Virgin Voyages Day 4. Wednesday, December 22, 2021. Back at sea. We are on our way to Bimini now. We had a pretty full day yesterday so a lazy morning is in order. We have nothing on today except dinner reservations at Gunbae, the Korean BBQ joint. Tonight is the big, ship wide Scarlet Night. It’s an extravaganza of red and I’m really looking forward to it. We haven’t made it to Noodle Around and their udon bowl looks delicious. Noodles for breakfast it is. The wind is kicking up a bit and it’s cool this morning. Hot noodles should hit the spot. AAACK. The udon is served with shitake mushrooms and spinach and it tastes like a shaker of…
Scarlet Lady is a Diva
I just realized I haven’t blogged since I went to Iceland in November 2019. That’s pretty much what the pandemic has done to me. I logged on and saw that I had some half done drafts from a cross country RV trip to 4 states in Summer 2020 and then a half-draft for my trip to Toronto in September 2021. But none of that made it to the final stage. It is now December 19, 2021. I’m on Virgin Voyages Scarlet Lady. I boarded this afternoon and it was already a full day of activities. I am going to pack everything in that I can so that if anyone asks me about this brand new ship I’ll be able to…
Disneyland MaxPass: Yes or No?
The first Star Wars movie (A New Hope) came out in 1976 when I was itty bitty. I don’t remember if I saw it in its original run or not. What I do clearly remember is watching The Empire Strikes Back on the big screen and my little brother was scared of the swamp scene with Yoda and had to leave the theater. I don’t remember if I got to watch it to the end. Return of the Jedi has always been my favorite of the original trilogy. Maybe because I was finally old enough for the entire movie to sink in and I wasn’t being asked to escort my brother outside. I will always remember the shock and thrill…
Travel Glamour
Thursday, June 13, 2019 Originally, I had birthday dinner plans to celebrate a childhood friend. But when she started feeling ill we postponed till a later date and my evening opened up. Around 1pm I got a message. “I have an extra ticket for the TravelAge West Wave Awards tonight. It’s a black tie event. Do you want to go? Leaving in three hours.” Uh, yes I want to go. But could I arrange it on my end? The message was from Betsy who runs the Uniglobe Travel Center (UTC) office, my travel host agency. She and Rose, my mentor at Uniglobe, go to this event at the Ritz Carlton in Marina del Rey every year. This year they had…
Skiing, Skating and Eating in Sapporo
On Saturday, February 11, we got to go skiing on Hokkaido. This was a special treat for us. As I’ve mentioned before, the snow coming down from Siberia is super light, fluffy and dry. This special snow makes for some of the best snow conditions in the world. However, either it’s been a light season or they just haven’t gotten their big snowfall yet, because the piles of powder I’ve heard about were nowhere in sight. We met Mayumi and her family at the Sapporo station where the buses line up. We got on a bus headed for Teine (tay-nay), a ski resort about an hour away from the city. After we arrived, we rented our ski and snowboard equipment…
Two Special Japanese Dinners
It has already been nearly three weeks since we’ve been back from Malaysia and a lot seems to have happened in that time. Including I got a very bad cold and I wasn’t able to do much but lay around and think about all the things I felt I should be doing. It’s almost Christmas and I have shopping, wrapping and shipping to do. But I was so tired and achy I couldn’t even write much, let alone get up and shop. So I’m catching up again. We returned from Malaysia on Sunday, November, 27. The following Sunday, December 4, we had plans to take the Shinkansen (that’s the speedy Japanese bullet train) down south to Hiroshima prefecture to a…
Birthday Japan Style
We survived birthday week! Lots to celebrate. On Sunday, November 6 Halyard turned 15 years old and Avalon turned 10 years old! On Monday, November 7 I turned ??? Right in the middle of forty-something. We decided to have our special birthday breakfast on Saturday the 5th because Avalon had plans to have a girls’ night sleepover at her friend Aimi’s (pronounced eye-mi) house from the 5th-6th. So Avalon wasn’t even going to wake up with us on her birthday morning. The special birthday breakfast menu highlights were pancakes, bacon, fruit and apple juice. After breakfast we convinced all three kids to hike up to Minoh Falls to see the autumn leaves. I made sure to pack plenty of water…
School Welcome Party and BTSN
BTSN for anyone without kids means: Back to School Night. Most (American?) parents know this, I think. Is there Back to School Night at Japanese public schools? I’m not sure. Thursday, September 15 is Back to School Night for the Middle and High School parents at Osaka International School. The PTA decided that they would host a welcome party today for the families immediately after school and leading into the back to school night program. It seems partly to be a ploy to boost parent participation at BTSN. This is just the kind of tactic that goes on at our home schools so I thought that was pretty funny. I decided to help out at the PTA Welcome Party. It…
Bike Trauma, Bank Drama, Birthday Nirvana
This was another busy day. Friday, September 2 started out as usual, with all five of us biking to school together. By now, Halyard and Kaiyo sometimes ride ahead and leave the rest of us in their dust. They can’t be bothered to slow down for me. And it’s probably a good thing because today I actually fell off the bike. Ugh! It really hurt too! I was just arriving at school and I guess I was playing chicken with a pole but that pole didn’t flinch so I lost! The electric bike is really heavy so once I started to lose my balance momentum and gravity took over. I fell right in the driveway area of school so that…
Grandma’s 100th Birthday
Saturday, August 6 is another big momentous day. It’s Grandma’s 100th Birthday Party. When my mom was first thinking about the party I asked her to schedule it before our departure date. So this is one of the things we’ve been waiting for before we leave. It’s in Riverside and we have to be there to help out with set up and greeting people at the door. Grandma is looking so good! She is as sharp as a tack and has perfect vision and hearing. She’s just amazing!Since we couldn’t get a dinner date on the books with our Kiwi friends, the Slomans, before they head out on vacation, we’re having breakfast with them in the morning before heading out…