The Vacation Rundown.

We love Canada.  We love it.  I would live there.  That, essentially, sums up the awesome that was our vacation.  We spent almost as much time in transit as we did vacationing, but I supposed that’s okay.  We got to see a lot.

Our first stop was Montreal, where we did a significant amount of shopping.  THERE WAS A TRI-LEVEL GAP STORE.  THAT WAS SELLING BRAS FOR $8 EACH.  That alone was worth the whole vacation.  I was in heaven.  We went into three different Roots stores about five times over the course of the vacation just because I knew I needed some Roots-y goodness, I just couldn’t throw down $70 on a hoodie.  I relented when the price fell to $45.  Still a little guilty about it, though.  Anyway, this is us on Mont Royal:

After a few days in Montreal, we headed to Quebec City.  Quebec City was beautiful.  It was a big city that has small town charm.  There is a large section of QC “inside the wall,” a former military fort.  Everything in that area has a lovely old European feel to it.  The food was pretty good and Matt got his second taste of his new favorite desert, sugar pie.  On our walk around town, I took this picture especially for Annie:

Because you should not use Comic Sans if you expect anyone to take you seriously.

We had planned on two full days in QC before heading to Boston to see Evan, but the nor’easter had other plans.  So, we left Quebec City after a day around 1630 (when it was pitch black) and got to Evan’s place about 0100.  And then Evan passed out the Zimas we really started having fun.  Oh, Evan.

If you don’t remember Evan, he was practically Matt’s live-in boyfriend during the World Cup last summer.  He’s also pretty lucky because there are two, maybe three of Matt’s friends that I like enough that I would interrupt our vacation to spend a few days with.

Since most of Boston was snowed in that first day, we pretty much had the city to ourselves.  We tromped around in the snow, learning Boston facts and trying not to lose feeling in our extremities.  After a lovely progressive dinner of clam chowder (omg, the waiter said “chow-dah”) and oysters (and a shrimp burger for me), we tra-la-la’d off to TD Garden to watch the Celtics beat the Kings.  I think it was the Kings.  Is there a Kings in the NBA?

Our second day in Boston was awesome because Evan gave us a sweet tour of his alma mater, Harvard University.  He even kindly endured my questions, such as “So, did they sort you into houses (dorms) by random, or did they have a sorting hat?” and “Would Professor Snape put a spell on you if you didn’t finish your homework?”  But seriously, look at these pictures – Harvard is the closest thing the U.S. has to Hogwarts.

Finally, we returned to Montreal for some hardcore shopping and the Biodome.  All in all, a spectacular vacation.  Matt says his favorite thus far, although my vote still falls with Buenos Aires.

V is for Vacations.

Since we've been married before we got married, Matt and I have taken quite a few awesome vacations. Shall we happily remember them?

December of 2004, I left the U.S. for the first time to visit Matt at his University in Beijing. It was a pretty amazing trip, and oh yeah, that was when this happened --->

On our honeymoon to New York City, when after wondering aimlessly down Broadway we stumbled upon The Ed Sullivan Theatre, home to the King of Late Night (always and forever in my heart, at least) and got tickets to see his show LIVE.  Our amazingness was expounded (and my heart nearly stopped beating) when Dave allowed Matt o ask him a question before the show ("Where's the best pizza in Manhattan?" and dear, dear friend Dave bought us the best pizza of our lives.  David Letterman bought us a pizza.  Best. Honeymoon. Story. Everrrrrrrrr.

<--- Us before the show.  Soooo EXCITED!!!

Then, quite sadly, the vacation life stagnated because we were dirt poor.  Oh, well, we had each other and all that jazz.  Two years into our marriage, we got our fancy little three year vacation in the form of orders to Okinawa.

So for our third anniversary/pre-deployment leave, we decided to go big and spent a week at the Amari Coral Resort in Phuket, Thailand.  We spent most of the week walking around window shopping or drinking fruity drinks at the lobby bar.  Pretty amazing, right?

It was really hot and sweaty in Thailand.  And we didn't trust any of the locals to take a picture of us and give our camera back.  That's my excuse for this terrible picture. --->

I didn't really think the Thailand vacation could be topped until  (dun, dun, DUN!) we met up in Buenos Aires.  I fell in love with South America immediately. 

Matt spent a year in Mar del Plata, Argentina his Senior year of high school and so I've been hearing about this country for the last 8 years.  While debating where to meet for Matt's mid-deployment leave, Argentina was a natural choice (even though I wanted to go to France).  We spent two weeks enjoying and exploring the huge city.  We ate more beef than I can really even comprehend.  And more good food than I've had in two years in Okinawa.  We went shopping and saw art.  Rode the subway and pet a pretty disgusting stray dog that just looked sad.  Mini-theme park!  Empanadas!  Eva Perone!!  It was such an amazing vacation and will probably go down in the books as "Best Ever."

Vacation, Part 1: Getting There.

Well, due to a tiny hiccup in the government in Kyrgystan, Matt's return home was delayed about a week. Which was lame because: A.) It had already been 8 months, for Pete's sake, B.) We had tickets to fly to the US on vacation four days after his actual return date. Four days is apparently not enough time to tell Marines, "Hey, we've got resources to help you, don't be stupid." Because of the extended transition time, we had to cancel our tickets and Travelocity basically put us out $3800. (That is a story for another time, but needless to say, Travelocity is now on THE LIST, along with Best Buy.)

We needed another cheap way to get back to the States. Enter: the Secret Society of the AMC Flights. Pretty much everyone in the Military community knows about AMC Flights. Ask anyone exactly how they work and maybe one in one hundred can tell you. Basically, when there is a training flight or a flight taking equipment somewhere and that flight has some extra space, military members and their families can hop on for either really cheap ($30ish) or free. This was to be our vacation savior.

There is a lot of waiting for spots on flights in your desired general direction, lots of layovers and lots and lots of uncertainty. But there is also lots and lots and lots of Free Flight-ness. Which, I guess makes up for it.

The first leg of our trip back home was a commercial charter from Okinawa to Iwakuni to Yokota Air Base. We had to arrive at the Kadena Air Mobility Command (AMC, get used to the acronym, you'll read it a lot in the upcoming posts) at something like 4 in the morning. And then we had to wait a few hours to find out if we were able to get on the flight. Then we had to wait a few hours to get on the flight.

When we got on the plane, we noticed that the seats in the middle of the plane were cordoned off with caution tape. We knew we were in for an exciting vacation. Apparently, the plane cleaners had opened the emergency exit over the wings and now those doors were inoperative. Awesome. Equally awesome? When the plane took such a deep dip, less like turbulence and more like Chester fell asleep at the wheel, that the oxygen masks several rows in front of us came down. Waaay awesome.

Fortunately for us, the rest of our travels were significantly safer. We spent the night at the amazing lodge at Yokota (full sized fridge, dish washer, etc for $41), flew to Elmendorf AFB the next morning, got to see the midnight sun in Alaska, then got to Travis AFB by 6am Sunday morning. Which we learned was not a good time to get a ride to the airport in California.

We spent the day sleeping and exploring the base on foot. Pizza Hut for dinner, sleep by 9, then shuttled off to the airport to catch our flight early the next morning. When we finally got to Tucson, I was happy to see my in-laws, happy to not be waiting for flights and happy to finally be home again. Gotta love the military lifestyle.