vacation

I knew we were heading from Maine over to upstate New York, since we wanted to see some church history sites. The trouble with that direction is that there really isn’t much in the way of “short stops to check out” on the way. Also, there are no real highways that go east to west over there, so it would take a long time and have plenty of windy roads. After some research, I found out that Ben & Jerry’s factory is pretty much right along the way, however, and who doesn’t like Ben & Jerry’s? (Ironically, after I visited,

After I went to the latest revival of Into the Woods last summer and had such an incredible time, I definitely wanted to head back to see the new version of Sweeney Todd that was getting such rave reviews. I wanted to be sure to see it with the original cast, however (since more and more, I’m convinced that’s the main reason to pay a premium to see something on Broadway.) This meant going sooner, rather than later, except I had no real reason to go to New York City other than seeing the show, and making a specific trip

Friday, Denisa and I had tickets to go see Wynton Marsalis play jazz in Boston. I’d bought them a few months ago, and I’d been really looking forward to it. We’d lined up things for Daniela and MC (and Ferris), gotten a hotel, planned everything out, and all we had to do was have Friday go right. I had to be in Bangor for a library meeting, so I’d be leaving from that, rushing home to get Denisa, and then hurrying down to Boston, hoping we’d miss the traffic, so that we’d make it to the concert in time. Everything

Our final city of the trip was Rome, and it’s the city where we spent the most time. It’s a large city with such a deep history, how could we do anything else? Because it’s so large, getting around it was more difficult than the other places we’d gone. Everywhere else, once we were in the city, we could mostly walk everywhere we needed to go. You can’t do that in Rome. (Also, you don’t want to do that, because it’s sweltering outside.) On the plus side, Rome has a fairly large public transportation network. On the minus, most of

The way I figure, if you’re going to Italy, and you don’t take a stupid looking picture in front of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, have you really been to Italy? It’s only an hour train ride from Florence, and so we decided to do it as an afternoon trip on one of our days there. It took a bit to decide just how long to stay. You can get tickets to go up the tower, and to visit the church and baptistry there. In the end, we decided to just stick with seeing the outside. The plan, when we