Travelin'

This was a wonderful trip! My two sisters and I left early on Saturday morning- we took the train from Oak Lawn to Union Station in downtown Chicago. From there, we caught the Amtrak to St. Louis. It was about a five hour train ride. It was such fun to visit the snack car and have lunch on the train. When we arrived in St. Louis, we took the Metrolink to Lambert Airport where we rented a VW Bug, which we then drove to St. Charles, MO. St. Charles is a very old, quaint little town on the Missouri River. There are blocks of old houses and buildings converted to shops and restaurants. Of course, there are many Lewis & Clark references - I think their journey began here. We stayed at the Country Inn & Suites which was very nice. And on Sunday, after Mass at St. Peter's, we visited almost every single shop. We never made it to Frenchtown, which is the antique district. We ran out of energy. We had dinner at Lewis & Clark's (what else?) which was delicious! On Sunday night, we went to the Ameristar Casino. I started out with $6, played slot machines for three hours, and ended up with $3.50. Karen did really well at the blackjack table. Finally on the last full day, we drove out to the countryside (beautiful!) to Defiance, Missouri and visited five wineries and tasted many different wines. I enjoyed the Chambourcin wine and brought home a bottle from Augusta Winery. The train ride home was fun, too, but the weekend sure did go fast! We had a wonderful time!

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Road Trip 2007 - Intro

We have returned from Road Trip 2007 and it was a very long road! I can't believe how much we did and saw in 8 days. We logged 1,875 miles from beginning to end.

Its kind of a strange thing that I love Road Trips, but I hate to ride in cars. I always like to sit in the back seat and do things to take my mind off the traveling - listen to my ipod, do cross-stitch, read a book, play my PSP, etc. But I love the planning and I love the thought of seeing the country!

I've been on a lot of road trips - the first major one I can recall was my Mom and Dad taking me and my younger sister to visit my Aunt and Uncle in Huntsville, AL. My Dad was driving our new (used) 1966 gold chevy with the black vinyl top.



We weren't too far out of Chicago when the a/c conked out. The real crime about that happening was that this was our very FIRST car that had a/c. So it was a huge excitement to have this cool and comfortable ride to look forward to. But it just wasn't to be.

Anyway, the road trip that year (1970, I believe) took us through Carbondale, IL to visit our brother at SIU, then on through the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee where we visited Lookout Mountain and Rock City.


I recall being so very impressed with Rock City, that I brought my kids back there many years later.

We did make it to Huntsville and had a nice visit with the relatives before the long trek back home.

Many of my other Road Trips have run together in my head -- I know I took a wonderful Road Trip to the East Coast once upon a time in the early 80's. Traveling through Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island...maybe more - I just can't remember!

Then there was the Road Trip with the destination of Virginia Beach in 1987. We visited Williamsburg and Chincoteague, where we saw the stuffed "Misty" - those who are book readers will know what I'm talking about. And then on the way home visited those same relatives of the 1970 Road Trip, only this time in Kentucky.

I loved the Road Trip of 2002. It was kind of a cheating Road Trip because we flew part of the way, but really....driving to California was not an option. We started in San Francisco, drove over to Sequoia National Park in the Sierra Nevadas, down through the Garlic Capital of the world - Gilroy -, to the Hearst Castle in San Simeon (wait a minute -- not sure if we did that on this particular trip or not!), but I know we did visit the Winchester House in San Jose; Monterey, Carmel, then on to Los Angeles before flying home. And yes, we traveled the great Highway 1 along Big Sur.

The reason this one is not totally clear is because its kind of like the Road Trip of 1998 (with my sisters and Mom) in that we flew to California and drove from there. I know we did many of the same things as the Road Trip of 2002, but in an all-girl kind of way instead of a family type thing. Just a different experience.

And back in 1992, like I was talking about above -- took our little kids (they were 5, 4 and 6 months old) to the same relatives' anniversary party in Kentucky and from there went down to Rock City and Lookout Mountain.

I know I did several Road Trips to Florida, both married and single. With kids, without. On one of the Florida Road Trips, the kids counted every Waffle House restaurant along the way and I wish I recalled the count. Its kind of funny that our brown Astro van's air conditioning broke down shortly out of Chicago on that trip..... It was fun anyway, and in addition to Disney we drove over to the coast and spent some days on the beach at Indialantic. Of course, on the way down we stopped at Rock City and Lookout Mountain because we had one more child by then who had never been there!

I kind of doubt that I have mentioned all the Road Trips I've taken. There have been many many short ones, that's for sure. But I'm not sure that weekend trips would count as Road Trips, no - not really.

So, this is the intro to the Road Trip Saga. I'll start posting photos and the story, day to day, of our great Road Trip 2007 in the upcoming days or weeks, depending on my enthusiasm!

It truly is Magic!

My daughter, Lauren, was talking to me today about some friends she met while we were on a Disney cruise in November of 2005. She still keeps in touch with these girls! But anyway, while we were talking about the cruise and the Disney ships, I started really wishing for another Disney cruise. I know I'm a cruise addict, there is no doubt about that. I'll take any cruise, any time. But there is just something more about a Disney cruise.

If you've ever been to any of the Disney theme parks, you've experienced some of those extra touches. Now imagine these touches applied to a cruise and multipy it times 100 - and this is what sailing with Disney is all about.

For instance -- dining onboard the Disney Magic or the Disney Wonder. Not just a dinner, not even just an exquisite dinner....but an event.

We sailed on the Wonder in 2004 and the Magic in 2005 and discovered that they are identical ships, so the dining rooms are the same with the exception of the formal dining room on each -- on the Magic it is called Lumiere's and on the Wonder it is called Triton's.

Lumiere's features French cuisine and has a beautiful rose theme - which follows the Beauty and the Beast story.

Triton's was inspired by the Little Mermaid, of course, and has an art deco style with a beautiful 'under the sea' mosaic on one wall.

When you dine on a Disney ship, you rotate dining rooms nightly. What this means is that you are assigned a specific restaurant for each night so you get to take turns in each one. You have a wait staff that is assigned to your family and this wait staff also rotates with you. Thus, each night your preferred drink is brought to your table since your waiter remembers what you usually order. My daughter, Amy, always found not one, but two, glasses of cold chocolate milk at her plate at each dinner!

The girls with our waiters on the Magic: Johnathan and Pieroj, at Lumiere's --



Over our Thanksgiving cruise, we had the best rotation ever. There are over 1,000 passengers onboard each ship, so not everyone has the same rotation, obviously. I felt we were so lucky to dine at Parrot Cay on Pirate's Night and on Thanksgiving, we were in Lumiere's (which also coincided with formal night).
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I'll start with Animator's Palate restaurant which happens to be my favorite. Now 'palate' also can be spelled 'palette' -- and both of these spellings would apply to this restaurant. It features many of Disney's most loved films and this restaurant literally comes to life while you dine. As you begin your meal, everything is black and white - the walls, the giant paintbrushes and palettes in the center of the room, the waiters' vests. But with each course (and the music is synchronized to change with each course), a bit more color appears. There are framed portraits on the walls and if there is a song playing from say - the Lion King - only the portraits featuring Lion King characters will light up in full color. As the dinner goes on, more and more color is added until dessert - when even the waiters' vests are in full rainbow hues instead of the plain black and white. Animator's Palate is a true experience!
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The very tropical Parrot Cay restaurant:




Parrot Cay is a very brightly colored, tropical restaurant featuring a lot of bamboo and green leafy designs, pinks, oranges and a live steel drum band playing Caribbean music. The food is also Caribbean themed and so delicious! I forgot to mention that all the waiters perform in each restaurant every night (after they are finished serving) and in Parrot Cay they encourage everyone to join them in a Conga line around the room. We ate at Parrot Cay on Pirate Night which was so appropriate. I'll talk more about Pirate Night later, but in a nutshell - it was a night celebrating Pirates in the Caribbean - so dining in the Caribbean restaurant was perfect that evening.

Pirate Night at Parrot Cay:



The third restaurant, as I briefly mentioned, is either Lumiere's or Triton's (depending on the ship you are on). On the Disney Magic it is Lumiere's - I don't think I've ever dined in a more luxurious and beautiful setting. It is French cuisine (and David even tried escargot), and just extremely posh. The chandeliers have the little rosebuds inside them -- these little touches are all around. Here's a photo of one of the chandeliers, although you can't see the rosebud it is inside the very bright area:



And Triton's is equally luxurious with an art deco style. You are dining 'under the sea' which may or may not be a good thing to think about while you are on a cruise ship - but anyway, who doesn't love the Little Mermaid? I just loved the huge mosaic of Ariel and also the beautiful blues and greens in this restaurant.

Now since there are three main dining rooms, you do get to visit each one twice during a week long cruise. Or you can opt for casual dining at Topsider's or Beach Blanket Buffet. At these dining rooms you can take your tray outside and sit at the rear deck, watching the ocean churning behind the ship. There are not many things I can think of that are more relaxing than just watching the ocean go by, especially in the Caribbean where it is the most wonderful aqua blue in color. But I digress....
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Above: in the hallway just outside Palo.

Finally, a very special choice for dining is Palo Restaurant. If you want to dine here, you need to make reservations *before* you leave for the cruise. It is very popular at Palo for good reason. This is the adults only restaurant and although you pay $10 per person, you are catered to and doted on while you enjoy truly the finest Northern Italian cuisine.

We also had High Tea at Palo -- absolutely delightful with the wonderful creations of cakes, scones, finger sandwiches, and items that I've never seen before, served with several varieties of English Tea.

Well, I could go into the late night buffets, Pluto's Doghouse, Scoop's and other dining extravaganzas, but perhaps those are best talked about in another entry as this one is becoming very long and now I'm getting a bit hungry just thinking about them.

Truly, if you can only manage to put aside $1 every day, start saving for a Disney Cruise! You will have the time of your life and feel like a pampered princess or prince, whatever the case may be.

When you wish upon a star, your dreams come true!

Girlfriends & Girl Weekends

I had to start out with the above photo. That is me on the left and Mary on the right. When that photo was taken, we had actually been friends for three years already. Years went by and years went by and we are still hanging out together.

Fast forward 9 years.....

Here we are again and its 1971. That's Mary on the left, I'm in the middle and we have a new buddy, Teri, on the right. This photo was taken in San Francisco and you might consider this the original Girls' Weekend, our Junior Class Trip (although it lasted a week, not a weekend and included many other girls AND chaperones). Didn't stop us from getting into some serious adventures, however.

A few years went by, some of us went away to college, we all got married, had kids and suddenly it became 1989. A few phone calls later and we had re-organized the Girls' Weekend. Off to Galena, IL we went.

From 1989, we barely missed a single year. In fact, we expanded our getaways to include a second annual getaway, the Family Getaway Weekend which included husbands and kids. As the kids grew up, the Family Getaway Weekend fizzled out, but the Girls' Weekend never did.

Our adventures were numerous and some were unbelievable. Over one short weekend in the early 2000's, we were steamed out of our room in the wee hours by a faulty radiator; locked out of our room in our pj's; caught in a blizzard so bad that we literally had to feel our way down the street by walking next to buildings until we found the most wonderful Italian restaurant; and the next day we trudged through the snow without boots looking for antique shops. After that weekend, we all agreed it was the worst one ever. But it is the one we talk about the most today!

And in December of 1995, I was 8.5 months pregnant and afraid to venture too far from home. So we stayed in the suburbs and went Christmas shopping. When we returned to our hotel room, my dear friends wrapped every one of the Christmas gifts I had bought while I sat with my feet up and supervised!

Another year we were adventurous and flew to Minneapolis and shopped at the Mall of America. But our big adventure, so far, was our 50th Birthday Celebration Cruise. We sailed on Norwegian Cruise Lines in March of 2005, ironically over the same dates as that California school trip of 1971.

We have some unwritten, but mutually agreed upon rules for our weekends. First of all, we try to take turns visiting each of our hometown areas - since we are separated by many many miles. Once in awhile, we choose a midway point, but generally we take turns going up to Wisconsin, down to Quincy and to the Chicago area.

The other rule is that we don't eat at chain restaurants. We have dined well and always search out the unique, local and BEST restaurants we can find.

And finally, the TV stays off. All we do is talk, drink wine, talk, shop (mostly antique and thrift stores), and talk some more.

Some of the places we've been: Galena, IL; Minneapolis, MN; Madison, WI; Quincy, IL; Orland Park, IL; Springfield, IL; Cedar Grove, WI; New Buffalo, MI; Bloomington, IL; Naperville, IL; the Caribbean.....and some I just can't recall.

Here's a photo of Mary and Teri taken just last week - on our weekend in Bloomington, IL.




Nowadays, if you pick up any women's magazine or do an internet search, you will find a lot of stories and information about Girls' Getaways. But back in 1989, before they were trendy, we were doing them. I don't want to say that we invented the Girls' Weekend, but it sure seems that way to us.

So, here's to you - my best friends! Cheers!

By the way, these are antique glasses that we found in a shop in Naperville - there were only three of them and it was the obvious thing to do - we each bought one and now we bring them along and toast one another on our annual Girls' Weekend every year!