Category: travel

I love traveling.  To anywhere.  Especially if it’s somewhere I’ve never been.

The husband loves … making me happy!  And so this year will be quite the year of travel.

We started off the year with a trip to New York in February to see the husband’s other woman.  April brought a weekend trip to Gettysburg, even though it is just over an hour away.  (If you do a ghost tour, skip the Farnworth house tour; also, be sure to get some fries at Hunt’s Battlefield Fries.  And if you buy the CD audio-tour of the battlefield, the directions are really good up until about stop 12 … so pay attention!)

May took us to Texas, where we hit several of the hot-spots with the husband’s family: NASA in Houston (which is awesome, I got to sit in old mission control!), a UT graduation ceremony, caverns outside of San Antonio, the Alamo, the river walk, dinner with the husband’s bff, and Schlitterbahn.  And all of that in 5 days!

June will take us to Oklahoma, to see the husband’s father.  It’s a long overdue visit, and I’ll get to cross Oklahoma off my list of ‘states-I’ve-never-been-to’.  🙂

July is my spa trip, and at the end of the month we’ll be heading back to New York.  Amtrak is having a fare sale, so we snagged cheap train tickets.  And we finally cashed in our Holiday Inn points, so we’ll be enjoying a free stay.  And with the show tickets the husband got for his birthday, it’ll make for a fun – and surprisingly cheap! – trip to the big city.

August is Leavenworth to visit my family.  Not that they live there, but the dad decided we should have a family reunion some place fun.  We’ll be there during the theater festival, and the mom has purchased tickets for us all to just about every play available – so we’ll be doing what we all enjoy best: sitting around …

August also brings us to Pennsylvania to see Taylor Swift.

And September is Italy!

October is still up in the air, but is tentatively local trips to Winchester and/or Charlottesville.  Ooh, or the renn fest!

November will find us back in the west with a trip to LA to visit my good friend Mal.  Maybe.  If he decides he can make it.

And December is just chilling for our very first Christmas at home.  Followed by a trip to Disneyworld to ring in the new year.  If there’s any travel money left.  And if I can convince the husband …

The husband and I are going to Italy to celebrate our 5th anniversary!  I just put down the deposit on our trip.  And I know our anniversary was like 2 months ago, but as the husband can attest, that won’t dissuade me.  🙂

This will be our first fully-guided tour.  The last time I went to Europe, I winged everything – but at that time, I had more time and less money.  So with less time and more money, we’ll be enjoying a trip where we don’t have to worry about anything after we get ourselves on the plane.

There will be somebody to pick us up from the airport.  A giant bus will pick us up every morning and take us to our destinations.  All of our entrance tickets will already have been purchased.  We’ll get to stand in the ‘group tour’ lines and bypass the long entrance lines.  We’ll have English tours arranged for us everywhere we go.  And we’ll have a guide with us the whole trip who can help us find husband-friendly eateries!  (You know, McDonalds …)

We don’t leave till September, but I can hardly wait!  Hmmm, I think I’m going to need some new luggage …

I keep getting all these great Spring deals in my email inbox: 6 days in Paris, flight AND hotel: $499. Flight to London: $200. Rome: $300.

I wish the husband had more vacation time. Oh, and a desire to travel …

On the up side, we are taking a day trip to Gettysburg in a few weeks. I’ll take my adventure where I can get it. 🙂

The alarm went off way too early, and after a snooze, the husband kicked me out of bed.  I got ready, ate breakfast, and packed up the rest of my things.  (I do take longer to get ready for the day, it was necessary for me to be kicked out of bed in order for us to stay on schedule.)

We made sure the bear was ready for his debut, checked out of the hotel, and took the ferry into the city.  We got to the convention center at 8:20 just to find that they wouldn’t let us line up till 10.

As we sat on the floor with the bear in my lap, we met one of the husband’s website friends who was looking for a couple of freaks carrying a stuffed animal.  And she found us!  We gave her a strahotski.com sticker, and as we were chatting, a professional photographer with a crazy nice camera and a pro badge (that gave him access to the good seats) came over to see what all the hubbub was about.

We met a nice man wearing the Buy More Jacket I contemplated buying from the NBC store a few days before.  When he saw me eyeing his jacket, he worried that I was looking at it to mock it – I assured him I had nothing but admiration for it, and I whipped out the ‘Nerd Herd’ hat to put it on.

Once the convention staff realized that a critical mass was forming, they created a pre-line so that there would be order when they finally let us get in the real line.  We met up with another one of the husband’s website friends, who, again, found us because we were hauling the bear around.

They finally let us stand in the real line, where we stood in anticipation of seeing the creators of Chuck (Chris Fedak and Josh cranky-pants Schwartz) and of course, Yvonne Strahovski.  When the doors opened, we rushed in, and thanks to the quick-thinking of one of our new friends, snagged seats on the aisle right by the mic.  You know, in case they had a Q&A session.

We caught a 5-minute trailer of what we have to look forward to in the rest of the second season – and boy, was it INTENSE!  Sarah gets it on in a serious way with somebody who is not Chuck (I hope it’s for real, and not just spy bizniss, Chuck’s been having most of the ‘fun’ so far), Sarah and Chuck get to move in together in a nice house in the suburbs, Morgan’s mom gets busy with Big Mike, Anna finally comes back!

The panelists finally entered, and I have to say, WOW, Yvonne Strahovski is GORGEOUS.  Like in a way that I didn’t even know was possible.  I like to think I’m pretty, but after seeing Yvonne, I’ve had to re-evaluate.  On a scale of 1 to 10, she’s a 10, and the rest of the population is down at 1 and 2.  Except maybe for Brangelina, I’ve never seen them in person …

After some introductions and quick chatter, they opened it up for questions, so I stood up and took a step to my left – and, voila!  I was second in line.  I let the husband slide in right in front of me and handed him the bear.

When his turn at the mic came, the husband introduced himself as the webmaster of strahotski.com, and the room erupted in cheers.  Clearly, many of the thousand people in that room were aware of his site.  He asked if he could give his bear to Yvonne, and after a few moments of confusion, Chris Fedak said to ‘throw it up’.  The husband tossed the bear to Chris, and he handed it to Yvonne.

Yvonne was nothing but smiles as she accepted the bear, and she placed it on the table in front of her, by her nameplate.

My turn at the mic came, and I asked a quick and silly question that got some laughs, and prompted a funny discussion about how the creators had suggested Yvonne change her last name to ‘Smith’ or ‘Striker’.

One of the last questions was about who Yvonne’s craziest fan was, and she gave that honor to the husband for creating his website, and gifting her the bear.  That was the true highlight of the husband’s weekend, he is ecstatic to have made it onto Ms. Strahovski’s radar.

When the panel was over, Yvonne, Josh, and Chris were ushered off somewhere and quickly disappeared.

We hit the Joss Whedon and Josh Jackson (oops, I mean Fringe) panels after that with some of our new friends.  Since that meant we all missed lunch, I passed out snacks that I carried in my handy-dandy carry-all bag.  They weren’t very substantial, but it was enough to tide me over.

After the Fringe panel ended, we bid farewell, and the husband and I headed home with fond memories of the day we got to sit in the same room as Yvonne Strahovski.

We woke late on Saturday and had a leisurely breakfast of chocolate chip muffins, cran-grape juice for me and a chocolate breakfast shake for the husband.  I made us bring food from home for breakfast, as we often spend way too much money on mediocre breakfasts when we travel – I’d rather spend not much on mediocre breakfasts by bringing the food ourselves.

We took the ferry to the city, but as it was the weekend, we had to take the hotel shuttle to the port with weekend-Weehawken service.

Once we made to the other side of the Hudson river, we walked the short way around the Javits center to get to the front door, having learned our lesson from the day before.  We walked in late to a Batman panel that had the potential to be cool, but it was just some dude telling us how cool he was, his whole bootstrap story.  Which is a good story, don’t get me wrong, I have one of my own, but it just wasn’t what I was expecting.

We then went to the crowded food court to get lunch of a blood-dripping rare cheeseburger (for the husband) and a grilled chicken sandwich for myself.  My sandwich was good, but the husband ate his as quickly as possible so as to not think about his raw beef.

We caught the incredibly not-funny star trekkin’ improv comedy group, the moderately boring champions online/star-trek online panel, and the heated genders-in-comics panel.  After some wandering through the vendor room, we decided to call it a day, even though we had planned to hit a comedy show in the city that evening.

We rode the ferry back, and since it was a warmer night than the previous one had been, we braved the elements and sat on top.  It was a scenic ride back with the city all lit up.

In the room, we tried to order Papa John’s pizza, but all the stores I called referred me to another store, with the final store giving me a number that was disconnected.  After that failure, I just called roomservice to order a well-done burger and some french-onion soup.

The soup was sweeter than I expected, and I followed it up some famous amos cookies.  The husband thoroughly enjoyed his no-traces-of-pink burger, and I stole his pickle.  We caught some Alien-Predator movie on HBO, and I finished up our Jayne hats (I never got around to weaving in the ends).

We headed to bed early so we could get up nice and early to get in line for the Chuck panel – the real reason for our trip.

 We made it to the Rockefeller Center and checked out the NBC store.  After perusing the merchandise, we settled on a Nerd Herd hat and a couple of Buy More badge thingies.  We then followed the signs upstairs to take the tour.

We got two of our very own NBC pages to take us through the tour where we sat in Conan’s studio, saw Will Forte’s plaster head (it’s for mask-making purposes), and even saw some of the SNL cast at work!  We stood outside the SNL theater and saw Andy Samberg, Will Forte, Jason Sudeikis, and the husband claims he caught a glimpse of Keenan.

After the tour we wandered back to Times Square and ate in the most expensive TGI Fridays on the planet.  With time to spare before our show, we hit the M&M Store and looked at all the adorable chocolatiness inside.  Then we hit Midtown Comics, as they were just around the corner from our theater.

When it was finally not too early to loiter in the lobby, we headed over to the Nederlander theater.  The theater doesn’t seem to have any back entrance (it’s currently being renovated), so we watched cast, orchestra, and crew walk in past us.  After Lauren Graham made it down the hall past us with curly blond hair and in a hat the covered the top half of her face, I realized I had just seen Lorelai’s nose!  Just a few feet in front of me!

When they opened the doors, we found our seats at the tippity top of the theater.  It’s a small theater, though, so even the bad seats really aren’t that bad.  Shortly before the show started, however, the husband suffered from a rare (for him) nosebleed.  Luckily, I carry one of everything in my married-lady purse, so I handed him my pack of tissues, and a few minutes later he was good to go.

Guys and Dolls was in the second night of previews, so the director came out to let us know there might be some snafus.  The show started 10 or 15 minutes late, but was thoroughly entertaining.  The only snafus seemed to be with Lauren Graham’s wardrobe, as she played a stripper and some of her clothing didn’t want to go without a fight.

The last ferry left just as the show let out, so we walked around the block to the Port Authority to catch the bus back to Weehawken.  While we were trying to decipher our bus schedule and the charts on the ticket-selling machines, the 11 o’clock bus left, so we had to sit and wait for the 11:30.

We made it back to the hotel without incident, chatted with a nice couple in the elevator, and went to bed thoroughly exhausted.

The husband and I took an impromptu trip to the big apple on account of Ms. Yvonne Strahovski was suddenly slated to be at the New York Comic Con.  Seeing as he runs a big Strahovski fansite and New York is only a 4 hour drive away, of course that meant we had to go!

We hit the road Friday at 5 am in order to avoid rush hour traffic in DC and Baltimore.  We stopped at one of the oh-so-convenient Jersey turnpike stops (Sunoco and Cinnabon have to be making serious money off their exclusive deal) at 8 am to get breakfast, support Sunoco, and call the hotel and beg for an early check-in.  A nice lady at the front desk assured us it would be no problem.

After un-eventful traffic all the way up, we hit stop-and-go traffic once we took our exit in Jersey.  It was actually a relief, it meant I had time to figure out which lane to be in and inch my way over – and I didn’t end up accidentally driving through the Lincoln tunnel, which was my biggest worry about the drive up.  I have a very strict NO-DRIVING-in-New-York-City policy.

We found the hotel, checked in, and slept for a few hours before heading into the city.  We had a long day ahead of us – tickets to a show that evening – so we wanted to make sure we were up to the challenge.

As the husband put his shoes on in the hotel as we were preparing to head out, he informed me that he had never eaten a hot dog from one of those New York hot dog stands.  I assured him that we could remedy that quite easily.

We bought ferry tickets from the concierge – tickets that he pulled out of his pocket – and made our way to the ferry landing just outside the hotel.  As we were waiting for the ferry, the husband noticed that our tickets had come from a ticket 10-ride pack, and had a face value of $1.50 LESS than what the concierge had charged.  Which explained why he seemed to be pushing the ferry on us, and only gave us a bus schedule and pointed out the bus stop after I requested such information.  (Thank goodness for hotel reviews!  Otherwise I wouldna known about the bus …)

We landed at the 39th street pier and walked the long way around the Javits Center to find the front doors.  We picked up our Comic Con badges, then since it was only 30 minutes till they opened the doors, we stood in line to check out the vendor room.

After a quick jaunt around the vendor tables, we headed out to the city.

We walked our way to the Rockefeller Center, but not without passing several hot dog stands.  We stopped and got some dogs and bottled water, so now the husband can now say he’s had a New York City hot dog!  And it was not nearly so exciting as he had hoped.  It was, however, the cheapest meal we bought on our trip …