Karen Comes to Visit...September 2010

Walking across the Brooklyn Bridge 

 

Taking in the skyline and heading in to Brooklyn for Pizza at Grimaldi's 

I eat my pizza like a real New Yorker

Carlo's Bakery, Hoboken New Jersey

The "Cake Boss"

We turned the corner to see a huge line of people and waits up to an hour and a half. We didn't let that scare us away though, we waited patiently with one thing on our minds: Chocolate covered cannoli's

Getting our numbers was like holding the gold ticket!! It was MASS CHAOS in there, and the most stressful bakery ordering I've ever experienced!

note: Yes, it was worth it!!!

Visiting the family in Long Island

Taking a boat ride captained by Rick and Karma

The September 11th Memorial in Babylon

Goofing around on the playground

Karma was exhausted after 2 days of fun in LI

It was so nice to show Karen a little bit of what our life is like here in the city. By the end of her trip she no longer trusted my "its not that far" and "its just a few blocks". Apparently I'm an exhausting tour guide!!

Kat's Visit in September

Out and About... West Village and Chelsea

note: I was wearing really cute heels but ended up in my flip flops about half way through the night.

You can take the girl out of California but you can't take the California out of the girl!

Picnic in Central Park

Out and About... Brooklyn, Williamsburg, Upper West Side

note: (top left picture) All the different clothes we tried on for one night out!

Playing around at The Plaza Hotel and FAO Schwarz

New York TV and Movie Bus Tour: A 3 hour tour covering sights in the Flatiron District, Chelsea, Greenwich Village, SoHo, Meatpacking District, Tribeca, Lower East Side, and Midtown. We had an awesome guide (who has even made an appearance in SNL digital shorts with Andy Samberg!) 

Times Square, Washington Square Park, Brownstone from the Cosby Show, Fire Station from Ghostbusters,
 and black & white cookies

We kinda have a thing for Will Smith...

Ben's Pizza from Men in Black and his apartment from Hitch

And the best part of all... FRIENDS!!!!!

note: Kat is an avid Friends fan....she falls asleep every night watching the DVD's and knows trivia that would surprise Jennifer Aniston herself ...so this was kind of a big deal!

Out to Dinner with Ryan

The Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island

I always love my time spent with Kat..just wish we didn't live so far away!! We had so much fun the week she was here, so glad she came but sad it was over so quickly!

Playing in the city and Long Island... August

 Ryan's cousin Trina was in town from Georgia so her and his Aunt Michelle came into the city one rainy afternoon

Learning how to eat a crab...but mostly just playing with our food!

At Gilgo enjoying the beach and even winning an intense game of buck dice!

Chelsea Pier in August

Someone that Ryan worked with told him that he should go to Chelsea Piers so for weeks whenever we were trying to think of something to do he would always suggest that. He didn't actually know what was there he just knew he needed to go. I had to work on a Saturday so he came and met me after work and we walked from Murray Hill towards Chelsea

Sights along the walk

We finally made it!!! It is a pretty cool spot--lots of activities to do including the four story driving range

Taking Karma to the dog park one afternoon

Panama City Beach, Florida

We started out August with a trip down to PCB to visit Karen while she was fixing up the house down there. Ryan grew up spending his summers down in Florida so he was excited for my first trip to the beach house. 

Kayaking in the bay behind the house

Crabing--another first for me--after a day at the beach! I was so excited when I caught one

Out to dinner at Pier Park at Margaritaville

Photo shoot on the dock

A very stormy day at the beach

Last day in Florida soaking up all the sun and sand we could

New York in July

We came back home from California in July to a hot sticky summer! I was pretty miserable until we got air conditioning in our apartment (our living room got up to 93 degrees!) Once we had a place to escape the heat we had fun exploring the city and heading out on the LIRR to Long Island for beach days.

The bottom left picture is from one night when we had run out to the store around the corner...when we left our doorman told us that there was a storm coming and that we should probably stay in. I really wanted an orange and we had to walk karma anyway so we decided to go quickly before it started raining. I had no idea how quick storms move out here! It didn't take long for the thunder and lighting to give way to pouring rain. Needless to say our doorman didn't look to happy with us when we ran back through the door looking like we had just jumped out of the pool! 

Ryan's old room mate Brandon and his wife Brittany came and stayed with us for a few days. I had time off while they were in town so I got to show them around a site see along with them during the day. We went to ground zero, saw the stock exchange, walked across the brooklyn bridge, ate good New York pizza, rode the Staten Island ferry to see the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island..just to name a few things! It was so fun having them here, we love visitors!

DUBLIN, IRELAND-TAKE 2

We were pretty exhausted by the time we got back to Dublin but we had a few more sights to see and one last night to have fun

On our flight back to Dublin, we needed to spend our last Pounds since Ireland uses Euros so we both decided we had to pick out a candy bar that we couldn't get at home

The classic Dublin photo...

You almost have to take this picture just to prove that you really did go to Dublin!

We each had to get one out front of the Guinness Storehouse

Kilmainham Gaol

Kind of the Irish equivalent of Alcatraz. They only way to go in and see the jail is by tour so we headed over and waited for our group tour to start

Checking out the jail cells. The jail part was neat, the stories were interesting, but the crazy history lesson was just dragging on!

At this point we were very ready for the tour to be over. Our tour was only supposed to be an hour. Here we are hitting hour TWO!!!!

We actually were trying to figure out if there was a way to escape. We didn't realize that part of the tour was to actually feel like a prisoner too!!!!! The warden is in the top right corner...

After our prison sentence was over we headed back to our hotel, relaxed for a bit then headed back out for dinner. We found a cute little pizza place to sit and enjoy good food and the "football" game. We flew out the next afternoon and amazingly were upgraded to 1st class again! We had such a great trip and saw so many amazing things. We made it home Tuesday afternoon, unpacked, did laundry, repacked, and headed to California on Wednesday! By the time we got there neither of us had any clue what time zone we were on, or whether we were coming or going!

EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND

We had a great few days in Edinburgh enjoying the sites, food, people, and history. Oh and not to mention the World Cup craziness going on everywhere during our whole trip!

Edinburgh Castle from below

Walking through the city to the Castle and Royal Mile

The Royal Mile

While walking down the Royal Mile we came across the Heart of Midlothian which marks the spot of the old gallows that were in front of the old prison. You stand on the edge of the heart and try to spit into the center loop; if you make it in its good luck.

As we were walking towards the statue on the far right Ryan told me that if I could tell him who the statue was of then he would take a picture of me with it (this is going back to him hating how people take pictures with any statue and me deciding that I have to!) Luckily I had already read all about the Royal Mile in our guide book so I quickly responded "Sir William Scott" 

The Hub (church), Edinburgh Castle, and the site of the last public execution in Edinburgh

Edinburgh Castle

The next morning we made our way back over to Edinburgh Castle to tour around. It was really neat to go here because it gave you an idea of what they castles really were like. Most of the castles that we had seen on our trip were ruins or empty castles. This, however, still had everything there including the roofs, windows, interiors, and so much more. They also have the Scottish Crown Jewels which was awesome to see, along with the "Stone of Scone" which was recently returned from England but must be taken back for any coronation. 

This guy was amazing on the bagpipe, while he was playing you could hear him almost everywhere around the grounds

We got the audio guide to take around with us-- it made everything so much more interesting! 

Boys and their weapons! The top cannon is Mons Meg and actually used to be drug around the battlefield at a whopping speed of 3 miles a day! It weighed 6.6 tons...I can't imagine being one of the many men whose job it was to get this monster from point A to point B

Leaving the Castle

The bottom right picture is the plaque that commemorates the 300 witches that were burned in Edinburgh

That night we did a haunted ghost tour of Edinburgh. It was so much fun! They walked us around the Royal Mile and told us true stories of horrible things that happened, and of the ghosts that were now present in Edinburgh. Our next stop was 4 stories under neath the Royal Mile in the vaults
Left: We were only in the 3rd scariest room and I was already freaked out!
Middle: Ryan wasn't scared at all, he thought it was funny how I didn't want to get left behind the group
Top Right: Thats where one of the ghosts likes to chill...
Bottom Right: I was a volunteer for showing how they used to do the hangings

Around the city

The top right photo is Ryan holding a replica of the Death Mask

Back at our hotel we ordered room service...just for a bucket of ice!! 

We headed out early the next morning for our last day in Dublin...