We signed up for the bicycle trip with Freewheeling Adventures, our fifth trip with them. The trip was specifically this one. It was both a vacation and a (belated) celebration of my turning 50 (last November). We chose this trip, in part, because we have friends living in Budapest for three years. It was a great chance to visit them and to explore ( Read more... )

So we got up and tried the whole airport thing again, this time with success. BTV to ORD was on time and uneventful. It did feel like we were going the wrong direction though! The connection in Chicago was a bit tight. We basically got off the plane, took a bus to another terminal, grabbed some snacks, and got on the next plane ( Read more... )

I'm calling this "Day 0" because it was a non-vacation vacation day. The day was long and stressful, but probably not that interesting to read about ( Read more... )

We had to be up at 4 AM. That's my idea of hell right there. I was awake at 3:15 and then just kind of dozed, worried about over-sleeping. I even had my mother call to make sure we were up. We made it to the airport for our 6 AM first flight. Our homeward trip was Palm Springs to San Francisco to Chicago to Burlington. We were in San Francisco by 7 ( Read more... )

After breakfast, we went up for a hike in Tahquitz Canyon. It was our second time doing the hike. I took a lot of pictures. It's about a two-mile loop up into the desert to see a waterfall. A lot of the hike is around the stream that flows down from the mountain. There are trees and green vegetation and wildlife to see. There are always ( Read more... )

Today was truly a day in the sun ( Read more... )

We rose at a leisurely hour and had breakfast and lounged by the pool. Between journaling and writing postcards, I seem to attract a lot of attention by using an actual pen and paper here. Thank goodness I am reading on an ereader, otherwise I would seem a veritable dinosaur ( Read more... )

It was chilly overnight and we woke to temperatures around 60º F and wind; the forecast was right. We decided to stay close to town today to avoid the wind and blowing sand as much as we could. the mountain protects the city of Palm Springs from the valley winds.

We did some shopping while walking to lunch. We found Woody's Burgers on Indian ( Read more... )

This morning the gent who had been talking about the Coachella stuff overheard us mentioning that we were from Vermont. He came over and started chatting with us. (He was quite the talker.) It turned out that he went to college in Middlebury and then he set up a recording studio and lived in Vergennes in the 1970's. He had a lot of stories to tell ( Read more... )

InnDulge serves a nice continental breakfast every morning. It's not fancy, but is a good start to the day: coffee, tea, pastries (from the nearby Ralph's grocery store), boiled eggs, toast and bagels, yogurt, and some cereal. It all comes with a heavy dose of gay, which can be hard to take first thing in the morning if one isn't used to it ( Read more... )