Coming Home, Part 2 (the end)

We are home.

We left Virginia promptly at 7am this morning. The Hanshaws were kind enough to take us on a slight detour right through Washington D.C. so that the kids can see some of the sights, though we never stopped the car. We drove past the Pentagon, then went into the heart of the National Mall, driving right past the Jefferson Memorial and the Washington Monument. We saw the White House from a distance (we waved to the President) and also drove past the Lincoln Memorial before resuming the trip home. Despite some traffic around NYC, we still made pretty good time and arrived at our house at around 1:45pm this afternoon.

We're all pretty exhausted and have a lot of unpacking to do.

Hopefully within the next couple of days, I hope to backfill some of our blog entries with some pictures.

Coming Home, Part 1

819 miles in 12 hours. Orlando, FL to Stafford, VA.

That is all.

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Our Last Day

Today was our last full day in Orlando. We took another day off from Disney and decided to just play it low-key.

I took care of getting the blown tire replaced on the rental car first thing in the morning. $173.

Then, we went mini-golfing followed by lunch at Fuddruckers. Maria wanted to do one last bit of shopping at Michael's for some Disney scrapbook paper. Then we hit the pool for about an hour or so.

Later in the afternoon, I took the boys to the "Ripley's Believe it or Not" museum, then we all went out to dinner at Olive Garden. When we got back to the hotel, we started packing for the long, long drive home over the weekend.


The boys got a bit disoriented at the exit of the Ripley museum

Thursday

I've been negligent in keeping the blog updated over the past 48 hours. Here's a quick recap.

Wednesday was our day at Hollywood Studios (formerly known as Disney/MGM). We got there just as the park opened at 9am, but we could quickly tell that John was not feeling well. Maria and I decided that we would try to get him through to lunch, where we had a special lunch planned at one of the restaurants. But John let us know pretty quickly, during our first ride of the day, that he wanted to go back to the hotel. So at 9:45am, John and I went back to the hotel for the rest of the day while Maria and Kevin stayed with the Hanshaws at the park.

Back at the hotel, John had a pretty lousy day. He took a 4 hour nap in the early afternoon, and was still pretty much out of it when he was awake. But by the evening, he was showing a few signs of starting to feel better, so that was encouraging.

Meanwhile, back at the park, the rest of the gang had a great time.

Today was Blizzard Beach, one of Disney's water parks. Fortunately, John was feeling better today so we could all go and have a great time. I was the only one brave enough to go down the "Summit Plummet" water slide, which was a 120 foot drop at speeds over 50 MPH. We stayed at the park from when it opened at 10am until around 3:30pm, when we all went back to our respective "homes" to get changed and regroup. The plan was for us all to go back to Hollywood Studios for the evening to see the "Fantasmic" show, but John was pretty pooped out from the day at Blizzard Beach and didn't want to go out again. So I took Kevin and we met up with the Hanshaws. The Fantasmic show was amazing. I was able to record most of it on video, so Maria and John can check it out in the morning.


A brief clip from "Fantasmic"

Tomorrow is our last full day in Orlando, and is a day off from the parks. I'll be going to get the blowout tire either repaired or replaced first thing in the morning. The plans for the remainder of the day have yet to be determined.

That's all for now.

Trouble in Paradise

We spent a relaxing morning visiting with the Canhams, and a relaxing afternoon with the Hanshaws.

The Canhams and the Gallaghers at Downtown Disney

Kevin and John had fun with the ground fountains at Downtown Disney

Kevin caught a fish while fishing at the Hanshaw's place!

For the early evening, we split up so that Maria and Manuela could go shopping at the outlets while Frank and I took the kids to Disney Quest at Downtown Disney. We're not here for more than 15 minutes when Frank gets a call . . . the women are on the side of the road with a blown tire. Help has since arrived, and they should be back on the road shortly. But now we need to call the car rental place to see what we need to do about having a workable spare for the drive home this weekend.

The "Road Ranger" rescues the women.

That's what happens when you leave the women alone for just a few minutes!

Bill

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Magic Kingdom, Part 2

Yesterday was a very long day at the Magic Kingdom. We got there early for the official opening of the park at 9am, and didn't leave until a late dinner at "Chef Mickey" in the evening. I think everybody had a great time but was all very exhausted at the end of the evening.

The ceremony for opening the Magic Kingdom.

Yesterday was also our only bit of bad weather, relatively speaking. We had a two brief showers in the afternoon. One lasted for maybe a minute or so, literally. By the time we got our rain ponchos on, it was over. The second lasted a little longer, but the timing was perfect. We had just gotten on a train ride around the park when it started, and it ended just as the train ride ended, so we pretty much missed the whole thing.

John was a trooper yesterday. He was still not feeling all that well, and before we left in the morning I was pretty sure that we were not going to make it through a whole day without him crashing at some point. But he had enough energy to keep on going and seemed to actually get a little better as the day went on.

John with Cinderella's three step-sisters.

The skies got dark in the afternoon.

Chef Mickey's restaurant was fun. But it was infested by giant mice that acted as if they owned the place.

Today is our second day off for the vacation. We are scheduled to get together with some old friends who moved to Florida about eight years ago or so for brunch this morning, and then spend the afternoon with the Hanshaws at their place.

The tentative schedule for the rest of the week is: MGM (now Hollywood Studios) tomorrow, Blizzard Beach (one of the Disney water parks) on Thursday, and Friday is going to be TBD. Then we start hitting the road back to Connecticut on Saturday for the 2-day return home.

If I get an opportunity this afternoon or this evening, I'll try to upload some photos.

Bill

Kevin Cheating at Scrabble

While waiting for John's fever to die down this morning, Kevin and Dad played a rousing game of Scrabble.

Sunday

John has woken up with a fever this morning and is not at all looking like a happy puppy.

It's a good thing that today is a scheduled day off, so we were planning to lay low today anyway. Kevin and I went out early this morning to get some fever reducer for John, and we're just waiting for that to kick in before we go to breakfast.

We ended up hanging by the pool . . .

. . . and playing mini-golf on our day off

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Animal Kingdom

We've just arrived at the Animal Kingdom, it looks to be another beautiful day in Orlando. I've been told that the first ride we're doing is a "spinny" ride. I don't do spinny rides, so this is my first "I'll sit this one out" of the vacation so far.

We saw a beautiful American Eagle during the trained bird show at Animal Kingdom.

The Gallaghers and Rafiki.

A scene from the parade at the Animal Kingdom.

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Day 3

Everybody's asleep after three very busy days. I'll be joining them soon, as I'm also exhausted. Here's where we are:

We went to the Magic Kingdom yesterday after we unpacked the car, and stayed there until after the parade on Main Street. We left there around 9:30, came back to the room and crashed.


Megan, Kelly, Brian, John and Kevin arrive at the Magic Kingdom after two long days in the car.

We had planned to get up at 7am this morning to give us plenty of time to get ready for another long day, this time at Epcot. The Hanshaws were going to meet us here at our hotel at 8:30am. Unfortunately, somebody (yes, me) forgot to turn on the alarm on the clock after setting the alarm. John woke us up at 7:51am this morning when he opened his eyes and looked at the time. So we were in a panic and rushed to get ready and out the door by 8:30am (we made it).

As I mentioned, today was Epcot. We got there for 9am, and were there until maybe 7pm. Came back close to our hotels to get some dinner (pizza) and called it an early night.


Guess who was inexplicably crabby in the morning during our trip to Epcot?

Tomorrow were up and out early again for the Animal Kingdom. Probably a repeat of today, should be another long day. But hopefully we'll be a little more rested.

Bill

We are here!

Arrived in Orlando at 2:45 or so, now at the Magic Kingdom. Weather in the mid-80's. I'm told that the crowds are fairly light.

More to come later as time allows.

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Day 2

It rained from about halfway down the Jersey turnpike until Richmond, VA, so I ended up driving all the way to NC. Only two very brief gas/bathroom breaks, which is why I was unable to update from the road yesterday.

We got here to NC at midnight. Up at 6am, meet the Hanshaws for breakfast at 6:30am, on the road again by 7am. 500 miles to Orlando!

I'm kind of fried right now.

Bill

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Getaway Day, Part 2

First crisis averted. We upgraded to a Grand Cherokee from our original reservation, which I believe was a Toyota Camry. Lots more space in the back for storage. Navigation system. Split screen DVD players in the backseat so that both boys can watch their own movies at the same time. It's a very nice vehicle. Less than 500 miles on it.

It's still packed very tight. And we haven't yet put the suitcases in.

Countdown is less than two hours to departure.

Getaway Day, Part 1

We're still a couple of hours away from leaving, and we'll be heading off to the airport in about 15 minutes or so to pick up our rental car.

But . . . after further review of the amount of stuff Maria has piled in the kitchen and family room that she thinks we can fit into anything short of an 18-wheeler, I think it would be logistically easier to move Disney World into our front yard within the next two days.

I don't have a good feeling about this.

Our Florida Vacation

We'll be leaving in two days for our family vacation in Florida! Our planning and preparations are in the final stages as we prepare to leave somewhere around noon on Wednesday (April 15). We're traveling with our friends form town, the Hanshaw's, who are "veterans" of this trip, so we'll be following their lead. Maria and Manuela have been working on the schedules for both the trip down as well as our itinerary while in Orlando. We're looking at leaving Simsbury Wednesday at approximately noon, and arriving in Orlando sometime mid-to-late Thursday afternoon. I'm not quite sure of the ETA. I'm just driving the car.

We're getting a rental car as we don't want to put an enormous amount of milage (1,219 miles each way!) on our current vehicles. We'll be picking up the car Wednesday morning, packing it up, and then picking up the boys from school at lunchtime and hitting the road.

The plan is to drive around 11 or 12 hours on Wednesday, with a target of Lumberton, North Carolina for that night's stay. Looking at the map, Lumberton is pretty close to the South Carolina border and it's a little over 700 miles from Simsbury. Wednesday is going to be a very long day. Thursday morning we'll be hitting the road again for another 500 miles or so (around 7 to 8 more hours) until we hit Orlando.

Maria and Manuela have already planned most of our days at Disney. I believe we're scheduled for our first day in the Magic Kingdom for Friday, with Epcot on Saturday. Sunday is a "day off" from the parks. I believe we have another day off either the following Wednesday or Thursday, and then we start the long drive back on Saturday, April 25. Like the trip down, we'll be breaking the trip back into two days. I imagine it will be another 700/500 mile split, which means we'll probably stay somewhere in southern Virginia that Saturday night. We'll have to nail down the details between now and then and make some reservations.

I'll be trying to update this blog with periodic updates (perhaps even from the car via my Blackberry), and also throughout the vacation with some photos and maybe even a couple of brief videos if I feel ambitious enough.

Bon voyage!

Bill

Our 2004 Portuguese Vacation

Here's a diary of our vacation to Portugal this summer. I've posted a daily recap of each day; you'll need to go to the archives (on the right side of the page) and read each week in order (starting with August 4/5 through August 23, 2004). You'll also have to read each week in the archives from the bottom up to see each day in order. But first, here's the cast of characters so that you'll know who's who:

Me (Bill)
Maria
John
Kevin
Joe (Maria's brother)
Vanessa (Maria's friend and Joe's girlfriend)
Isabel (Maria's sister)
Bob (Isabel's husband)
Nathan (Isabel and Bob's son)
Mom
Dad

Sunday, August 22, 2004

We're going home!

In many ways, the trip home was even worse than the trip over, and that's no easy feat! It started off easy enough as we got up at 6:30am with a goal of leaving by 7:00am. We actually hit the road closer to 7:30am.

We made it to Lisbon in good time, a little after 10:00am. We had no problems in returning the rental cars and getting checked in at the terminal. Our flight to Madrid at 1:05pm left right on time, and we had no problems at all changing planes in Madrid. They everything went straight to hell.

An eight hour flight from Madrid to New York, and Kevin was a nightmare for a good part of it. He refused to stay in his seat, and I spent most of the first four or five hours just trying to contain him and keep him from bothering the other passengers. Both John and Kevin finally fell asleep for a couple of hours at the tail end of the flight. My happiest moment was looking out the window and seeing Cape Cod, and then a little while the Connecticut shoreline. I saw the Connecticut River from it's mouth in Old Saybrook snaking it's way through the entire state. There was nothing that I wanted more at that time than to be on the ground. The plane finally landed right on time at 7:15pm EST at JFK. That's when the day took a turn for the worse.

We had a little trouble getting through immigration as the agent told us that Joe's green card was expired , and that he would need to fill out some paperwork. That was problem number one. While he and Vanessa took care of that, Maria, the boys, and I went down to baggage claim to get our luggage. Of the four pieces of luggage that we checked in Lisbon, only three made it to New York. That was problem number two. In the meantime, Joe and Vanessa got his paperwork taken care of, got their two pieces of checked luggage, and rather than wait for us they decided to go get their car.

After Maria and I finally decided that our missing luggage was not going to show up, we decided that we would just report it to Iberia Airlines baggage services office and head out. But when we tried to get through customs, we realized that we no longer had our customs form, which we had filled out on the plane, on us. Problem number three. Maria realized that Joe had had it with his stuff when he had to fill out his paperwork. As we later found out, the immigration agent had made him fill out a new customs form (we had tried to list him on ours), but wouldn't let him leave with the old form (i.e. our form). Apparently, he didn't think it was necessary to tell us that little fact before he and Vanessa bolted for their car with THEIR luggage. So now, we had to go back upstairs and fill out a new customs form and go through immigration again. Fortunately, we found an agent who was very helpful and got us out of there pretty quickly.

So now we're out of the terminal and I have to go to long term parking to get the car, about a 45 minute round trip. I leave Maria and John and the luggage right outside the terminal, and take Kevin with me. When I finally got to the car, and was waiting in line to pay at the parking exit, who should show up behind me but Joe and Vanessa! Joe asks me "what took you so long, we've been waiting over an hour". I was really annoyed and not happy at all to see either one of them at this point. Joe said something about following me back to the terminal while I get Maria and John, and I told them that there was no reason for them to wait for us, that they should just go home. Maria and I had already assumed that they were long gone by this time anyway. I gave them directions to I-95 and we parted ways.

When I got back to the terminal with the car, I realized that I couldn't get to where Maria and John were. Problem number four. So I leave the car at the arriving passengers pick up area with Kevin in the car, the doors locked, and the flashers on, and run over to get Maria and John. When we got back to the car, about three minutes later, there was an airport cop starting to write a ticket. This was the last thing I needed at this time as it was about 10:00pm and I was tired and pissed. I explained the situation to him, and he told me that he had already called for a tow truck, don't do this again, etc., then he let us go. Finally, we were on our way home and in control of our own destiny.

A couple of stops for food and bathroom breaks, and we finally made it home to Simsbury at around 12:40am. All in all, about a 22 hour trip door to door.

Saturday, August 21, 2004

Our last day in Sao Salvador.

We basically just laid low all day as we started getting ready to leave. I took the boys to Ammaia, the old Roman city that's being excavated in Sao Salvador, to visit the museum and see the ruins while Maria stayed home to start packing. Then the boys and I took a drive to take a few final pictures.

Wandering around Ammaia with the boys.

For lunch, Maria's parents took us to lunch at a small restaurant in Castelo de Vide. It was a good and filling meal.

After lunch, Maria wanted to visit a friend in Portage, so the four of us went there for about an hour or so. Came home and finished packing. Gave both kids a bath so that they'd be nice and clean for the long trip home on Sunday.

The road from Sao Salvador to Castelo de Vide, which runs parallel to the golf course.

A couple of pictures of the golf course. That's Marvao in the background of the lower picture.

Alentejo is the name of the region of Portugal in which Maria's parents live.

A view of Marvao from the other side.

The view from outside Maria's parents house.

Kevin and John's last night in Portugal. At least for this trip.

Friday, August 20, 2004

Today we went to Evora to visit Maria's aunt, uncle, and cousins for the day. It was just the four of us. We had a very nice day in Evora. In the morning, we did some sightseeing, visiting the Chapel of Bones and the Temple of Diana, the ruins of an old Roman temple. After that, we went back to aunt and uncles house for lunch. After lunch, we went next door to her cousins house for the rest of the day. John and Duarte spent a "Yu-Gi-Oh" afternoon together, watching Yu-Gi-Oh videos (in Portuguese, of course) and dueling all afternoon (Duarte won every duel). Duarte gave John a bunch of cards, many of which were Portuguese, so John had an especially good day. In the afternoon, Maria and her cousin went shopping while me and the boys stayed behind.

Got back to Sao Salvador in the early evening, and just chilled for the rest of the day.

I have no idea what this sign means, but I really liked it. A lot.

Maria and John with St. Dolores, in Evora.

The Chapel of Bones. There's a story behind this place. Ask Maria sometime.

Hanging around at the Chapel of Bones.

The inscription above the door loosely translates to something along the lines of "Our bones lie here awaiting your bones."

The "Temple of Diana", an old Roman temple in Evora.

Maria's family in Evora. Back row: prima (cousin) Zezinha, tia (aunt) Emilia, Maria and tio (uncle) Carlos. Front row: Kevin, John, Duarte and Ana (Zezinha's children).

Thursday, August 19, 2004

Got up early to get in 18 holes in the morning. Got to the course at around 8:35am only to discover that the course didn't open until 9:00am (go figure!). It was a beautiful morning for golf, a little on the cool side with a slight breeze. I decided to rent a buggy becasue I didn't want to deal with the hills on the back nine, and because Maria planned to be on the road by about 12:30pm. After a shaky start, I played very well, shooting a 49/46 for a 95 for the day. I think I successfully put my 59 from Sunday behind me.

I got back home at around 12:15pm and helped get the kids dressed so that we could take Maria's mother to Campo Maior, which is her hometown. She (mother) wanted to go to the cemetery to make arrangements to get a new marker for her parents grave. Once we got to Campo Maior, we picked up her cousin so that she could come to the cemetery with us. Once we got there, at around 2:30pm, we found that it was closed for siesta and that we would have to wait until it reopened at 3:00pm. A lot of waiting for things to open on this day. We were there until 4:30pm or so. Stopped at a couple of places in Campo Maior after we left the cemetery so that mother could say hi to some cousins.

Once we got back to Sao Salvador, at around 7:00pm, just laid low and took the boys for a walk before getting them, and us, to bed.

The boys in the morning.

Campo Maior, and waiting for the cemetery to open.

The town line.

A view of Marvao from Sao Salvador.

In the evening we took a walk down to Ammaia, the old Roman city that's been rediscovered and is being excavated in Sao Salvador.