Friday, June 23, 2017

East Coast Escapade Travelogue

Well, I know you have all been anxiously awaiting on the edge of your seats for a little recap of our trip. We took a kind of last-minute trip to the East Coast to visit our friends and be godparents in their baby's baptism and also for my husband to go to a meeting for his work. Here are a few of our adventures, even though I try to be brief with pictures and even summaries.
We flew into New York because it was cheaper and also my husband had never been to New York. I had packed all shorts/dresses and sandals and just one light sweater per person and of course it was raining when we got there. So all my travel plans (which involved walking and outdoors) went out the window. By the way, I really liked lovetaza.com's restaurant and travel recommendations for New York. Even though we didn't end up using them! So our day in New York was spent pushing them around in the stroller in the rain (luckily no one caught pneumonia!), and trying to use the subway and realizing what a nightmare it is with a stroller. We went to mass at St. Patrick's and spent the day at the American Museum of Natural History.
The next day we rented a car to drive to our friends' house in Virginia, which was supposed take four hours and actually took eleven. This was because of poor planning and picking up the car near LaGuardia, which is on the opposite side of Manhattan in relation to Virginia, and following the GPS blindly which led us through Manhattan at 3 o'clock on the Friday of Memorial Day weekend. We ate at a restaurant in New York State called Jackson Hole (picture above) which was our favorite restaurant of the whole trip.
In Virginia, we had the extreme honor of becoming godparents. It was a beautiful baptism and a beautiful party. The picture above is of my husband lighting the candle, the godfather's grand task in the ceremony, but grander yet is the responsiblity we now have of helping our goddaughter keep her light of faith alive.
We hung out with our friends, went to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, spent Memorial Day in Washington DC (see pics above), which was actually perfect because they had a beautiful parade. We also went on a five-minute hike at Great Falls Park (see pic above), which started out great (me taking pictures of butterflies, thinking "it's so hot, I'm glad I didn't bring our sweaters"). I say five minutes because after taking this last picture I heard thunder and looked up at the sky perplexed. Then thunder again and it started pouring down rain before I could yell "ruuuun!" to Addie. We waited under cover and friendly park rangers helped us call a taxi back (which took an hour to get there... but otherwise all turned out ok)  
Next stop: Chicago, which we surprisingly loved. I was a little sad to leave actually, especially to go back to kid-hating New York. :/ My husband went to his meeting during the day and we had lunch, took naps in the hotel (me included!), went to Maggie Daley Park twice (where I lost Addie and thought for sure she was kidnapped... long story), went to another park near the Shedd Aquarium, went to Navy Pier (see picture of Adelaide on tongue "slide") and had delicious deep-dish pizza at Giordano's for dinner. My favorite restaurant there, though, was called Spanglish and had good Mexican food and Jarritos (hooray!). That's the picture above. Also, Addie got a fever the day we left, but luckily she took some medicine (and rested, and drank liquids) and it never came back. Ah, travel with kids... it will keep you on your toes.  
 Yo babies of New York... whasuuuup?!
When we finally got to our hotel in Chinatown at eleven pm (took hours to get from airport to hotel because we went from one place to another, trying to use uber, then finally getting a taxi), we were pleasantly surprised at how much we loved being in Chinatown and how much friendlier they were there (crazy New Yorkers!). We had delicious breakfast at the hotel (I always book the cheapest hotel on booking.com as long as it has breakfast included). Then we were finally able to go to Central Park (see pic), although we didn't have too much time to explore. We asked a random Chinese man on the street if he could recommend a restaurant for lunch and after much gesturing (apparently his English was not so great), we went down the street to the most delicious chinese food I've ever eaten (see pic above). After naps and such, we crossed the Williamsburg bridge by foot (really nice!) to have dinner at my husband's childhood friend's house. He lives in Brooklyn, which was really hip and trendy and had lots of delicious-looking restaurants, artsy shops and hopping bars. See pic of me and Addie looking cool in Brooklyn. The next day we went to mass and at leftover Chinese food before facing the nightmare of New York traffic to get to the airport.

It was a trip with lots of ups and downs and difficulties (my husband's grandfather passed away while we were there), but a very good trip nonetheless. We really feel it changed us, united us as a family, had really fun moments and we learned a lot.

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