Summer Lovin'...Had us a blast! Summer of 2011

This was a week of rest from our trip to Boston. However, it was also the week where Bank Of America sponsors Free Museum Day. So, we all agreed to head to the Intrepid Sea, Air, and Space Museum. It was a hot day and I haven learned that to keep ourselves cool, I put bottles of water in the freezer (make sure you pour some out first) and when we head out we each carry a frozen bottle of water to place on our pulse points to keep ourselves cool. It also gives us really cold water to drink. It certainly helped with my kids and their complaints about the humidity.

The Intrepid was very interesting and one could spend at least 4 hours there.

Space Hands

Rock the Boat, don't rock the boat baby.

As you can see, it is very interactive. There is also a cafe there in case you or the little ones get hungry. The boys all had a great time. They probably could have spent more time there; however, they were also getting tired.

During this particular week there was a lot of heat and humidity. There was one particular day where it was at a heat index of 110 degrees. This was when we decided to drive to the Liberty Science Center in New Jersey at Liberty Park. It's a lovely location. This is also where you can get the ride to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty; however, since we did this just 2 years ago, we opted to just head to the Science Center. Plus, it was just too hot to be anywhere outside.

As I have mentioned before, if you have a Science Museum membership where they belong to the ASTC group, then you have reciprocity amongst these museums. The best is that you get in FREE when you live 90 miles or more from the museum. It's great because we used this at the Boston Science Center as well. It was a great day for the kids and we all stayed cool inside.

1776...no, not the musical June/July 2011

(This is a repeated blog. I thought I hadn't posted this trip, but apparently I did. Check out: "Who's Got the Paine or just re-read and enjoy) We had the fortunate chance to meet up with our oldest son's classmate in Boston. His classmate's father is a Bostonian and we decided to head to the Boston Museum of Science and then to walk the Freedom Trail with the kids. This was a great way for the kids to experience history. There are walking tours that you can take; however, we had our own guide decided to forego the paid tours.There is a wonderful website that you can use in sync with your smartphone of the Freedom Trail that will offer all the history you need as you arrive at each landmark.

Freedom Trail (red line)

Paul Revere's House

oldest street (cobblestones)

Faneuil Hall

oldest restaurant

 The Museum of Science is located in Science Park. It's an easy ride there via train or bus. The day we went MBTA was renovating the Science Park train station and so notices from the Museum and various postings throughout the train stations stated how MBTA would provide us with a bus to connect with the museum at its nearest train station. It was all very easy.

On another day, our friends invited us to their family summer home in Little Compton. We have never been there and found out it was just Rhode Island (about 1.5 hr away from Boston proper). It was a gorgeous getaway that reminds me a little of Martha's Vineyard. What fun we had that day kayaking (clear bottom kayak), boogie boarding at the nearby beach, looking at the many lobster traps and the beautiful sunset. We were very grateful to have been invited to such a lovely place for some relaxing fun.

Little Compton

Oh Canada!!!! Arriving in Vancouver, B.C. Summer 2017

As I have been blogging off and on for almost a decade now, I have found myself traveling with teenagers. Yes, they do grow and how we travel begins to change and shift. I will continue blogging about my travels and share with you what I do presently. Here we go...........

Our lives are quite busy nowadays with sports and a lot of other extracurricular activities. I just realized it's been 2 years since I have blogged about our travels. I can't believe life got THAT busy, but it did. When they say it gets easier when the kids grow up, they are wrong. The kids can handle themselves more independently, but extracurriculars are insane. We aren't the type of family who makes the kids do everything. We are far from that so I can't imagine how other parents do it. I will admit that it takes a village to raise your family.

I will try to catch up on the other visits we made between my last blog and this one. For now, I will start with what is fresh in my mind.

Our family reunion has been planned by all of my cousins and my aunts and uncles. Unfortunately, this reunion was brought about by my mother's passing. Her brothers and sisters felt we all needed to see each other more often for good reasons rather than to say our goodbyes to those who will be missed.

Since I have family in Vancouver, British Columbia, we all decided that would be a fun place for a 4-day reunion (long weekend). My husband, myself, and the kids stayed a bit longer to meet up with friends. This is one of those trips where I didn't have to do too much research since my family were the best tour guides. I had been there before, in fact many times growing up; however, this is only the second time for our boys and now they are teenagers it will be memorable.

We flew WestJet airlines and it was very affordable coming from the SF Bay Area. This is the one area I knew I had to put in some work. We knew about the family reunion about 5 mos in advance and hence, my constant search for the best flight prices. I looked through various airlines to compare the prices and to search for direct flights. Out of the many airlines flying into Vancouver, we found that WestJet had the best economical prices. I did keep in mind that it was only a 2 hr flight and flying in something more economical may not give us the most space, but for a 2 hr. flight I knew we would be fine (the flight ended up taking us only 1hr 45 min). The flight was clean, efficient, and on time. Once again, I like the early flights because of the traffic here in the Bay Area. I like to avoid the traffic and it leads to less people in the morning. We flew in on a Thursday and the prices were still very good.

I had booked a rental car via Travelocity and used my Discover card to reserve our car. This was my first mistake!!! Canada is not familiar with the Discover card and not many

businesses take it. I didn't realize this and should have thought about it initially. So, this led to a horrible experience trying to get a rental car. They only take Visa or MasterCard. Since I didn't bring mine with me (well, I had a Visa Debit, but they didn't take that), I had to call my husband. He was there already for a quick job that had ended the day before. Fortunately, my cousin was able to bring him to us so we could use his card to get our rental. What was frustrating was that we used the local car rental place and they were of no help whatsoever!!! They just denied our reservation, although the reservation was confirmed via Travelocity, and then did us no help (poor customer service) to help us find another car rental place. This car rental place was off the site of the airport. My boys and I carried our luggage and walked to another car rental for help. Enterprise was wonderful!! Even though they didn't take my Discover, they let my boys and I sit there, cool off, took our luggage to a corner of the office so we could sit and wait for my husband. There was a Costco across the street. We were hungry. My boys were getting hangry!!

We ended up eating lunch at Costco and the beauty of a Canadian Costco? Poutine!!! My boys love fries and they especially love poutine. We were able to grab a bite and when my husband arrived with my cousins, they ate there as well. Enterprise must have felt bad for us because they ended up upgrading us to an SUV from an Economy car. We drove to my other cousin's house where they had an in-law for us to stay during our visit.

Lions Gate Bridge

Our first stop, since we arrived @ 10am, was to Stanley Park. It reminds me of our park here in San Francisco, the Golden Gate Park. The boys enjoyed stretching their legs and climbing trees and tree stumps on the waters edge. It was a beautiful day in Vancouver, B.C. My uncle stated that I always say that when I'm there visiting them. He said that it's because I'm only there during the summer months which is why everything is so lush and beautiful. The rest of the year, it's pretty wet and cold. The weather is probably a lot like Seattle. Oh, and one more thing. My Canadian cousins stated that it's not always easier to fly to Seattle, rent a car, and drive through the borders. Apparently, their last drive through the border took over three hours. There are a lot of people crossing the border and the border agents aren't the quickest in processing. Unless you have the Nexus or Global pass (?), you will sit for a bit. We were happy flying direct to Vancouver. For everyone else, heed this warning.