One of the main reasons I chose Toronto for my mini-vacation is that Niagara Falls is a short daytrip from here. So when I arrived and settled into my hostel, I immediately asked the desk staff about booking that trip and bought a package that included Niagara Falls along with a hop-on/hop-off bus tour of the city and a couple other perks ( Read more... )

And what am I doing in Toronto, you might ask?  Well, I ended up with some last-minute time off from work and knew that I wanted to spend it going somewhere new that I haven't been before, preferably a foreign country as it's been a while since my passport got  a new stamp.  But I only had a few days, so I wanted someplace relatively close and ( Read more... )

Hey, everyone. I realized recently that my last LJ post was over two months ago, and that just will not do. I found myself with a long Memorial Day weekend with no particular plans, since I'd hoped to go home to NC for the weekend but the airfares were just too high. So instead, I gave myself a couple lazy days and on Memorial Day, headed into ( Read more... )

Okey dokey, as I said in the previous post, I wrote a very detailed account of our first full day at Disney which we spent at Epcot. And right before I finished it, I had a computer glitch that I'm blaming on Windows 8 and the entire entry disappeared ( Read more... )

I HATE Windows 8. I've spent a good part of today on the computer, alternating between trying to get all my pictures and videos posted and properly organized, and working on a LJ entry about mine and Grandaddy's day at Epcot. Just as I was finishing a long detailed entry, the web page randomly refreshes and I lose the entire draft. URRRRRRGH ( Read more... )

......or a crash.
So the last time I traveled home was for Christmas, and I wrote on my LJ then that the journey home didn't exactly go as planned.

On Thursday I arrived back in NC for vacation, scheduled during my charge's spring break from school while he vacations elsewhere with his family. The plan was that I would arrive in NC on Thurs the 7th, ( Read more... )

I'm sitting in Philadelphia airport waiting for a flight to Raleigh, which should start boarding soon.  I wasn't supposed to be here.  I wasn't planning to fly home at all.  I was going to rent a car and drive home for the holidays.  But I've never rented a car before, and didn't realize that I'd be unable to rent a car without a major credit card ( Read more... )

Hello Livejournal.  It's been exactly a year since I last wrote about my return from China.  A lot has happened in the past year, but they haven't been the type of events I usually write about here.  I think of this as my travel blog and mostly limit my entries to travel-related topics, which I haven't done much of lately.  However, I don't want to ( Read more... )

As I type this, I’m on my last flight of three in the past two days.  (I’m typing in Word and I’ll copy it to Livejournal for posting once I land.)  This one is between Newark, NJ and Raleigh, NC so it’s barely an hour and a half.  Not a big deal…..unless you’ve been traveling for over 30 hours straight and haven’t had any decent sleep in that same ( Read more... )

I’m heading home in two more days.  48 hours from now, I’ll be either on a plane or in an airport waiting for a connection.  Xiamen to Shanghai to Newark to Raleigh.  It’ll be a long tiring flight, but at least I know I’ll be back on home soil at the end of it ( Read more... )