Saturday in NYC

Last Saturday we spent the day in New York City. We went to see the Broadway show, In The Heights.

It was a neat show, and it is always nice to visit the city for a day. We had a lot more time this year to check things out, so we did get to visit several places this time without feeling rushed. We had lunch at John's Pizzeria, which was absolutely fabulous. The pizzeria is set in an old church, so there were beautiful stain glass windows and the choir loft, where they had seating and two additional pizza ovens to the two on the main floor. What great pizza. If you are ever near the Theatre district and are hungry for good pizza, this is the place to go. After the show we had enough time to get lost trying to find the Brookstone store that we had passed earlier in the day and get fresh pop corn from Dale and Thomas Popcorn. If you haven't had their kettle corn, you need to try it. Even Pete likes it, and he isn't big on kettle corn. Dinner, as is tradition, was at Rosie O'Grady's. We are sorry to say that neither of us enjoyed our meals, even though others did. Probably the most disappointing part of the day was the Starbuck's hot chocolate right before we got on the bus. Not only did it take forever to make and was expensive as anything, it tasted awful. Starbucks has nothing on Sheetz's hot chocolate, which is definitely more affordable!

Florida Trip Recap

Overall, we had a wonderful time on our trip to Florida. We were gone for seven days, which seems like a long time when you say it, but we had such a great time, it didn't feel like it was too long or too short. Of course, who wouldn't want to stay in a paradise like The Breakers a little longer, but it is good to get back to reality. While the cold Pennsylvania weather is drastically different to swimming outside at 8:00 AM in Florida, we are so thankful that we had the opportunity to travel, spend time with our family, and meet so many wonderful new people as we went on this adventure. We definitely look forward to doing it all again soon!

Flying Home

We cannot express how much more enjoyable it was to travel by train than by plane. First of all, we arrived at the airport at around 12:30 for a 2:45 flight. We had figured that once we got through security that we would sit down and have a nice lunch. That was until we looked at the board and our boarding pass to find out that the airline had moved us to the 1:30 flight. By now it was 12:45 and boarding was going to begin at 1:00. So, we quickly got in lines for food, grabbed what we could, and moved to the end of the terminal only to get on the flight.

But then the fun really started. Now that you have to pay $15 for each bag you check, everyone and their mother, sister, brother, father, you get the picture is carrying on all of their bags. And you of course know that everyone wants their bags in the overhead space above their seat. Along with the fact that no one owns a bag that fits in that space. We spent more time waiting for people to get their stuff situated than anything else.

Finally, we got to Charlotte, but we had no idea if the airline had made any other switches of our flight, so we tried to get off of the plane as soon as we could so that we could consult a board. Well, they had left our next flight alone, so we now had two hours to spare. The nice thing about the Charlotte airport is that they have many food choices and little stores, beyond the generic airport store, so we had plenty of things to entertain ourselves with.

Then, the time came to wait even longer as everyone and their daughter, son, wife, cat, dog, had a fit about where their luggage was, and that they didn't want to check it. My question is, if they check your bag once you are on the plane, do they still charge you the $15? I would guess no because since they now charge for drinks ($7 for beer/wine, $2 for soda/water, and $1 for tea or coffee) and you have to cough up the cash, and it didn't appear that those with checked luggage were having to pay, so maybe that is the way to get around the system. Try to carry on things, but ask them to check it.

This leg of the flight was awful since Philadelphia cannot handle the volume of traffic coming into it at night, so we were circling with planes above and below us (pretty neat when you see it out the window). But, the pilot kept us abreast of the Eagles' progress in the game so that must have been his way of trying to keep everyone happy.

Needless to say, we did not enjoy flying on US Airways and would consider taking the train again, if anything so that we could avoid having to deal with all of the crazies.

While At The Breakers

For our first night of dinner at The Breakers we ate at The Seafood Restaurant. We tried new things this time: Pete - Yellow Snapper with a Lobster Risoto cake (out of this world!!!) and Julia - Mahi Mahi Oscar served with an amazing sauce. The food was as good here as the last time we ate here. We both agreeded that we could have eaten another portion of our dinners because they were so good.

We started the next two mornings with walks on the beach since the weather was absolutely beautiful. We would have swam in the ocean, but there were Man of War jellyfish in the ocean, and after seeing many washed up on the beach, we decided not to take the chance coming across one in the water.



While we were in West Palm, we had a wonderful breakfast at Testa's (http://www.testasrestaurants.com/) with John & Melissa and our adorable nephew John. John shared his pancakes with everyone, and he and Aunt Juju had fun coloring and drumming on the table with the silverware. Afterward, we had went for a nice walk down Royal Poinciana Way, and John identified all of his favorite cars: B (for BMW), Mercedes, Audi, Porsche, Ford, and Chevy.



After breakfast, we headed back to The Breakers for a day by the pool and ocean. It was indeed the perfect day. We were in a beautiful setting with wonderful weather, the ocean was just beyond the pool, and we even got a tiny bit of color (amazing)!



That evening we had dinner with Uncle Bob, Aunt Deb, Megan, Gail, and Serena at The Italian Restaurant (another favorite restaurant). This restaurant is especially child/teenager friendly as they have multiple game and activity rooms for children to be entertained in during dinner. Megan and Serena took advantage of the fun in between eating dinner and dessert, which by the way was warm chocolate chip cookies and milk.



We finished the evening in the Tapestry Bar enjoying our complimentary drinks and interesting people watching.

The next day we attended church at The Royal Poinciana Chapel. As always, Uncle Bob's service was wonderful, and we look forward to returning again. The Chapel is under some major renovation now, which we didn't take pictures of because we had to get back to check out of our room and get to the airport, but we can't wait to come back and see the project when it is completed.

Arriving at The Breakers

We arrived at The Breakers this afternoon to a very warm welcome. Everyone was very polite, and we were personally greeted by one of the other Vice Presidents. Since our room (a complementary upgrade) was not yet ready we were given free drink passes which we will use tomorrow. We are off to dinner now, but wanted to give you all a view of our Suite which is very sweet! We have a sitting room with more furniture than we have in our living room, a beautiful bathroom which we would love to have in our house, as well as a beautiful bedroom. It is gorgeous!!! Each room has either two or four windows, each with a different view of the property since we are on the corner. We will take more pictures later, but here is just a taste. The pictures do not do the rooms justice, they are absolutely breathtaking, as are the views.

Back on the Train

We are back on the train traveling across Florida to get to West Palm Beach for our much anticipated free stay at The Breakers! For those of you who don't know, we celebrated our first anniversary at the Breakers and were not too pleased with our experience. Julia wrote a letter to the President, and the result was a phone call from the Vice President offering us two free nights to make the experience up to us.

We should be arriving soon, but have enjoyed our second experience on the train (obviously much shorter than our first) as well as the scenery of orange groves along the way.

Happy New Year!

We apologize for the delay, but we have had a busy last four days.

Monday evening after arriving we got to go on a mini private tour of the Raymond James Stadium (where the Tampa Bay Buccaneers play). It was so cool! They had just a few stadium lights on so that we could make our way down the tunnel onto the field, but it was such a neat sight.



On Tuesday, we spent the afternoon at the Lowry Park Zoo in Tampa. We had a lot of fun walking around seeing the different animals and learning new bits of information about them. The Lowry Park Zoo is home to one of the largest non-profit Manatee Hospitals in the country. All of the manatees in the zoo have been injured or require care. Once they are rehabilitated, they are released back into the area where they were found, or if that is an unsafe area, they release them back into an area where there is an established manatee population.

While we were at the zoo, we were also able to take a boat tour on the Hillsborough River (for an additional fee of course) in the hopes of seeing Manatees in the wild. We did see two Manatees, as well as two alligators and various other kinds of wildlife such as vultures, invasive plants that are not native to Florida (the Brazillian Pepper Tree), and various dogs who live along the river who beg for treats as the boat goes by. Even though we didn't see as many animals as we thought that we would, we got to see some pretty neat houses along the river including one that had a tree growing up through the roof.

Overall, it was a fun day, and we enjoyed the experience.



On Wednesday, we helped out with the mass band rehearsal for the Outback Bowl halftime show. Our jobs consisted of helping to get the students onto their correct side of the field so that the could be placed into their spots. Not much sun was soaked up during this experience, but it was a lot of fun to speak with the students who were involved.

After lunch, we made our way into Ybor City where the Outback Bowl parade is held. All of the high school bands who are participating in the competition were in the parade, along with the Iowa and South Carolina University bands. The crowd was really excited for the event, and we enjoyed watching from a balcony above the street. Beads were thrown just like at Mardi Gras, and we enjoyed watching people in the parade try to throw them up to the second story to us. It was nice for me to actually watch a parade instead of being in a parade (even though I do find that to be a lot of fun), but it was a lot of fun to simply be a part of the crowd.



When the parade was over, we drove to the other side of Tampa to spend New Year's Eve with the Cevallos family. Javier Cevallos is the President of Kutztown University, and several years ago while attending the Outback Bowl, he learned that my father is one of the band directors who is in charge of the Halftime Show. He spends New Year's in Florida each year with his family, and has graciously extended the invitation to my parents every year. Pete and I were thrilled to be invited as well this year, and we had a wonderful time. The Cevallos family encorporates several Puerto Rican, Spanish, and Ecuadorian traditions into their celebrations each year, and we enjoyed learning about them. There was live music, lots of food, the eating of 12 grapes at midnight, as well as jumping over the burning man of 2008. It was so much fun, and we look forward to adopting similar traditions into our future family celebrations.


And finally, today, New Year's Day and the Outback Bowl. We were there on the field prior to the game and during halftime. We also had the opportunity to go up into the Press Box and Club Level to walk around. The view from the Press Box is amazing, and we would both love the opportunity to watch a football game from that vantage point.

While we honestly didn't watch much of the game, we had a great time and enjoyed the freedom (thanks to our field access passes) to explore the stadium and see some really neat things.