Rain, Rain, Go Away

Greetings from Halifax!! Yep, it's rained pretty much the whole time since we got to Halifax..It's not suppose to rain on your holidays is it? I think that should be against the rules!

We had an uneventful, short flight here (about 1hr 40mins), so I was happy about that. The girls were kind of disappointed that Halifax looked a lot like Ontario! Different from our last trip to Disney, last year, where we left blizzard conditions and were swimming in an outdoor pool on the same day!

Yesterday afternoon, we headed to Peggy's Cove and luckily, the rain stopped for a couple of hours so we could enjoy our visit there and take lots of pictures. We walked on the rocks alot and looked for shells. We had a fish dinner there too!

Today we headed to the National History Museum or something like that and then we went to the Discovery Centre, we spent about 1-2 hours at both locations and went to the MicMac Mall, which was a very nice one indeed.

Everyone is swimming in the pool while I write this as the internet only works down by reception again..sounds like our trip to Disney!

We are heading to Lunenburg tomorrow and it is suppose to be a bit nicer weather, so let's hope so! We will then stay at Digby for the night before carrying on to Brier Island, where we plan to whale watch and do some hiking, regardless of the weather I guess!

Here are some pictures from our Peggy's Cove visit! Sorry if the colours are bit off, I'm not used to Kevin's laptop yet!

Just got some service work done...

...and on the way back got this for fuel economy. I'll have to ask if they did anything else!

July Holidays

Just got back from our summer holidays, would have posted something sooner but as usual I forgot some stuff. This time it was the cord needed to transfer the pictures from the camera...oh well.

This time we took off for Quebec. Our final destination was Tadoussac, to go whale watching. It is a very long drive! We stopped overnight at Quebec City on the way up for a break.




http://maps.google.ca/maps?f=d&hl=en&geocode=&saddr=Napanee,+ON&daddr=Tadoussac,+QC&sll=49.891235,-97.15369&sspn=39.299398,81.738281&ie=UTF8&ll=46.21025,-73.33374&spn=5.246017,10.217285&z=7&om=1






(Wow, that's some link, I hope it works)




As usual, we got lost. Remarkably no one lost thier temper and we made it to our hotel.




The next morning we went to the Parc Aquarium (http://www.sepaq.com/paq/en/) Here's some photos:










Brooke relucantly agreed to pose with the mascott.

Here's a cool picture of me and Brooke underwater.

They sure do like thier bridges in Quebec. And they just don't build one, whenever there's a bridge there's at least two!

More to come later!

July 16, 2006 update

Summary:

Fill Number	Date	Odometer	Fuel	l/100km	MPG (CDN Gallons)
13	07/09/2007	10128	38.628	4.73	59.67
12	06/30/2007	9312	34.753	4.96	56.90
11	06/27/2007	8612	38.038	5.42	52.132
10	06/21/2007	7910	37.77	4.45	63.42
9	06/15/2007	7062	36.775	4.62	61.07
8	06/07/2007	6267	37.411	4.64	60.78
7	05/30/2007	5462	37.055	4.33
6	05/19/2007	4607	37.899	5.14
5	05/13/2007	3870	37.187	4.75	59.45
4	05/06/2007	3087	36.961	4.89	57.89
3	05/02/2007	2330	35.035	4.7	59.9
2	04/11/2007	1588	44.493	6.33	44.5
1	04/02/2007	885	38.425	4.34	65

New personal record

Napanee to Kingston, drove around the mall area for a bit for a bite to eat and some shopping with the family. We went up on the 401, came back on the number 2.

April 26th Adventures

Today we got up early as we knew we'd have a busy day.

We finished packing and Keturah couldn't find her stuffed Stingray, so we had to calm her down and called housekeeping and lost and found, etc. etc..They said they hadn't seen it. We didn't take it out of our room, so that means our maid must have...

We checked out of the Seralago and went to eat breakfast at IHOP again...eggs, bacon, hashbrowns and toast...Yummy coffee too!

We then drove to the MGM Studios Park. We had to take a tram from the parking lot to the front door.

We walked down a couple of streets here and both streets were all stores, except for a beauty and the beast show...We then went to the Sunset Boulevard area, where Kevin and Brooke got a fastpass for the Rock and Roller Coaster starring Aerosmith (their music anyway).

We then went over to the Animation Courtyard, where we went to see the Magic of Disney Animation. It was a short movie and then an interactive area, where you could add your own picture/sounds/colours to the animated characters on the computer screen. IT was neat to see what they go through to design characters for the animated movies. We also went to a short workshop after this, where an artist taught us to draw Minnie. We got to take home our finished product. I think we all did a good job.

We then went back to the roller coaster ride as it was time for them to ride. Keturah and I hung out in the gift shop while we waited. They said it was kind of boring, compared to some they've been on.

We then caught three quarters of the Indiana Jones Epic-Stunt Spectacular, where they showed stunts that he might do in a movie, with explosions, jumps, etc.etc. pretty cool.

We then went to the Star Tours ride, which is a Star Wars flight simulators..similar to what we went on before.

We went to see Muppet Vision 3d, which is a hilarious 3d Film starring the muppets. It was pretty cool as we all love the Muppets. It was in a theatre that looked exactly like the real muppet show theatre, complete with the two old guys in the theatre, cracking jokes.

We then went to the Disney-MGM Studios Backlot Tour that showed us the magic of movie-making magic. It was pretty cool.

We then had to go because we had to catch our plane.

We dropped off our rental van at the airport and then showed up at the JetBlue counter to check in, only to be told that we had missed our plane!!! Yikes..It was MY fault as I didn't look at the tickets in the last two weeks, I knew there was a 6pm involved, but that was the time we should have arrived in Syracuse..OOPS...We freaked out for a bit, and then calmed down and re-scheduled for the same time the next day -Friday.

We then went to the airport hotel, called the Hyatt (which means expensive in some language I'm sure). It was convenient, so we decided to stay there. It was the nicest hotel we've stayed in in our lives I'm sure!

There was a food court in the airport, actually, it was like a shopping mall, with lots of stores, etc. So we ate dinner there.

We then went swimming in the pool and relaxed for once at the hotel. Kevin and I read, Brooke surfed as we had wireless internet here and Keturah watched TV.

We got up around 8am and got ready and went for Breakfast in the food court again. The girls and I had bagels and kevin had McDonalds crap!

We then went swimming in the hotel pool. WE then packed up and had to check out at 12noon. We then got our boarding passes and checked our bags in. We then shopped around a bit. We went through security around 1pm and my carry on got held up for some reason and as I was waiting the fellow doing the xraying said to his helper that there's a big bottle in there and then I thought..crap! that's my sunscreen. You can't take anything in liquid/gel/lotion form in your carryon if it's over 3oz. So, she said she had to confiscate it...I said that's fine, it's my own fault! It was 1/2 gone anyway, so wasn't too bad!

We then went and grabbed some lunch...Kevin and Keturah had salads and Brooke and I had a piece of pizza. We walked around our gate a bit and then we noticed that our flight was delayed by 1.5 hours..SIGH. Due to weather in New York I think, our plane was late getting there.

We got on the plane and headed out about 4:40PM. We had an uneventful flight. The pilot said it might be a bit bumpy, but I didn't notice any turbulence. I read my book most of the flight and listened to my iPod.

We landed at 7:15pm. After we retrieved our baggage, Kevin called the hotel shuttle and they were there within 2mins with our keys and dropped us off right beside our van. WE loaded up and headed home at 8pm.

We drove straight through and had no problems at the border. I had all my receipts ready (well, the ones I could find!).

We got to Napanee about 10:30, but stopped at A& P to grab some milk and bread for breakfast.

We got home and unpacked a little and then went to bed at 11:30pm. It was a long day today!

We are all glad to be home, but miss the nice florida weather already. When we left Florida, it was 89 degrees, sunny and hot and when we landed in Syracuse it was 59 degrees, cloudy and rainy! YUCK.

Well, it could have been worse, it could have been snowing! HA

Thanks for reading about our adventures, now I gotta sort through the 1000 pictures I took!

April 25th Adventures

We slept in a bit today-me until 730am and the gang until 8.

We got ready and went across the road to McDonalds for breakkie. I had the pancakes kids' meal. Keturah had the fruit, nut and yogurt, while Brooke and Kevin had egg mcmuffins...their coffee was pretty disgusting.

We the hit the highway to go to Cocoa Beach, which is about 45 mins from Kissimmee.

We stopped for gas and it cost only 40 dollars to fill up--about 1/2 what our van at home costs---but then it's US dollars too!

We had to go on this toll highway which cost us 75 cents and then a little while later down the road it was another 75 cents and a little farther down it was 1.25---crazy! The roads were in pretty crappy shape for being toll roads!

We got to Cocoa Beach around 11am and found a parking area, which cost 5.00 to park. Later we found out we could have parked for free down the road a bit!

We walked down the beach and collected some seashells and the girls played in the sand. We saw a jellyfish (we think it was) dead on the beach. We didn't touch it though, just in case!

We stayed only about 2hours due to the sun and the fact that Kevin and I were getting headaches from the sun...of course, we don't have hats to wear! We didn't come prepared at all, as we were also getting thirsty and hungry and didn't bring anything to eat or drink.

The beach was really nice and sunny and breezy too. Kevin, Brooke and Keturah got sunburned pretty bad because they were wearing their bathing suits and didn't put sunscreen on their backs.

We drove over to Merritt Island, where the Kennedy Space Center is, but the girls didn't want to go at all. WE couldn't even bribe them into going :-)

So, we finally found a Burger King to eat lunch and had burgers and chicken fries and even pie for dessert because we were fairly hungry at this point (2pm).

We then drove back to the hotel and headed down to the pool. I didn't want to swim because of my heat rash on my neck and the whole pool is in the sun. So I sat in the shade while they swam I read a book and listened to my iPod, mostly in the shade. My feet were in the sun and they even got burned!

We stayed at the pool for about 1.5 hrs and got ready and went to Walmart. Brooke wanted to return a CD she had bought.

We then went out for supper. We couldn't decide on where to eat...We all wanted different food, so Keturah and Kevin ate at a Chinese Buffet and Brooke and I ate at an Italian Buffet. We had pizza, pasta, salads and dessert. It was pretty good for 4.79/person! Kevin said there's wasn't that great, but Keturah liked it. OH yeah, the buffets were in the same plaza, so we were just 2 stores away from each other!

We came back to the hotel and packed up our bags--making sure everything fit!

Kevin and and the girls are gone for a quick swim, so I stayed here to write this up so I won't forget!

We hope to go to MGM Studios tomorrow so we can use up our Disney pass.