Lowdown House Blues Festival

July 11, 2013July 16, 2013 • by admin • In July Home, Travel, Where We Walkers Are • 0

BB King & Co (July 10th/11th)

Blues. I thought I knew what ‘blues’ music was… yet had no idea there were so many different ‘types’ or genres within one category. Anyways, on Wednesday and Thursday night Cordie and I made the trek to the Brookfield Plaza which was formally known as the World Trade Center… a couple hours in advance to get in line for seats. Forgetting that I am not a huge fan of lines the wait was not that fun when the actual ‘seating’ of people started LOOOONG after what was communicated. I must say though, seeing BB King and his crew in person was definitely worth it!

BB King is now 87 years old… a great singing voice, talented at his guitar playing and LOVED to talk more during the show than do either of the previous two things. He was very humorous and the team of guys on stage with him were just as amazing! The crowd went wild when ‘the thrill is gone‘ started playing!

For the second night of the festival we went much later to avoid all the lines and in hopes of just seeing the Los Lonely Boys and to hear their infamous “Mamacita” which was fantastic!

A few highlights of being at the festival was being two rows back from a commercial that was being filmed both nights in a row (the actors/actresses had the same outfits on both nights) and watching all the crazy people trying to move seats…walk towards the stage to be told to sit back down again…over and over and over.. yes I may have paid much more attention to all the people than the actual show. (guilty) And the gorgeous view of the water, the beautifully constructed buildings around us and spectacular yachts just lounging in their place.

9/11 Memorial

July 9, 2013July 16, 2013 • by admin • In July Home, Travel • 0

In Remembrance & Prayer (July 9th)

Today we went to the 9/11 Memorial to honor the lives that were lost and to help support the efforts of building a ‘new’ place for the city of New York in that specific area.

There are two fountains (30 feet deep) in place of where the two towers stood-the names of each individual is nice and large so it is very legible. The last picture is of the new Freedom Tower (now the tallest in the United States) and I believe 4 new World Trade Towers will be built as well. We spent a lot of time at the memorial amongst others reading about the events and all that happened on that day praying for those that are still mourning the loss of their loved one.

Life in the Fast Lane

July 5, 2013July 5, 2013 • by admin • In July Home, Travel, Where We Walkers Are • 0

These first few days of living in Manhattan have FLOWN by-we have taken complete advantage of exploring our surroundings each day! So it feels like we have been here for more than just 4 days! We have decided that everyday we will go out and ‘walk’ the city for exercise but also to just see MORE… in NYC I am finding there is always MORE to see!

One of my favorite things is how there are different styles of buildings everywhere you look! We live really close to what I call the ‘court’ district as there are court houses and police buildings everywhere! The pier is also a very short walk away and we have gone to everyday since we have been here. I love the view and being by the water.

Check out my Pictures page for more photos in the New York album that will continue to grow as we are here! (in the upper right hand corner of each picture within my gallery-there is ‘info’ click on that and you can see the description..for those of us that would not know where to look. )

Recap:Driving from Rochester, MN to New York City, NY

July 3, 2013July 3, 2013 • by admin • In July Home, Moving, Travel, Where We Walkers Are • 1

Day One. Adios MN!

Cordie (my husband) and I left Rochester, MN Friday June 28th for the Big Apple. I had many tears in my eyes after saying good-bye to 2 close friends and their darling children, which are like my nieces. I will deeply miss them all-so thankful for our technology today to being able to ‘see’ them through different avenues if its not in person. I love each of their personalities and have enjoyed watching them grow!

We hauled as fast as we could to Columbus, Ohio… Running into hours of traffic in Chicago due to the BlackHawks winning parade…made the trek a lot longer with a quick spurt of excitement getting to ‘wave’ across the interstate at our good friends the Timms. I have never been to Indiana… so seeing the various cities was nice and yet we were ready to get to our hotel by the time we were in Indianapolis…the ten hour drive ended up being just over 12 hrs by the time we stopped in Columbus, Ohio. Day One of driving was over.

Day Two. Columbus Zoo

Columbus has one of the top ’2′ zoos in the U.S after San Diego, CA. I was super excited to go… after a long morning of rain and sitting in the hotel we were finally able to go to the zoo for a few hours to see some animals! One of my new favorite animals is the BEAR.

The thing that was fun about the Columbus Zoo was that there were different ‘regions’ you could go into to see animals from different parts of the world; so of course I took Cordie to “Australia” one of my favorite places in the world.

Overall, we had a blast at the Zoo in the hours we were there… If you have the extra time their waterpark looked delightful!

Day Three. Trek to Niagara Falls.

On Sunday, we took our time leaving Columbus going back to (we had dinner there the night before) Whole Foods Market for another wonderful meal. What I love about Whole Foods are all the choices! We had sushi and pizza-so worth every dime. We were making pretty good time so decided to stop in Erie, PA on Presque Isle to ‘skip’ a few flat rocks and enjoy the sunshine and sand.

After our short stop we got on the road again towards Buffalo, NY! We hit ‘toll’ traffic outside of NY that added another two hours onto the trip… we arrived at our hotel and literally threw our stuff on the bed and went as fast as possible (without speeding) to Niagara Falls in the hope we would make it before the sunset!

This was taken just ten minutes before it went down. We did not do as much research as we could have before arriving, but got incredibly lucky that there was some sort of Festival going on (more people yes) which meant FREE parking and FREE entry onto the observation deck which allowed for a great view. (If you decide not to pay the 15$ to go up on the observation deck-don’t fret there are plenty of other spectacular places to get great pics) Personally, I would not plan a whole vacation around visiting the Falls… there are a lot of people… a lot of bugs and not too many other activities to do… I would suggest bringing your passport along and plan on staying in Ontario, Canada for your ‘holiday’ and seeing the Falls at the same time.

The nice thing about getting there at night was the fireworks show-as they were shot up towards where you would be sitting and made the noise louder and each firework a lot larger! It was a great ending to our evening!

Day Four. Fog. Rain. Traffic.

We left rather early on Monday morning-to avoid the crowds of Canadians celebrating Canada Day and to get to New York City around the time my little sister got off work! The drive was miserable… due to dense fog and pounding rain through most of the beautiful hills of Upstate New York. A few highlights were the Winerys along the side of the road I could see every once in awhile and driving through the towns. Syracuse, NY buildings looked so old and worn down…which was cool to see that they were still standing, but also made me wonder how much money New York puts into the rest of its state-or if it all goes to New York City?

After a full day of rain and traveling through New York State. We made it to our new home for the month of July! We are staying in a really cute apartment in Chinatown, our window over looks a park and it is quiet at night!

We are on the top floor and the Cross is for the Funeral Home our apartment is on top of! Apologies for the lengthy post… Hopefully from here on out they will be more regular and shorter!

To Travel. To See. To Be.

June 6, 2013June 6, 2013 • by admin • In Moving, Travel • 0

To move within the first year of being married is not always recommended, however, my husband and I could not wait any longer to get going on our little escapade. We have always dreamed and discussed traveling before we ‘settled’ down into the typical house and started having children. So we have decided to travel NOW. Our goal is to be in a warmer climate preferably as close to the ocean as possible, hence why Florida is at the top of our list. When finding a place to rent for only a short period of time within our budget kept falling through the cracks we decided to ‘go with the flow’ and are going to live in NYC for a month this summer. Neither of us have been there which is half the adventure and are looking forward to exploring the city for a few weeks.

We are looking into a rental in Ponte Vedra, FL for August & September as one of my best friends from High School is getting married in Jacksonville, FL at the end of September! From there my husband and I will be flying to Valencia, Spain for his work. We are planning on staying in Europe for a while after the conference. For now, I am still in Rochester, Mn avoiding the packing, cleaning, until we move our things into a storage unit.