Puerto Rico-2015

This past January, John and I were lucky enough to take a little trip to Puerto Rico for work.  We went two years ago with one company and now this time we went with a different company.  They were very different experiences.

Last time in 2013 we were at a resort in San Juan, this time we were to the east of San Juan in Fajardo.  It was absolutely beautiful.  The trip was Jan 12th-15th so four days, three nights.  It was actually a perfect amount of time.  We had a very early flight on Monday morning.  WE were up by 3:00 for our 5:30 AM flight.  We connected in Chicago and then had a 4.5 hour flight to San Juan.  We arrived in San Juan just before 4:00 local time.  We then had about an hour shuttle to the resort. Upon arriving, we got checked in, found our room and walked around a bit before the Welcome Reception.  The dinner was really good and John enjoyed the drinks.  It is a good thing this time I pregnant because it is no an all inclusive place.  Drinks were only covered when it was for a work related event.  After dinner we headed back to our room and had an early night-we were exhausted from a long day of travel.

View from our Room

The next morning, I got up with John and we went to grab breakfast before John had his meetings for the morning.  While he was in the sessions, I found a nice shady spot to try to catch up on some random things like blog posts, shutterfly books, etc.  

View for the deck where I spent the mornings.  

John got done around 10:00 AM so we decided it would be a good day to check out Palomino Island.  We had the option to do other activities but with being pregnant, a lot of them were out of the question like ATV trip, horseback riding, and catamaran trip (I was worried about motion sickness).  We could have gone on a trip to Old San Juan but we had done that the last time we were there so we decided to just take it easy and relax-something that doesn't happen too often at home.  

This resort was nestled along side of the cliff which provided beautiful views.  The picture below shows the resort from the water taxi.  There was the upper section and then the lower side and we had to use a little tram to get down to water level.  Because of this, the resort actually doesn't have a beach right there on the resort but they have a private island accessible by water taxi so we spent Tuesday afternoon there.  

The island was really pretty and peaceful.  The first spot we sat at was a little more secluded and quiet which was nice.  

My Virgin pina colada.  I was definitely missing the rum :)

After awhile we decided to grab some lunch at the little restaurant on the island and then we moved more the the sandy side of the island.  

This is a picture of the tram that took you up and down the cliff.  

When we got back to our room we discovered that our carpet was soaking wet!!  So after a few calls to management/housekeeping they discovered there was a leak in the room above us which was causing the water to seep into our room.  They ended up moving us to a new room.  After making the switch we headed to dinner with our sales rep and all of the other dealers in his territory.  Our table was filled with dealers from MN, IA, and SD.  It was interesting to hear how different businesses run compared to ours.  We decided to call it an early night again-I know we aren't too exciting.  

The next morning we woke up to our new view from our balcony.  

We headed down for breakfast, John had breakout sessions, and I hung out by the pool again.  

That afternoon we decided just to hang out at the resort vs head over the island again.  We found a some chairs by the pool and just lounged all afternoon.  It was wonderful!!   Then we headed back to our room to get ready for the banquet.  This is when our relaxing vacation turned not so relaxing.  As we were walking to the banquet room I tripped and fell on and floor outlet that was missing its cover and was located right in the middle of the hallway.  Ugh I kind of got nervous because I fell and called my Dr. just to confirm I had nothing to worry about.  The nurse immediately told me I needed to go into the hospital to be monitored!! What?!? I was not going to go to a hospital in Puerto Rico.  After talking to the Dr. the nurse called me back and said I just needed to take it easy and to go in if I noticed any signs of trouble.  Thankfully, I never did and the hotel staff were super awesome.   

They brought up food from the banquet for us to eat in the room and I just rested for the remainder of the night.  It was scary though-all I could think about was going into preterm labor, having a premature baby on an island and being stuck here until my baby was strong enough to head back to the states.  Thank goodness none of that happened but after I fell I couldn't wait to get back to the states.  

The next morning we packed up our stuff and just lounged around.  We didn't have to leave the resort until after noon so we had a relaxing breakfast and just relaxed until it was time to catch our shuttle.  

We had this yummy fruit plate for breakfast along with this amazing corn bread and then shared an omelette.  It was perfect!  

All in all we had a great time minus the incident with tripping the last night (I cant' believe I am so clumsy!).  It was good to get away and spend some time with John, we met some nice people who are in similar businesses as us, and learned some too.  

Planning Our Disney Vacation-Part One

Since April/May sometime I have been planning a vacation to Disney World in Florida!  When we first decided we wanted to go I had NO IDEA how much info is out there are the planning tools that are accessible.  It is a but unreal-but for a planner like me I was in heaven ;).

I have a couple of posts regarding our planning process of this trip.  The first one covers our resort and dining selections.  I have one coming up that covers our daily plan (which park we are going to each day) and why as well as our fastpass+ reservations for those parks.  I will also include a list of sites that were super helpful to me during the planning process in the second post.

When we planned the trip we were hoping I would be pregnant and hoped to expecting a baby sometime in the spring and we wanted to go before that happened.  Our timing will be perfect!  We also booked when Disney was offering free dining and we are going before Elsie turns 3-which is the age they start charging for admission and for buffets.  I did cost compare staying off site in a condo with a kitchen vs staying on site with the meal plan and it ended up being cheaper to stay in a moderate resort and eating Disney meals.  Also, the weather isn't super hot the time of year we are going so I don't think we will be spending much time at the pools or a beach.

Oh another thing we took into consideration when booking when to go was the crowd calendar.  There are so many crowd calendars that predict the crowd levels in each of the parks.  We are going during a relatively slow time during the holiday season which started at Disney on Nov. 5th and goes into the first week of January.  I am super excited to be going when Disney is all decked out in Christmas!  And if you know me-you know I really don't like crowds so I know we could never go over Christmas break.

RESORT: 
For our resort I chose Caribbean Beach Resort.  It was between Coronado Springs and Carribean Beach and after researching felt that Caribbean Beach themeing would appeal most to Elsie.  Also the room has a table and two chairs vs at Coronado Springs it is a desk and a chair.  We are planning to do some breakfast meals in the room so I thought the table would come in handy-its the little details :)

DINING:
After reserving the dates for our trip I had to come up with a plan for which parks we will visit each day so I could make our dining reservations.  Included in the Disney Dining Plan is one counter service meal (food court like places), one snack, and one table service meal.  Because we have the dining plan the most bang for our buck is to make reservations at Character meals-many of which are buffets which means Elsie eats free.  At restaurants where you order off a menu the child can eat off your plate for free or you can order them a meal.  Well Elsie is a good eater so I tried to book places that had buffets.

This is what our meals look like :

Day One:  Arrival, We plan to go visit some family that lives in the area.

Day Two:  Check into hotel and spend a half day at Hollywood Studios. We have lunch reservations at Hollywood and Vine which is a character meal that includes Doc McStuffins, Jake, and Sophia the First.

Day Three:  Magic Kingdom-Breakfast at Crystal Palace with Winnie the Pooh and Friends.  Our reservation is the coveted 8:00 AM time which means we will be able to enter the park over an hour earlier than everyone else :).  Dinner is at Chef Mickey's which is dinner with Mickey, Minnie, Pluto, Donald, and Goofy.

Day Four:  Epcot Center-Breakfast and Lunch at a counter service restaurant and Dinner at Princess Storybook Dining at Akershus Royal Banquet Hall which features Belle, Cinderella, Snow White, Aurora, Ariel, and Mary Poppins.  This is a very special day so we had to plan a very special meal ;).

Day Five:  Free Day-we have no plans for this day!

Day Six:  Animal Kingdom-Tusker House Breakfast-Mickey, minnie, Donald, and Goofy-Another 8:00AM reservation.

Day Seven:  Breakfast and Lunch whereever and dinner at Cinderella's Happily Ever After Dinner at 1900 Park Fare.  This dinner features Cinderella, Prince Charming, Lady Tremaine (the Step-Mother) Anastasia and Driezella (the step-sisters).

Day Eight:  Early Departure.

So with Elsie's age I am super excited about scoring reservations at the times we wanted for these character meals.  She is super into all of these characters and in the past weeks has become obsessed with Pooh which when scheduling these meals were the characters she was least familiar with.

Something else to note is that when staying on site you can book your reservations for dining 180 days out from the start of your trip plus the duration of the trip so I could go on the minute our reservation window opened and book all of our reservations at one time.  If you stay off site you only can book 180 days out from the day your are trying to book so if your trip was 10 days each day for 10 days you have to book your reservation.  With character meals, those fill up fast but I had no problem booking because I was up bright and early  (5AM) to book our meals.  Here we are 30+ days out and there are no reservations for the times that we selected so it pays to be on top of things.  Now not every restaurant is like this but the character meals are.

So there is our plans for dining.

Poland Trip: Day 3-Tatra Mountains to Rzemien

Monday, June 23rd 2014

What a beautiful day to explore the Tatra Mountains.  We woke up and sat outside for awhile just enjoying the beautiful view outside our cottage.  John and I still have not mastered the art of selfie taking so just bear with us ;).  

We found this interesting.  These are their hay bales and you can see in the above picture a man with a wheel barrow.  He was getting some hay for his livestock.  So no round or square bales here.  

After breakfast we packed our bags and headed back into Zakopane to make our way up the mountains.  There is one place that had a gondola but when we stopped to ask how to get there we were told we would have to wait in line for over a few hours.  So we passed on that and instead took a tram up.  

This was funny to me.  A pretend beach on the top of the mountain.  Also if you look at a the pictures below I am wearing jeans and a jacket because it was chilly.  Well there were many people sitting in these chairs in tiny little tank tops soaking up the sun.  

My attempt at a panoramic photo with my phone.  

At the top of the mountain there was an alpine slide so Tony, Magda, John, Tami, and myself decided to give it a go.  There were a few part where you felt like you were on the edge of the mountain.  It was pretty cool.  

We hung out at the top of the mountain for a while, enjoyed a beer and had lunch.  There were a lot of little restaraunts and shops up at the top so we choose beer and pizza-not very Polish I know :)  But it was yummy.  When we were done we had two options to get down the mountain.  Take the tram back down or hike down.  My mom and Tami took the tram and the rest of us hiked!  It was really pretty but unlike trails here it was straight down vs switchbacks.

The guys were being silly trying to walk down the hill attempting to stay straight up and down instead of leaning like most do when walking down a steep hill.  For some reason this gave all of us the giggles.  

The "Up" tracks and the "Down" Tracks.  

There was a little bridge where we crossed above the tram tracks.  

Another view of the Sleeping Knight off to the left of this pic.  

And another from a distance.

There goes Tami and Mom down the tram

My handsome hubby :)

The hike down although steep was beautiful and it gave us a change to enjoy the scenery.  But let me tell you, although we didn't hike up the mountain my legs were super sore from hiking down.  I suppose it uses a whole set of muscles.  

Our friends along the trail.  

We got back down to the bottom and there was a little market square and also a bunch of kids activities that I am sure Elsie would have loved had she been there.  We walked around a little bit and looked at the shops.  We bought Elsie a little pair of regional moccasins and because they size things different I was so nervous about them fitting when we got home.  As we were walking there was a little peddler who was trying to sell us these little dancing disney characters (They dance along a fishing line that is attached to a radio and its vibrations made them dance)  My dad thought it would be fun to buy those for the grandchildren so he was having Magda ask a couple of questions.  Well shortly into the conversation (which was in Polish) we could definitely tell that the mood turned very angry-haha.  The guy who was selling these things was pissed at us because people were walking by and we were blocking the view-ummm we were trying to buy the things! So Magda essentially told him to F-Off and we walked away.  What a jerk.  You definitely don't have to understand the language to know the tone of a conversation that's for sure.  So we started heading back towards the vehicles.  It was finally time to head to Rzemien, the village where Magda's father and Danuta live.  

One thing I learned in Poland is that words are pronounced nothing like the look.  Rzemien in my mind is actually like Gemien with a "G" or a "J" sound vs and R sound.  So anyways, the village is about 1.5 hours in the opposite directions from Zakopane so it was probably like 3 hours away.  Of course I spent a lot of the time sleeping.  I rode with my mom and dad and Tami and Derick rode with Tony and Magda.  There was one point where I thought we were all going to die-ha!  So the road are pretty narrow once you get off the interstate (probably not what they are called) and we found ourselves following a semi on this narrow road with no shoulder.  My brother was trying to get around him and pass but of course was a bit difficult because he was driving his car from England where the driver sits on the right side-which is fine when the center line in on the right side so he was relying on Magda to stick her head out the window and check for oncoming traffic.  There was one time I thought Magda's head was going to get cut off.  It was pretty intense.  Oh and add to the fact that the semi driver was hugging and crossing the center line  when there wasn't oncoming traffic so he could avoid the side of the road made it even more interesting.  But we all made it there safely. :)

We got to Rzemien and Magda showed us where we would be staying.  One of Krzysztof's (Magda's father) cousins was letting us stay in their upstairs apartment.  So we unloaded of bags and then walked down to Magda's parents home which was probably two blocks in distance.  It was interesting because pretty much all the homes had fences around their properties with walk gates and gates for vehicles to drive through.  But none of the fences were privacy fences.  Many of them were really decorative fences-very pretty.  Another thing that I noticed about the homes here is that most had clotheslines/drying racks because electric dryers were seldom used (if they even owned one).  This actually inspired me to get back into drying my clothes outside.  I bet I have dried fewer than 10 loads in our dryer in the last month.  Another thing I noticed is all the beautiful flowers they had either in a garden, window sill, or container.  Oh and the vegetable gardens.  It seemed most home is the village had one in their yard and Danuta's was huge :)

We enjoyed dinner outside and it was absolutely delicious!  We had some yummy green beans, boiled potatoes with dill, ribs, and chicken.  It was so good!!!  And then not long after dinner the vodka shots began along with more food!  

This photo shows the food that got brought out not more than an hour after dinner was served:  Desserts, kielbasa, and ham.  yum!!!!  

The two dads enjoying some moonshine :)

It was a very enjoyable night.  Although we didn't speak the same language we were able to communicate enough to enjoy each other's company.