Jun 19, 2015

Our Vacation; Part 1


J and I just got back from 8 days in the US. J's sister Rachel was getting married in West Virginia and we decided to use the wedding as an excuse to actually go away. The town Rachel was getting married in was less than 2 hours from Washington, DC so we thought we'd spend the first couple days of our vacation being tourists before things switched to wedding mode.

Our flight from Halifax to Philadelphia was J's first time on a plane.

Getting from the airport to the hotel ended up being our first challenge. We had borrowed a GPS to use only it hadn't been completely updated with the area we were travelling. (My dad felt awful!) J talked to the guy at Budget about renting one, but he suggested we head to Walmart and just grab a cheap one to save some money. We got directions from two different people but ended up hopelessly lost before finding the Walmart. To make matters worse, it was dark and it started raining. Not just a little rain, but torrential rain with thunder and lightning. It was super scary.

We eventually made our way to a gas station where J ran in to try to get directions. The clerk at the gas station didn't speak strong english, but we headed in the direction he pointed. We ended up stopping for directions again at a Starbucks. We found a shopping centre and the first store we came across was Best Buy. It was getting late, so rather than try to find the Walmart we just ran in there hoping they'd have something cheap. The staff there were wonderful, but we definitely ended up paying more for a GPS than we planned. At that point we just wanted to find the hotel though so we didn't care.

By the time we got to the hotel we had been on the go for about 11 hours. Luckily, the staff at the hotel (the Metro Points in New Carrollton, Maryland) were awesome. They were friendly and helpful and we were checked in and on our way to our room in no time.

I am definitely missing having a king-size bed to sleep in!


Fortunately, the non-updated GPS ended up being pretty much the only hiccup of our whole trip, and things definitely got better from there. We decided to visit the Smithsonian National Zoo our first day but it's going to take a whole post of it's own.

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Jun 18, 2015

Still here!


Hello!

I'm still here, I promise.

I've been absent due to a major lack of planning. I was getting ready for vacation, on vacation, and getting everything ready to go back to work after vacation,

J and I had an amazing time on our first real adventure, but I'm not sure travel is totally for me. You would not believe how stressed out I got every time we were driving in Washington (so many more people so obviously way more cars), and when we went through customs coming home. (And all we brought home were a few souvenirs and a bottle each from the duty-free store!)

I'm working on a recap of our trip and hope to share it with you soon.

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