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NYC adventures day #4 - p.m. tennis

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Oh, I forgot to talk about Flushing, from a couple of days prior to our last day. When we were touring around Queens eating ourselves silly, we found a bunch of time with no place to go and no room to eat. So, we wandered around the streets taking in the sights and the smells, and we ended up walking over to a park. I have rarely seen a park so ...used. There were soccer games going on - adult soccer games with families all up and down the sidelines. Kids were riding bikes in fountains that had been drained. There were ice cream vendors, grilling was going on, and oh, the music. I couldn't help myself because there was drumming, music, singing and dancing. We had moved over one block and instead of Asian communities, this was definitely Latin. Exactly where, I had no idea. I just wandered into the crowd and enjoyed being a part of it for about 5 minutes, then I noticed my family was wandering far away so I reluctantly caught up with my group but kind of wanted to be adopted b...
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NYC adventures Day #4 - the a.m. grumpies

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The trip was definitely winding down. Despite getting plenty of sleep in an excellent hotel bed, I woke up and was just...done. Done with walking and sightseeing. I had hit my travel wall. My feet weren't particularly sore, nor was any part of me in distress. It was more of a mental state and I was more generally overwhelmed by everything we had taken in but I had not been able to process. Although I was not surprised, the timing wasn't great, because we had to be out of the hotel by late that morning and we would then be out and about until our plane left....in the evening. As I mentioned before and what I know from experience but seem to to have still not learned the lesson, is this: if I don't schedule down time while traveling, there comes a bad day. Not only for me, but for the others with whom I am traveling. However, with such a short time in NYC and so much we definitely wanted to do, it is not clear what I would have changed. But I will firmly say this - I know...
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NYC adventures, Day #3

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This was the day we ate around the world!  We headed out to Queens (I believe we ended up in Jackson Heights) on the subway, and ended up finding Jeff's brother and his girlfriend on the very platform we were waiting on for a transfer. The morning started off with a light, sweet breakfast at a Colombian cafe (actually, I think I found it,  La Nueva Bakery on Yelp and the reviews reference that it is Uruguayan). I even used my very rusty Spanish (just a word here & there) to order say thank you I wish I had taken a photo of the cakes, as this place was primarily a bakery, with amazing cakes and tortes, although we did have savory empanadas and I adored them. I loved looking into the drink cooler and seeing all sorts of brands I had not seen before. A woman asked me to help her get a straw into a milk drink. It was crowded, delicious and a very fun way to start the day. Not soon after breakfast, we popped into an Indian restaurant down the road a couple of blocks, and t...
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NYC Adventures, Day #2

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Day 2: Midtown Central Park - Our hotel was close to the park, so we walked up there. The last time we had been there as a family we didn't give ourselves nearly enough time, so this was an open-ended experience. The guys threw a frisbee around while I people-watched and admired the skyline. Soon John found some of the big rocks jutting up and we spent some time sitting and taking pictures.  Central selfie We then rented bikes and rode around a little half of the park, which was a great way to get a sense of the scale and to see numerous different parts of the park. Rest stop MoMA  - There was an exhibition that I had read about in Time  and later in this  Village Voice article  and it was definitely a delight. What wasn't a delight was the constant jackhammer going on installing a new floor in an exhibition hall - but my handy earplugs dampened it somewhat. Also, the number of people in the museum was surprisingly full to me - any other muse...
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NYC 2018 Adventures

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In a whirlwind 4 day, 3-night trip to New York City, Jeff, John and I saw, did and ate more than we ever expected. Here is an overview of our family vacation, bullet-point style: Day 1:  Lower East Side and Financial District Flight from MSN to LGA - this is one of the easier and direct flights out of our local airport. For this trip, we flew out early in the morning, and by 10:30 a.m., we were in Manhattan, having dropped our bags at the hotel and we were ready to go! TKTS - This discount booth for Broadway tickets has an outlet near the Staten Island Ferry that opens earlier than the Times Square location. Online reviews had indicated it could be a long wait in line, but we waited all of 5 minutes, and there were so many choices it was hard to decide (we weren't the only ones hemming and hawing). We went with Avenue Q, which I had seen before but the boys hadn't. Tenement Museum  -a real treat on the Lower East Side. Much of the building itself was still decrepit with...
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Delightful Denmark - Tivoli Gardens

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Last year we took a truly wonderful cruise of the Baltic Sea. It was a work-related trip for me as I was in a hosting role, and happily, Jeff was able travel with me. I have to say Jeff and I both fell in love with Copenhagen. The slightly gritty yet architecturally interesting look of the city fit with what we enjoy, and I think the fact that we got everywhere by bike or on foot made it that much more special. My favorite spot of all was  Tivoli Gardens . Of course, I adore amusement parks so I was already primed to like the place. However, it ended up being much more of a beautiful experience than I expected. We went in the late afternoon of a warm but soon-to-be rainy day, and decided to get a few rides in while we could. At the entrance, I saw a restaurant with a variation of the word I recognized for 'cake', and made a mental note to come back. Captivating The rides ranged from older and quaint to quite modern, and getting a glimpse of Copenhagen from the ta...
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Chicago Suburbs

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Over the past two weeks, I have spent more time in the Chicago suburbs than in any time of my life. As such, I found some of the preconceived notions to be true (never ending, cookie-cutter, etc.). On the other hand, there were pockets of beauty, bounty and unusual artificiality so I felt compelled to write about it. To begin, I looked into where and what a suburb is, relative to Chicago. Here is one take on it, from station WGN in Chicago in a July 18, 2018 article on the station's website: We asked Josh Ellis at the Metropolitan Planning Council to help us figure this out. His answer: it's complicated... "I think of a suburb primarily as a residential community where during the day the majority of that working population leaves the community to go somewhere else to work," Ellis said. "Historically that somewhere else would have been the heart of the downtown of some city... but these days you can work in so many places in our region." So a s...
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