Entries Tagged as 'airport'

6 Days on the East Coast

May 23rd, 2013 · No Comments

Day 1:

tortas_frontera_ohare
My trips these days always begin with tortas from Frontera at O’Hare. YUM!

Day 2:

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The view from my New York hotel. Empire State Building on the left!

les_halles
After a long day of meetings, my team went out for dinner at Brasserie Les Halles. This is the French restaurant that is the home base of Chef-at-large Anthony Bourdain. I had the French onion soup and the cassoulet (a French casserole with a white bean base, three kinds of sausage, duck confit and pork belly!). For dessert I had chocolate mousse that was made with Valrhona chocolate, a high-end French chocolate. Everything was SO delicious. My coworkers and I just kept commenting how great everything was!

Day 3:

dean_and_deluca
There was a Dean & Deluca cafe just down the block from my hotel. Very different than the Soho market I used to visit, but still very good when I stopped by for breakfast.

freedom_tower
The Roundarch Isobar office is not far from the Word Trade Center. This is One World Trade Center, otherwise known as “Freedom Tower.” Just a few days earlier, “on May 10, 2013, the final component of the spire was installed atop the skyscraper, making One World Trade Center tentatively the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere and the third-tallest building in the world by pinnacle height, with its spire reaching a symbolic 1,776 feet (541 m) in reference to the year of American independence.” Look at how incomplete the building was about a year ago when I was in New York.

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Security badge photos are the worst!

seltzer
The East Coast has the best seltzer. I used to drink the Adirondack seltzer when I was traveling to the Boston office a lot last year.

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The Garden was around the corner from my hotel.

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Going to meet up for dinner at Chelsea Market… Ze Olde Office is across the street.

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Chelsea Market

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I was a little early so I walked around Chelsea Market….

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…. and went to my favorite chocolate shop, Jacques Torres. Remember when we got a personal tour from the man, himself?!?

giovanni_rana
I met Jess, Tien, Jeannette, Yvan and Juliette at Giovanni Rana Pastificio & Cucina in Chelsea Market. This was Juliette’s first dinner out. She’s only 4 weeks old!

rana_ravioli
I had ricotta ravioli with asparagus and it was served in a crispy Parmigiano Reggiano bowl! The food here was so good. All of the pasta was freshly made on site!

Day 4:

rachelle_juliette
I left New York to go to Boston, but before going to the airport, I met up with Jeannette and Yvan and Juliette for coffee.

juliette
Juliette is so precious! Only a month old!

Day 5:

boston_painted_building
Dallas used to live in Boston and I spent a lot of time there last year so it was fun to walk around and talk about places we both had visited. This building is behind a plaza where I used to visit food trucks at lunch. It wasn’t painted like this last year!

chau_chow_city_dim_sum
Dallas showed me this place, Chau Chow City where he used to go to dim sum with Billy and Ging and Josh. He said it was the best dim sum in Boston. Funny because I used to walk past this place every day when going from my hotel to the office.

annas_taqueria
Dallas loves Anna’s Taqueria, so we had to go there for lunch.

youth_pride_2013_boston_common
After lunch we walked around Beacon Hill and then through Boston Common, where there was a Youth Pride event going on.

boston_intercontinental
I stopped at the Intercontinental Hotel to use the bathroom and we ended up staying for a while to watch the Blackhawks lose to the Red Wings.

r_d
That night we went to Colleen’s wedding. More on that later!

Day 6:

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I had to head out of Boston in the evening, but before doing that, Ross and Chelsea picked us up and we went to visit Matt and Molly. We’ve hung out with their daughter Lucy many times, but it was our first time meeting their identical twins, Theo and Quinn!

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I’m holding Theo and Dallas has Quinn. They are about three months old.

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Uncle Ross, Lucy and Quinn.

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Aunty Chelsea and Lucy were picking flowers in the backyard. We had an impromptu barbecue and sat outside to eat. It was so nice out. And Matt and Molly’s whole yard is in full bloom. I especially liked the lilacs and they have a ton of them!


Excitement at the airport in Boston. I was just sitting there when all of a sudden flashing lights and an alarm went off… throughout the terminal. Everyone just acted like it was nothing but then I saw some firefighters walk by. A few minutes later the alarms turned off. False alarm?

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In the cab home. I never noticed the vomit clean up fee.

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Pearson Airport, Air Canada and Meeting Bobby Hull

February 10th, 2013 · 4 Comments

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Sadly, it was time to go home from Toronto on Thursday afternoon. Becky and I were on the same flight so we went to the airport together. I was off using the restroom and getting something to eat when Becky started frantically texting me that there was some famous hockey guy by our gate and where was I because she wanted to take a photo!?!??! When I got back, it was time for a photo opp. I didn’t even know who the “famous hockey guy was” before he was next to me waiting for Becky to take a photo of us (I’d already taken a photo of him with her). Anyway…. later on Becky told me it was a guy named Bobby Hull. I still didn’t know who that was, but further research shows he was the shit Blackhawks star back in the 60s and 70s. So good that he’s in the Hockey Hall of Fame (that we couldn’t visit!). Hull and his wife were both SO super nice and gracious and happy to talk to Becky for quite a while about hockey. Back at our seats, just down the aisle, Becky showed me this photo of Bobby Hull back in his heyday. It’s hard to get your head around :) .

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Pearson Airport. Nothing much to report. Customs kind of took forever but we had time. They stamped my passport, which is something they did NOT do on my way in and I’m still mad about it. Air Canada was pretty nice. I’d never flown that airline before. We flew United in. Lots of legroom. No one was seated beside me. On demand TV, Movies and music. There was a bit of a delay while they de-iced the plane because it was cold and snowing, but I got really into an HBO documentary called Ethel, about Ethel Kennedy, so the time passed quickly.

Goodbye, Toronto. It was fun, ey!

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Lahaina Chicken

November 13th, 2012 · No Comments

Our last meal in Hawaii was at Lahaina Chicken. We checked it out on a whim, but it was actually quite good.. and healthy-ish? And not a million dollars.

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Stuck in Hawaii

November 13th, 2012 · No Comments

On our flight back home we were connecting through LA, but it turned up that our flight was so delayed that we were going to miss our connection. Pretty much our only option was to take the evening direct flight back to Chicago. We tried calling around a bit to get out of the airport, but it just wasn’t working out. Normally I’d be psyched to be “stranded” in Hawaii for an extra 6 hours, but in the airport? Wearing jeans and sneakers? Uh. No. Luckily the Honolulu airport looks like this:

And since I was roasting in my jeans and sneakers, I bought a pretty sundress and slippers and changed in the restroom. Ah. Better. And then we spent a lot of time here:

Kona Brewing.

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Back From Hawaii

October 15th, 2012 · No Comments

So, we’re back from Hawaii. In the 11 days that we were gone, Chicago went from that awesome end of summer/beginning of fall low seventies and sunny weather that I love to full on fall. The trees are pretty, but I have a feeling it’s going to be freezing any second. I’m not sure where to start with all of the things we did on vacation, so I guess I’ll just start at the beginning.

I felt like this trip was kind of a bonus this year. In the beginning of the year we knew we were not going to be able to go and attend Jordan and Liz’s wedding, but then our situation changed and off we went. It kind of just sneaked up on us… knowing we couldn’t go, and then thinking that October was so far off.. Before we knew it, it was time to leave. We hadn’t been back since February 2011, for our wedding, so it seemed like it was almost 2 years gone by.

Dallas and I looked up our miles a few months ago on American and saw we had enough to fly to Hawaii first class for free. SWEET! But we didn’t book it when we saw it. And when we went back to book, we couldn’t get economy, let alone first class! And the tickets were kind of expensive. And we had to book on United.

I didn’t buy the iPhone 5 before we left because they would only ship to my billing address and the estimated delivery was right when we’d be gone. Dallas and I did both upgrade to iOS 6, though, which meant we could put our boarding passes in a new application called Passbook and then just scan our phones in the airport. Since we were checking luggage, they printed out paper tickets for us and then we just used those, because we are elderly.

We booked a direct flight from Chicago to Honolulu. Not on purpose. It’s just how the scheduling and pricing worked out. I’d never flown directly there before. Usually I’ve always had a layover in California or Texas. I was afraid Dallas wouldn’t make it because of an old injury he has that makes it hard for him to sit for a long period of time, but he seemed alright. We downloaded a few movies on our iPad and Kindle Fire and tried to be patient. It was almost a 9 hour flight, though. Definitely the longest flight I’d been on. In Honolulu we still had to do a short inter-island flight to Kauai. I was super anxious at that point to just get to our final destination, but at least we were almost there.

This trip was mostly a family trip. We were going for a family event, Jordan and Liz’s wedding, and also for Dallas’s grandma’s memorial. We stayed in a house with Dallas’s parents and his sister and her boyfriend. By pure coincidence, Paul and Kate were ending their vacation as we were starting ours, so we made plans to meet up with them. Also, my friend Stephanie from New York was going to be honeymooning with her new husband Scott at the same time. I wasn’t sure what days exactly or which islands so I emailled her ahead of time but didn’t hear back. Funny thing was that as we were sitting at Stinger Ray’s, a bar at the airport in Honolulu, waiting for our flight to Kauai, I looked up and Steph and Scott were sitting two tables away from us!!! Steph had never met Dallas and I’d never met Scott so it was great. We got to catch up and Dallas gave them some tips on things to do in Maui, which was where they were headed. They’d been on Oahu for a few days already and were headed to Kauai after that. We ended up not meeting up on Kauai, but it was great to spend our layover with them.

When we landed on Kauai, we got our rental car and made it to the house we were staying in. We quick dropped our bags off, went to the house Jordan and Liz were staying in to say some quick hellos to the family and then headed to dinner with Paul and Kate. We were exhausted but weren’t sure if we’d get to see them any other day, so we manned up. More on that soon :)

As a side note, this was my sixth trip to Hawaii!

2004 – The trip where Dallas and I met.
2005 – Visiting for Chris & Tandy’s wedding.
2006 – Skipped this year. Not sure why!
2007 – Visiting with John, Susan, Allison, Caroline and Jordan.
2008 – Skipped because we bought our condo.
2009 – Visiting for Dallas’s 15-year Kamehameha Schools class reunion.
2010 – Skipped to save for our wedding.
2011 – Our wedding on Kauai!
2012 – Visted for Jordan and Liz’s wedding.

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