Brotherly Love

For Thanksgiving this year, Mollie and I were both without a place to go, so we decided to head to Pennsylvania to enjoy Thanksgiving in Amish country. We started out in the village of Intercourse (great name, right?)...
...and walked around the different shops. My favorites were the amazing hand-sewn quilts and the iron works. Next we went on a buggy ride, featuring a covered bridge.
Love the buggy roadsign!
Don't hate me for cutting off this picture, but the buggy is kind of bumpy. I thought these girls were adorable, though.We headed over the restaurant that we have made reservations at for dinner. It had been under Amish restaurants when we searched online. When we walked in, though, it was not at all what we expected. We were thinking some cozy little old-fashioned diner. What we found, was a crowded almost cafeteria-like modern restaurant. The food left something to be desired, including our first course of fruit cocktail from a can, mashed potatoes from a box, and sweet potatoes drizzled with maple syrup. The bread was delicious, though, as was the pie. At least they had good baked goods. There were a lot of elderly couples there, as well as some interesting younger families. We just couldn't stop laughing about it.

The next day, we spent in Philadelphia, the city of Brotherly Love. Mollie and I were so excited to discover that the city is actually on a grid! It was so nice to be able to get around without staring at the map the whole time. I loved visiting all of the historical sites.

I was a little surprised at the size of the Liberty Bell. I always imagined it would be larger. I was also sad to know that the story about the crack that I learned in Elementary school is a myth.

Independence Hall was one of those places where it was incredible to imagine walking where such great men had walked before.
This is the room where the Declaration of Independence was adopted and the Constitutional Convention was held.
We enjoyed walking around Philadelphia, seeing the famous sites. There was also a really cute Christmas village set up with things from all around the world.

In the afternoon we drove to nearby Valley Forge. This was the 1777 - 1778 winter quarters for General Washington's troops during the Revolutionary War.

For dinner, we had to go get a famous Philly Cheesesteak. It was a little like the Seinfeld Soup Nazi. If you didn't know what you want and order quickly, you endured the wrath.

We ended the night with a little face mask and some TastyKakes, an original Pennsylvania brand.
The next day we headed to Gettysburg and did a driving tour of the park. I actually don't think I'd ever read the entire Gettysburg address before, and I came away with a new respect for Abraham Lincoln.

So many battlefields and so many lives lost here from allover the country. I don't think I've ever seen so many memorials in one place.
This is the Gettysburg National Cemetery, organized in semicircles around a monument. Each state had its own section for its fallen soldiers.

Our last stop before the drive home was the David Wills house. This is the room Lincoln stayed in and finished writing his famous Gettysburg address.

Pennsylvania is a beautiful state and there is nothing like a good road trip!

Dancing In Heaven

When we were little, my sisters and I had certain videos with movies taped from HBO that we would watch over and over again. One of our favorites was Girls Just Want To Have Fun. A classic, right? Still contains some of my favorite dance moves. Well, the movie was on t.v. the other day, so I got a little nostalgic and decided to find the soundtrack. Maybe I don't have the best search skills, but I couldn't find it available to buy anywhere. So sad. I did find a different version of this song and listened to it like a hundred times. Doesn't it make you want to dance? Bonus points if you know the scene this plays in. Go Janie and Jeff!

I Love Bermuda

On Wednesday the rain started pouring down and didn't leave for the rest of the week. Joy and I decided it was a good day to go to the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute where we could be inside. Titanic artifacts were on display. Crazy to think about all the people on that ship.


We were able to be in a simulated shark cage. The shark coming up and banging the cage actually did give us a fright. That would definitely be a rush to do it for reals.

These heads show the shrinkage factor from going down to different depths in a submarine. Why doesn't that happen to people?

This is the Tucker Cross which Teddy Tucker recovered in 1955, from the Spanish ship San Pedro which sank in 1595. When it was transported to a facility in 1977, Teddy unwrapped it to realize that the original was stolen and replaced by a replica!

It was a very rainy day, so we just headed back to the hotel. That pink pole is the bus stop. Pink poles go away from Hamilton and blue poles go toward Hamilton. They were hard to recognize at first when walking about.

The next three days I spent in the conference for work. After the first day of meetings, our boss treated our Development team and us to the nicest restaurant on the island. Yummy, fancy food. Jeff did have to squeeze into the back of a taxi though. The curse of being tall. ;)

Joy got to spend the day roaming the beaches and taking pictures. Isn't Bermuda beautiful? Too bad I didn't get to spend more time on the beaches. Oh well. It did rain every day while I was working, so the timing couldn't have been better.

Friday night, our company had a Calypso White Party. Requested dress: white with a calypso flare (explained as a splash of bright color). I somehow managed not to take any pictures, but there was an amazing amount of fresh seafood and a live band for dancing. Good times.

The conference ended around lunchtime on Saturday, so I organized a group to go on a Glass Bottom Boat for a shipwreck tour. We were in the Bermuda Triangle afterall. Surprisingly, after a while you can't really tell the difference between a rock and a boat underwater, because all the anemones and ocean life covers them up.

We also spent a little time snorkeling. There weren't very many fish, but plenty of sea cucumbers and different types of anemones. It is actually against the law to remove these. Our captain told us about a guy who tried to hide one in his shorts... yeah, he didn't realize that they sting. Oops!

Another interesting story... the green turtle population was nearly extinct in the 1800's because they were hunted for food. They tried to bring turtles from another country, but didn't realize that turtles go back to the place they were born to lay their eggs, so that didn't work. In the '60s and '70s Bermuda tried again by bringing thousands of turtle eggs from Costa Rica and burying them in the sand. Many of them hatched, however, the sex of turtles is determined by the temperature of the water. Because the water in colder in Bermuda, they were all born males. Ironic, right?

Sunday morning, we enjoyed a leisurely breakfast before heading home.

I highly recommend visiting Bermuda. I absolutely loved it there. Maybe it's a sign that I need to move to a warmer climate. ;)

Dolphins at the Dockyards

Tuesday was an exciting day. Joy and I got to play with dolphins! We went to the Dockyards to the Bermuda Maritime Museum where the dolphins live.We watched them jump and do tricks.

We got to spend an hour meeting the eight dolphins. They like to play, so we were told to be really excited and have lots of energy. Here I'm feeding one a fishy.

This one blew snot on my hand. Ew!

This one even let me hold her.

Joy started a water fight with these two boys.

Dolphins are such beautiful creatures!

Afterwards we walked around the top of the fort. Great views, but sheep live up there, so we were dodging their little pellets everywhere.

We also spent some time looking at the museum. We had the place almost all to ourselves.

This room boasted amazing floor to ceiling murals depicting Bermudian history.

A cruise ship docked there that day. The other two girls that swam with us came off of it. I need to go on a cruise sometime. Can you believe I've never been on one?

Another amazing day in Bermuda!

St. George & Rugby

Monday we slept in all the way until 8 am before taking the bus to Hamilton and having breakfast at The Spot. We rode the ferry to St. George, which stopped at the Dockyards on the way. It was a high-speed ferry and quite windy. The ride was pretty choppy. Enough so, that water splashed from the front of the boat all the way over the top to hit us in the face in the very back of the boat. Mmm-hmm. Refreshing salt bath.

Once in St. George, we saw the Unfinished Church...

...and Tobacco Bay, where some swimmers were having a lot of fun.

Next we walked and walked and walked in the heat to Fort St. Catherine.
The view from the top is amazing... and we got to play with big guns and cannons. ;)

Underground was a maze of tunnels, with plenty of storage space for their weaponry.

The lights were placed in the walls, sometimes in the middle of the wall so it would light rooms on both sides. Genius!

Good thing I noticed this sign, but Joy certainly didn't need to.

We weren't looking forward to the long walk back to St. George, so we actually had a cab come to get us. The driver was the deputy mayor and sang us a song... "I was born in Bermuda, eat your heart out..." He would stop in the middle every now and then and say, "why you laughing?" At one point he asked if we were "waiting for New Year," apparently we were moving too slowly. It may have been my most entertaining cab ride ever.

Back in the city, we decided to ride the bus to see the other lighthouse on the island. We realized that the bus only ran every hour and we didn't feel like waiting that long... so it was basically a bus tour of the lighthouse. We got a pretty good shot, eh?

The funny thing is, we probably would have had time to get off the bus, but all of the clocks on the buses are completely wrong, neither of us had a watch, and with the time change, we thought it was much later than it actually was. One funny thing about the bus... see this sign?

Joy and I both independently sat and thought it looked like a wise man putting something into a trash can or the like. Only when we started talking about it did we realize it is food. :)

We rode back to Hamilton and tried to go to the Bermuda art gallery, but it was closed. We ended up just having dinner at the Pickled Onion. The name sounded so gross, we had to try it. They definitely have interesting names for restaurants there. The food was actually pretty tasty.

Normal business dress includes Bermuda shorts. Love it!

Next we went to the rugby tournament. We ended up getting there pretty early, but that meant we got our choice of seats right at mid-field. The temperature dropped, and we started freezing, but luckily the rain stayed away. I resorted to buying a fleece jacket, which was luckily half price because it was from the year before. Joy just used the shorts I had brought with my swimsuit. :)

First, we saw Argentina get slaughtered by New Zealand. I was loving that they did the haka before the game! Here they are in a scrum.

The second game we saw was Canada vs. South Africa.

We had some fun people sitting by us. One American guy in front of us had no idea what was going on. I knew the gist of the game (which I learned from Lisa, whose brother played for Utah), so tried to impart my limited knowledge. Luckily, the British lady sitting next to me knew the game upside-down. She told us how she'd been going to games since she was seven years old (she's probably in her sixties now) with her dad, and ended up marrying a rugby player. Now they traveled allover to see matches. We also had some tipsy loud boys sitting by us for a bit. They were quite hilarious. I loved the accents. I seriously loved seeing these games. Rugby is so much more interesting to watch than football. They actually play more than they huddle.