Archives for August 2015

I am recapping my family’s visit and  our travel adventures from earlier this summer under the category “summer tales”.

On Monday (6/29), we set out on our adventure road trip. First stop: Monterey. We made it there in 3,5 hours which is not bad at all.

We checked into our motel, Comfort Inn Monterey by the Sea, had a snack and then drove to Carmel. We really only had this one afternoon set aside (what with our tight travel schedule), so we explored the town center for a little bit and admired the beautiful houses and art galleries.

Then we took the scenic drive to Carmel River State Beach. We had the opportunity to put our feet in the sand and enjoy the ocean. And then we got extra-lucky as a school of dolphins swam by. Greta and Tom were thrilled with excitement!

On we went on the 17-Mile Drive with an obligatory stop at Pebble Beach Golf Course, a visit to Pebble Beach Lodge and the coastal part of the golf course.

It was already 6 p.m. when we finally embarked on the 17-Mile drive up the coast. Of course we stopped here and there to enjoy the view and take pictures. Highlights included the Lone Cypress and Bird Rock.

Don’t think it’s easy to get a decent picture with one or both kids being goofy!

The art of the selfie :)

After we left the 170-Mile Drive, we continued along the coast to Cannery Row, where we had dinner at Bubba Gump’s.

Yeah, call it a tourist trap, but food is good and IF you have to go to Bubba Gump’s, you should do it in Monterey, the birthplace of this chain restaurant. Well, and you really have to go there at least once.
We were super-lucky as it was unusually empty on Cannery Row and we actually found a parking spot literally across from the restaurant and also got a table right away. That’s practically unheard of (but maybe that was because we were there on a weekday, who knows?).

My Dad and Dirk enjoyed “Surf’n’Turf”, the rest of us had shrimp in different variations and Tom had a kids’ hamburger. Food was delicious and we had a great night.
Jetlag, however, made itself known when Greta fell asleep on my lap around 8:30 p.m. and pretty soon after we headed back to the hotel.

You can find the previous post here.

I am recapping my family’s visit and  our travel adventures from earlier this summer under the category “summer tales”.

We spent Sunday (8/27) hanging out in Sacramento and keeping it low key.

Despite the fact that my parents had to vacate our bedroom and move into a hotel when my sister arrived (as I mentioned, we didn’t have enough space to put everybody up), we managed to host our family at our small apartment quite well. Everybody came over for breakfast on Sunday morning and if it hadn’t been for the warm temperatures in our dining room (there’s no AC), we could have quite cozily and comfortably enjoyed breakfast around our tiny dining room table.

We spent the morning watching some baseball (J was explaining the rules to my Dad and BIL) and hanging out in our air-conditioned living room before heading out to explore Oldtown in the early afternoon. It was a beautiful, but hot day here in the Central Valley.

We got to do some tourist-y stuff (like riding the carriage around Oldtown with the kids), we visited the old school house and enjoyed the views along the Sacramento River.

Aww, look! She wrote my name! With hearts around it!

In the afternoon, we headed back to my parents’ hotel and spent a couple of hours at the pool to cool down (and honestly we needed a place to let the kids run wild while everybody else was still trying to get over their jetlags).

For dinner, we took everybody out for pizza and wings at Chicago Fire and I think it’s safe to say that my BIL is hooked on hot wings now. Who could blame him?

You can find the previous post here.

I am recapping my family’s visit and  our travel adventures from earlier this summer under the category “summer tales”.

My sister, BIL + niece arrived on Saturday, June 27th… but not without a previous scare.

In the night from Friday to Saturday, my phone rang around 3 a.m. My display showed my BIL’s number. I was instantly awake, because all that was running through my head was “This can’t be. They’re supposed to be on the plane right now!”.

They were flying from Düsseldorf to Paris to Minneapolis to Sacramento. And they were supposed to be on the transatlantic flight at this point.

If you’re familiar with the process of obtaining a travel authorization to the US under the visa waiver program (most European countries are eligible) through ESTA (electronic system for travel authorization), then you know that all passport and travel information has to be entered electronically before you travel and you have to pay a fee.

How those travel authorizations are “approved” is still a mystery to me.

Because as it happens, my sister’s ESTA form was approved, but she was denied boarding the aircraft to the US in Paris because one of the numbers on the form didn’t match her passport number (= there was a typo in the application).

What’s the point of approving the travel authorization when passport numbers are not counter-checked and nobody notices a mistake until you’re trying to actually get on the US-bound plane?

So yeah, just picture my sister (BIL and niece) in Paris, being denied on the plane, being sent from one counter to the next to try find someone who can help them fix the error and get reapproved for travel, trying to get rebooked on a new flight (on the first day of summer break, mind you!) and completely freaking out over having to handle this all in a foreign language (English, not French. She never took French in school, damn it.)

To be honest, my sister sounded surprisingly calm on the phone when she informed me what was happening. I think, her being in a classroom with 30+ screaming kids every day pays off in other areas of her life! Ha!

My mind instantly went into planning mode, because not knowing when they would arrive meant that our whole road trip (which was supposed to start on Monday) could possibly delayed or completely disrupted, and I was frantically trying to figure out how we could modify our plans in case their arrival would be delayed more than 24 hours (which looked likely at the time).

But stop holding your breath, we got lucky, you guys. Really lucky.

They managed to have her resubmit the data to ESTA and were able to rebook the three of them on a flight to San Francisco (which landed only 30 minutes later than what their original arrival time in Sacramento would have been). Big deal!

The only downside was that we had to drive to San Francisco (2+ hours one way) to pick them up instead of conveniently picking them up at Sacramento Airport (which is only 15 minutes from where we live), but we were definitely able to handle that!

I was so, so happy and relieved when they were finally here. And basically without any family time lost!!!