The Steamer Trunk Chronicles

Update that I’ve had in draft form for 4.5 months…

So, it’s been a while. And unfortunately, we haven’t had much time for traveling. Lots of work, school, and family stuff happening.

This winter has been surprisingly mild; the Farmer’s Almanac predicted a terrible winter with lots of snow. We’ve only gotten snow a handful of times and I believe there was only one week that got into the teens.  And yet…I still wanted a spring break. We wanted a less expensive trip than what we’ve done in the past, so of course we booked a flight/rental car combo…for southern Florida. Without looking at hotel prices. So yes, our “cheaper” vacation certainly ended up being more expensive. But, it was kind of nice to get away from the all-inclusive resorts – we were able to go where we wanted, when we wanted, and eat the food we wanted, and didn’t have the “trapped” feeling we sometimes get at resorts in foreign countries.

Our first four nights we stayed at the Bahia Mar – a Doubletree in Ft. Lauderdale. The hotel was right across the street from the beach, and it even had a walkway over the road to the beach. The beach itself was aquite nice – and even when it was windy, the sand wasn’t blowing all over and making it uncomfortable. The water was very pleasant and the sunshine was awesome. So nice to get away from the grey Michigan skies.

After exploring the beach for a day, we traveled down Las Olas Blvd to Ft. Lauderdale’s Riverwalk district.  It wasn’t as impressive or as lively as we expected; it was a nice quiet stroll along the Tarpon River. Most of the nightlife was further north along Las Olas. However, there was one impressive part of the Riverwalk: the yachts. I’ve never seen such big boats in my life. In fact, there were a couple that I’m pretty sure are 2-3 times bigger (square footage wise) than our house.

We also checked out South Beach and the Art Deco district in Miami. Of course it started raining so we didn’t have a lot of time to check it out, but we got some great pictures and had breakfast at a nice little cafe.

Probably my favorite, though, was Everglades National Park. I’ve always wanted to go there, and it was super neat to see all the alligators and other wildlife. It was really interesting to learn about how even an inch of elevation difference can impact the sorts of plants that can grow.

We’ve been very busy this summer with work and school and life, but we are getting very excited for our trip to London! We will be gone for about 8 days and we plan to take in all of the big sights of course: Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, and Westminster Abbey. However, today while doing a random search in Google Maps, I found the place I am most excited to go: Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese.

In other news, we are also taking a trip to Seattle in October to check it out for potential living area. It looks like I will be graduating next December (hope hope hope) so we still have to check out North Carolina and the DC area….hmmm.

Any suggestions for places in either London or Seattle that are must-see but not well-known?

I was doing so well with the posting for a little while there…and then I got busy (read: lazy). Another semester has come and gone, and I’m already in the middle of another. Hopefully at this time next year I will be drawing near to graduating – December 2012 is my goal.

But this blog is not about school. It’s about traveling.

This year, we skipped our annual Memorial Day trip. We just had a patio put in, so we decided to be frugal and spend the weekend doing yardwork. It’s definitely strange: last year we went to Pittsburgh; the year before, San Francisco; and the year before that, Mammoth Caves in Kentucky. We slept in a wigwam there – but that is a topic for another blog post.

At any rate, I’m definitely getting the travel itch again. Luckily, I’ve planned a wine weekend on the Leelanau Peninsula with some girlfriends. It will be a much-needed break, but not the traveling time with my husband that I’ve gotten used to.

I realize this is somewhat rambly, but bear with me, I do have a point. And it is this: once I graduate, we intend to move. I have lived in Michigan almost all my life, and while the Mitten State certainly does have its charms, I’m ready for new horizons. Unfortunately, the only places it seems possible for us to agree on (I love the hot-muggy-sticky summer, he is more inclined towards mountains of snow) are somewhere in North Carolina, or the Pacific Northwest. I’ve been to NC once but not with the intent of moving there, and I’ve never been to Washington or Oregon. We are thinking of taking a trip this fall to investigate one of these locations. My questions for any readers are as follows:

1. Where would you go, and why?

2. Have you ever scoped out a potential new neighborhood? If so, how do you go about it?

3. Any other tips about either location, or other similar locations that we have not thought of are welcome.

P.S. New England is out as is NOLA (  )

I can’t wait to see where our next adventure takes us!

OH wait…I forgot…it’s London

Just a quick Sunday post…

We have an upcoming trip to London and York planned that we’ll talk about in detail at some point. Miranda just got off the phone with an inn in York. We have a reservation to stay at this ~500 year old inn. It is supposedly haunted. With my wild imagination, I am already planning out my nightmares. At least Miranda will be there to laugh at me.
The Black Swan

We went to the Big Island of Hawaii for our honeymoon. At first I was resistant to the idea as I was horrified to think of having a “typical” honeymoon. However, since we got married at the end of August, it was difficult to find a cool, not crowded, and not ridiculously expensive place to visit. We’d talked about waiting until December (after my school semester was over) but in the end we decided we wanted some time to be a couple before real life came crashing back in. Also volcanoes! So Hawaii it was.

Our flight left Detroit Metro at 10:05 am. We connected through Chicago and then Los Angeles on our way to Kona. If you’ve never been to Hawaii, you might not realize how absolutely far it is from the mainland. Even from LA it was five and a half hours. With travel time, layovers, and the time change (Hawaii is six hours behind us here in Michigan) our bodies thought it was 2 am by the time we got there.

Also if you haven’t been to Hawaii, you may not realize how much of the island is made up of lava rock (here’s a hint – the whole thing). The west side of the island is very dry, with an annual rainfall of about 10 inches, which means that nothing grows even on flows from eruptions that happened in the early 19th century. Chris, who’s been to Hawaii before, was telling me on the plane all about how we would fly into Kona and I would think we were landing on the moon because of it. Sadly, the sun sets early in Hawaii, so by the time the plane touched down at 8 pm local time it was too dark to see anything interesting. However. With the dark sky and the dark lava rock and the yellow sodium vapor lights that I kept thinking were traffic lights about to turn red, driving around Hawaii half-delirious from sleep deprivation was a very interesting and surreal experience.

No, this picture was not taken as we were driving to our condo. It was all we could do to not pull over and snooze on the road for a bit. However, it might give you a sense of what we thought we were experiencing as we drove. Remember. Sleep deprivation.