Archives for September 2015

I am recapping the wonderful times that I had with my family here in the States this summer. See all related posts under the category:  summer tales.

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Today (7/5) we had to get up early, because we were headed from San Diego to Las Vegas by airplane. We checked out of our hotel around 8 am, dropped everyone and the luggage off at the terminal and then my Dad and I returned the rental cars. We took a shuttle back to the terminal and then checked in for our 10:25 am flight.
Since we hadn’t had time to have breakfast, we bought coffee and bagels at the airport.

We touched down in Vegas shortly before noon and picked up two new rental cars – a Jeep Cherokee Latitude and a Nissan Pathfinder – and continued our travels on to the Grand Canyon.

We made it to Tusayan in 4,5 hours. We checked into our hotel, The Red Feather Lodge, and then decided to head into Grand Canyon National Park just in time for the sunset.

Pictures are worth a thousand words.

On our way back, we had to hurry to find a place where we could still get some dinner (yes, yes, we had a pretty busy agenda and everything was planned down to the minute – sort of), but were able to get Pizza and Wings at the “We Cook Pizza and Pasta” Restaurant before heading back to the hotel.

The next morning, we had breakfast at the Canyon Plaza Resort (Tusayan doesn’t offer too much in terms of culinary experiences).

We checked out of our hotel and then headed back into the park. We parked close to the Visitor’s Center and used the shuttle bus to take us closer to the South Rim.

We didn’t have enough time to take any hikes down the canyon (it’s on my bucket list – one of these days!), but we hiked quite a bit along the trail and the kids participated in a “Junior Ranger”-activity where they received an activity book that they had to fill out and at the end were rewarded with a “Junior Ranger badge”. They were so proud.

We had a little bit of a late lunch break and left the park around 3 p.m. to continue on to Page, AZ. The weather was a little crazy… sun and rain and thunder and lightening, we saw it all.

You can read the previous post here.

I am recapping the wonderful times that I had with my family here in the States this summer. See all related posts under the category:  summer tales.

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After a restful night (3/7), we decided  to have breakfast at Mimi’s Café in Anaheim before heading down to San Diego.
It turned out to be a good choice, because they had a delicious breakfast menu (with fresh croissants!) and we were able to score a table outside on their patio.

We had almost finished our breakfast and coffee when all of a sudden firemen came rushing through the restaurant asking everybody to leave immediately because there was a gas leak just outside the building and there was potential risk of an explosion.
Part of the road was already blocked off and cars were asked to turn around.

We walked away from the property, not really knowing where to go or how far to get away. Our cars were parked in the parking lot, so it’s not like we were able to just leave.

Also: we hadn’t paid our check yet.

So we hung out in a supposedly safe distance and waited for the permission to come back and at least get our car. Meanwhile, some of the waitressing staff walked away from the property too and when we asked them about our check (the honest person that I am), they told us to not worry about it and that the restaurant would take care of it.

Sweet. Free breakfast for everyone. Not a bad deal for a little bit of a scare. We were able to pick up our cars about 30 minutes later and then were off to San Diego.

Driving in Southern California is always on the crazy side…. so I wasn’t surprised it took us a while to get down there. We arrived at our hotel, The Crown Plaza, and first order of business was a couple of hours at the pool. The kids had earned that.

In the early evening, we drove to Downtown San Diego. After not being able to get a parking spot at Seaport Village (who’s surprised?), we parked near the convention center and walked to the Gaslamp Quarter from there. We had planned to eat at Fred’s Mexican Café (which we remembered from our last trip down there), but let it be known, it’s always wise to check the Internet if you haven’t been somewhere for a while. Lo and behold, the restaurant had moved and we had to revise our dinner plans. Of course, the Gaslamp Quarter on a Friday night is busy per usual and we had some difficulty finding a table for seven without an obnoxiously long wait time. (I swear, we always planned to eat early with the two kids, but it never quite worked out due to unforeseen circumstances.)

We ended up at “Operacaffe”, a small authentic Italian restaurant on a side street, where we were promised a table in about 20 minutes by the friendly hostess. It was already 7:30 pm and the kids were hungry and tired.

We waited 25 minutes, 30 minutes…. and finally after 45 minutes we were asked to come inside and were escorted to a table in the far corner of the restaurant.

There we sat and waited for another 20 minutes before a waiter took notice of us and took our order. The waiter apologized for the delay (it was pretty busy, I admit) and promised to get our order in right away, but cautioned us that it could be 30-45 minutes because the kitchen was so busy.

Well, you can guess it… the food came over an hour later. It was 9:45 p.m. at this point and we were just pissed. Greta had already fallen asleep on the bench.

The whole ordeal was really unfortunate, because the ambience was really nice and the food was authentic Italian, fresh and very tasty, but the service was awful.
I understand that it can get busy on the weekends, but a) I expect an established restaurant to be prepared for that and b) even for Europeans, who are used to longer wait times in restaurants, the wait time was just unreasonably long…. especially because we had two small kids in tow and they told us a time and then basically made us wait twice as long … that was just not cool.

They did try to make up for it with offering us (one) free dessert, but we were pretty fed up and just wanted to head back to the hotel. I should mention that they at least took a small amount off our final bill, which was accommodating, I guess, but the whole experience sadly was disappointing.

The highlight for the kids was that we actually saw a couple of racoons outside our hotel (rumaging through the garbage, of course). They thought they were so cute!

The next day was Independence Day (4/7). We purposefully had nothing planned for that day other than going to the beach and taking a relaxing day off from sightseeing and running around.
Unfortunately, we hadn’t really anticipated the craziness that is San Diego on a national holiday. We tried to find a place to have breakfast and everything was PACKED. We tried multiple places and couldn’t get a table anywhere, so we ended up driving further away from the city center and had breakfast at a Denny’s.
Not the experience that I wanted for my family (although the breakfast was actually quite good, I must say!), but the only place where we were still able to get breakfast after noon.

We tried to get to the beach afterwards, but we couldn’t find a single parking spot and the streets were PACKED everywhere. It was so frustrating.
We ended up driving around (and sitting in traffic) for two hours and then decided to just screw it and drove back to our hotel and hung out at the pool.
Again, not the experience I had hoped for. I had said so many great things about San Diego and was really looking forward to show my sister around, but we just didn’t anticipate the crowds of people on a holiday weekend. It was insane.

In the evening, we luckily were able to get a table at the Mexican Café that had moved away from the Gaslamp Quarter and was now located in walking distance to Oldtown. We had delicious Mexican food, margaritas and nachos and tacos.

We also explored Oldtown on foot afterwards.

We gave Seaport Village one more try in the evening in hopes of catching the Independence Day fireworks, but again, couldn’t find parking and ended up pulling over to the side of the road when the fireworks started. It was a little frustrating, to say the least. I wish my sister and BIL could have seen a different side of San Diego, because I don’t think they were really thrilled with the little that we were able to see of the city. But that’s why there is always a next time, am I right?

You can read the previous post here.

I am recapping the wonderful times that I had with my family here in the States this summer. See all related posts under the category:  summer tales.

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On Thursday (7/2), we took the munchkins to Disneyland. It was a surprise (and my treat!) for them for coming all the way to California and they practically had no idea until the moment when we walked towards the park entrance. It was a wonderful surprise and I really hope that they’ll not forget that day! We had such an amazing time!

Of course, with only one day in the park you can’t do everything that Disneyland has to offer, but I think we covered quite a bit of ground that day.

We went on a ride around the park with the Disneyland Railroad.

We went on the “It’s a small world” -boat ride.

The Mad Tea Party!

We waited (quite a bit) for the Roger Rabbit’s Car Toon Spin.

We met Pluto in Toontown…

… and Mickey Mouse!

And we finally went on the Pirates of the Carribean tour. I am sure there were some other rides I am forgetting right now. Of course, time flies when you’re having fun!

Around 5 p.m., my sister and I took the kids to the gift shop (of course!). They had saved every penny that they could get their hands on the weeks and months before the big trip overseas and my sister had told them that they could spend some of that money on something that they truly wanted. Greta really wanted a Simba toy (after changing her mind a gazillion times) and Tom picked out a set of toy cars. They couldn’t be any more stereotypical if they tried, right? ;)

We left the park after that to get some dinner and we seriously contemplated going back to the hotel at this point. J had insisted that we had to to go and see the parade, but the kids were already super-tired and we adults were pretty exhausted, too. Still, I argued that we couldn’t possibly bail out now  and that we had to go back for the parade and it was so absolutely worth it.

It was also absolutely amazing to the kids’ eyes light up. The light-show, the parade, the music, the fireworks… it all gave the whole day a truly magical ending! Greta’s eyes got progressively bigger and bigger and by the end of the parade, Tom was convinced that Disneyland is where the cars from “Cars” live! We didn’t tell him otherwise! :)

At the end of a long day, everybody was exhausted and tired, but we all agreed: it was absolutely worth it to go back for the parade and the whole day had just been an incredible experience! Even my Dad, who hadn’t really been that excited about going to the theme park, had to admit that having this whole day as family was an unforgettable and special treat!

I only got a hazy photo with my munchkins, but I think you can see that we’re tired, but very happy!

You can find the previous post here.

I am recapping the wonderful times that I had with my family here in the States this summer.
See all related posts under the category:  summer tales.

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We started today (7/1) off with breakfast at ‘The Busy Bee‘, a 50’s Diner on Main Street in Ventura where J took me for the first time many, many moons ago. My sister remembered the cafe from her first visit to the US in 2004 and so of course, we had to go back there!

Afterward, we drove further south to explore the Los Angeles area. I know, we would have needed much more time to do all the things I wanted to show my family in the city where we once lived for a little while, but we just had too much on our agenda to spend an extra day. So, we ended up doing what people do when they come to LA for only one day… we walked the Walk of Fame (and I found the relatively newly instated NKOTB star!),

ooh-ed and aah-ed at the Hollywood sign,

the kids met Spiderman and we admired the Grauman’s Chinese Theater and Dolby Theater.

Then we drove to Venice. My Mom and I took the kids to the ocean right away because they were in desperate need of getting some energy out, my Dad, sister and BIL explored the Board Walk for a little while before joining us.

Then we drove over to Santa Monica. It’s hard to believe that this is where we lived a few years ago (and I feel like I didn’t really take advantage of it while it lasted), but it’s still nice to come back here and feel a bit of a sense of home.

We walked on the beach, the kids enjoyed the many swings, rings and other acrobatic equipment, and then we walked over to the Santa Monica Pier.

We didn’t really know where we wanted to go for dinner and ended up wandering around 3rd Street Promenade in hopes of finding a restaurant without long wait times (for some reason we always ended up having a late dinner despite traveling with two kids under 7). We got lucky and found a table at Barney’s Beanery, which looked kind of bland from the outside, but turned out to be a really cool sports bar on the inside. My BIL was pleased! :)

Definitely a place I have to keep in mind for future visits!