lower cost hotels and just redeem the points for cash. We had enough bonus and regular points to redeem for a thousand dollars in cash which nicely defrayed some of the travel cost.
Experience-wise, that was the best choice I think, as I picked places with pretty fantastic breakfast spreads. Seriously I think we breakfasted for three hours one morning.
April 18, 2014
I’d never heard of the EMP Museum before our trip to Seattle, but they hosted a great booth showcasing a homebuilt TARDIS and offered a discount on entry when we were there, so of course we had to give it a go!
It was awesome.
I’m not really into music so failed to really appreciate the depth of the Nirvana exhibit but it was very well done, as was the MegaScreen featuring music videos and horror films (above).
My favorites: the Icons of Science Fiction and the Fantasy: Worlds of Myth and Magic exhibits.
The latter was behind a massive wood and iron door, Hobbit-like but for the height and weight of it. It’s a door you can shut, drop an iron bar across, and be safer and more secure behind than any flimsy modern door and bumpable lock. {I want that door.}
Inside the first corrider, some of the great tropes and tools of fantasy were showcased behind glass: Stormbringer, an Invisibility Cloak; beyond these a great dragon lay coiled around a curved “cave”, red eyes glowing, tail chained to the iron bars separating a resting monolith and an admiring public.
Our plan to give it a quick look-see devolved into spending half the afternoon wandering, oohing and aahing, and making up character cards with our faces and attributes on them. As you do.
In the Icons of Science Fiction exhibit, we were giddy over the Star Trek captain’s chair liberally doused with Tribbles; the replica Klingon bat’leth which made this shirt make so much more sense to PiC; the Dalek!
They played a hilarious short movie for the Time Travel category we’d never heard of and now love: Time Freak. You ought to see it, if you can. It was only ten minutes, but it had us in stitches. Great set up for a hilarious payoff.
Definitely worth the visit. I’d become a member if I were a local and they continued to have exhibits of this caliber.
April 11, 2014
PiC and I had the pleasure of spending a few days in Seattle. It was his first visit, my third, and we had a whole ambitious slate of things we wanted to explore. Predictably enough, my entire itinerary was foods and comics. His was a bit more high-brow: museums, nature, local sights.
We settled on a melange of friends, geekery, comics, trying great foods, and a little bit of sightseeing. Whatever we missed on this trip was added to the list for Next Time. There will be a next time!
And because I’m a sharing kind of person, some of my favorites:
Taylor Shellfish: Has limited seating, mainly high top tables and bar stools, probably fits about 25 people, if they’re awfully friendly, and their oysters are in open cases right next to the dining tables. It’s great. They have this fantastic chowder bar, offering two kinds of chowder, and for $6.50, you can have your fill of classic clam chowder or spicy geoduck chowder, and amazing dinner rolls.
I had to try their oysters, so that was a bit of a splurge as all oysters were > $2/each, and I think we all remember that I’m the greedy so and so who ordered FIFTY oysters the last time we oystered. No kidding, I broke PiC with that and this was the first time he’d even look at one since.
The Calf & Kid: A tiny cheese shop in the Melrose Market area, we literally stood there and gawked at all their cheeses. Egads I love cheese.
Cupcake Royale: We accompanied our friends to this coffee/cupcake/ice cream shop and good gravy but a regular cupcake priced at $3.65 is too rich for my blood. I had one anyway, vacation y’know, but it was just ok. Still, their designs were awesome.
Seattleites and Seattle experts: Do share any other must eat places that we should try Next Time!