Puerto Rico (the rest of the trip!)
Day 4 was a special day. Our group rented out the resort’s private island: Palomino Island. I’ve never been on an island with so many fun activities available. Not only could you rent kayaks and jet skis but you could also play ping pong, basketball, volleyball, paddle ball, chess, bean toss, and mini golf. I might even be missing some activities since there were so many! We also had free drinks all day and lunch. Ahhhh…..that was the life I tell ya! I got my butt whooped as usual playing Dad in ping pong. Then Naomi and I...
read morePuerto Rico (day 3)
That night we had cocktails and dinner outside on a beautiful terrace. Another wonderful vacation day had by all. For our first full day with the parents we decided to rent a car and venture to the capital city of Old San Juan. The drive was only about an hour and it sure was worth it. Old San Juan is pretty small and we walked through just about the entire city in one afternoon.The highlights? The fortress that still stands around much of the ocean front was very scenic. The cute little houses and cobblestone streets also brought a level of...
read morePuerto Rico (day 2)
On day 2 we were ready to explore. We got up early had breakfast with cafe con leche, of course, and then headed to the lobby to meet up for our tour to the El Yunque Rainforest. As soon as we got on the bus and heard our very lively tour guide speaking English with a strong yet totally understandable Puerto Rican accent, I know it was going to be a good time. This was the kind of tour guide that is clearly entertaining enough to himself that entertaining us is a mere bonus. He told us his name but quickly told us to just call him Tooouer...
read morePuerto Rico (day 1)
We took our time getting out of bed the first morning and were stunned at the beautiful view out our terrace (see banner picture above). After facebooking our view to make all of our friends jealous, we leisurely headed down to a buffet breakfast. Still tired from the previous work week and our travel day which turned out to be a little longer than expected, we decided our first day in Puerto Rico should be one of pure relaxation. So after taking a few pictures of the surroundings of the El Conquistador Resort we booked a couples massage!!...
read morePuerto Rico (travel day)
After a crazy work week and an extra day of work on Saturday, I was not at all looking forward to packing late at night and then getting up at 5:30am to head to the airport BUT when you are headed to Puerto Rico during the most insanely cold and snowy winter of the past decade, it seems like a small sacrifice to make. Getting up at 5:30am is somewhat hard for a non morning person (ein Morgenmuffel as they’d say in German) like myself but then again it is almost better than 7 or 8 am because at 5:30am I don’t really feel like...
read morePunta Cana, Dominican Republic with a side of ATL
After a bit of crazy busy time in 2012, my fiance and I finally managed to get away on a real vacation. Not the kind where you actually have work to do but take a few extra days or hours to see some sites and visit cool places, but the kind where the sole purpose of the trip really is to relax and be away from work – YAY! Since we were looking for some sun in the middle of a Midwestern winter, we decided to head to the Dominican Republic. The flights were just about the right price so that we could cover the costs with the vouchers we...
read morePhiladelphia (Nov. 15-18)
Wow, my last post, of Japan, seems like forever ago. I am happy to say that I finally managed another trip with the justification of going to a work-related conference. No, it was actually a pretty good conference. It had been a long time since I had been to the City of Brotherly Love and this trip, albeit short, ended up being my most thorough Philadelphia trip to date. Naomi and I spent most of our time in sessions learning about the latest and greatest in foreign language teaching, but when we had a free hour here and there we walked...
read moreJapan (days 8 – 10): Kyoto
From Hiroshima we took the fastest Shinkansen to to Japan’s former capital–Kyoto. We had free time the first night we arrived and I thought I would finally take the opportunity to look for some shoes. Having heard that it is hard to find large shoe sizes here I mistakenly thought it would be easier to find small sizes. No such luck! But we did find some T-Shirts with cool sayings written in Japanese Kanji. I’ve never payed upwards of $40 for a plain T, but I figured I may never return to Japan so what the heck!?!? We...
read moreJapan (days 6 – 7): Hiroshima and Miyajima
Shinkansen! That’s what the Japanese call their fast trains. They also have special names denoting how fast they go. The fastest”bullet train” is called nazomi but we took a slower one for our trip to Hiroshima. From Toyota it took about 2.5 hours because the slower train’s max speed was “only” around 240 km/hr and made several stops in the smaller cities. I was pretty happy about this down time as I was finally able to update this blog for you! After arriving we went on a hunt for the city’s...
read moreJapan (days 4-5): Toyota
The second stop of our Japan-in-10 days-trip was Toyota. What better place to see daily life in a smaller city than the automobile capital of Japan. On our way to Toyota we stopped at a beautiful hotel to eat lunch. The lunch was delicious and the description of it was even better (see picture below). As soon as we arrived in Toyota we did a fairly extensive tour of the plant which was certainly cleaner and more efficient than the US plants I’ve seen. Afterwards we hit the Toyota museum as well. I was disappointed that they didn’t...
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