Easter 08

Easter weekend was spent in Ann Arbor with Matt's family. After church we had an amazing brunch. I made some cupcakes on Saturday to bring to Easter brunch. I was inspired by a grocery store coupon and was up for the challenge. With the help of supplies from my mom, I made the cupcakes, made different colored frostings and decorated each cupcake uniquely. I do wish the pink cupcakes came out more pastel-y but the most important thing was that they tasted yummy!



One of the Easter basket gifts I received from Matt's parents was a complete map guide of Tokyo! Matt and I also exchanged gifts at home. One thing I received from Matt was a whole box of IceBreakers Liquid Ice Mints. I love these mints and they were discontinued a while back. Since then nothing has come close. That was so thoughtful of Matt to find it online!

Frequent Flyer

With all of our Japan planning, I am more interested in getting a frequent flyer credit card now. I have been toying with the idea for a while and after buying our tickets to Mexico, I realized that the cost of flights is just going to get worse. With all the traveling Matt and I want to do, I might as well earn points while I'm shopping! Right now I have a Disney card. I think I am going to keep this one at home for online purchases and have the new card in my wallet as my main card. In order to keep my credit score high, it would be unwise to cancel the Disney card. I am going to keep it at least until enough credit has been built up on the new one or maybe I'll just keep it as my second credit card.
There are two different types of credit cards that earn miles. There are the cards specific to an airline and there are cards that earn points that can then be turned into miles at an airline of my choosing. I am leaning toward the latter because we do not always fly a particular airline. I really like the American Express card- it is so pretty! The Chase Visa does not look nice but would be a good choice because I do most of my business with them. Decisions Decisions!

Guitar Hero and Lion King

The Milas' came for a visit from Texas and stayed at Lisa and Joe's house. Matt and I got to try Guitar Hero during the get together. I have heard a lot about it so I'm glad I finally got to try it. It was easy to pick up and I thought that I did very well the first time, getting an 86%. Of course Matt also picked it up well and beat me with over a 90%! All the other newbies didn't do as well as us.

That same weekend (like two weekends ago), we saw the Lion King in Toledo. We missed the Detroit stop. The creativity of the costumes alone is worth the drive down. Wow! We weren't allowed to take pictures but I definitely recommend it.

Ziplining

I've already talked about our ziplining experience- see our trip on Puerto Vallarta a few posts before this. We have our pictures back! We had to develop the film the old school way so that is the reason for the delay. I still have to upload ALL of our pictures to a gallery. I will be sending it to family for sure, but if you are not family and want to see our pictures, let me know!


We had to wear bandannas under our helmets.

Wheeeeeeee

Blogger

Here is my new blog! I wanted to change the look and google's version had the nice, clean look I was going for. I also like the customizations on the right that livejournal would not let me do! I tried wordpress.com simultaneously while trying blogger and blogger won me over. I was doing searches to see what other people thought about wordpress vs blogger and most people liked wordpress, but then again they were hardcore bloggers that wanted to get noticed by the general public and wordpress apparently is a better forum for that. Wordpress is also better for people who are better at setting up their own blog customizations manually. I need google widgets to help me customize.

I tried a program to switch things over (something google does not have themselves!) and it didn't work. When I have more time I am going to try it again or find something else.

Puerto Vallara Part 4- Last one!

Thursday- We slept in because we felt we deserved it! We just walked around all day. We (and I really mean "I" when I say "we") were really tired and dehydrated and wanted to find a nice refreshing place to relax and eat lunch. Fortunately, we found the perfect place! It was Epoca and it was my favorite food on the trip. (Barcelona was my favorite overall.) They had yummy sandwiches and I had a refreshing pina colada. It was situated right on the beach where the breezes from the ocean were more refreshing and relaxing than any air conditioner.

Matt decided to take a picture of every statue on the way home, and there were plenty of them. I think we have over 10-15 pictures of just random statues.

This is the most popular one; we saw this on signs and posters everywhere. Luckily we found the real thing!



Here I am trying to cut in:



That evening, we went to the Mexican Fiesta put on by our hotel. It was out on the patio between the beach and pool. They had a huge buffet and open bar. They also had music and dancing represented by each Mexican state. We saw traditional dances, cock fighting (they just had the roosters run at each other and fight for a little bit and then pulled them away), mariachi bands, pinata hitting and fireworks! It was an enjoyable night, especially because many of the people we met on the ziplining tour the day before were at the fiesta as well! The only strange thing was the couple next to us. They were pretty quiet and easy to talk to, but by the middle of the fiesta the husband was crazy, asking everyone lots of questions and trying to get the waiter to fill up everyone's glasses with tequila, which they kept doing to our quiet refusals. Matt thought I was annoyed by the time he was asking us personal questions like what my background was- I do not like that question since people seem to think I'm a mystery. Although it was probably most annoying to his wife who kept trying to go unnoticed except that her husband was drawing attention! I actually thought he was hilarious; he really made the night more interesting!

Friday- Today is our last day. We don't want to leave the sunny weather! We check out after breakfast and proceed to the airport. We were delayed in O'Hare but eventually we make it home to our house after 3:15am.

We had a wonderful time and we even got our money shot to put in our beach-themed bathroom:



Greetings from Puerto Vallarta!!!


Mexico is a great country to visit. I've been to Mexico City to see the pyramids, Oaxaca to see the silver mines, Acapulco to see the famous divers and now Puerto Vallarta. Mexico gets a bad rep in the US, but the country itself is rich in history and the people are always friendly and kind.

Click here on this blog to get a different perspective on a hopefully similar trip!

Puerto Vallarta Trip Part 3

Sidenote: I am really sad that all the La Shish restaurants closed. I thought they were going to close slowly, since they've been closing since 2005, but they all immediately closed on Saturday. This was most disheartening when we called them for carryout today only to have the other end ring forever with no one answering. R.I.P. La Shish, I will miss the mjadra, falafel, chicken schwarma, fatoosh feta salad and garlic sauce!

Wednesday: We met our ziplining group around 10:45am right across the street from the Sheraton. We took a bus all the way to the top of the nearby mountains. The bus had windows that were permanently open. The result was a ton of dust kicked up into our faces pretty much the whole half hour ride. Ziplining was an incredible, exhilarating experience. The guides were very friendly and the equipment was extremely safe. There were 10 ziplines, and each view was breathtaking to see while zipping through mountains and over the Cuale River. I was really nervous on the first one, but after a few it was a piece of cake. I wouldn't recommend this if you are afraid of heights, otherwise it is definitely something to look into.

PICTURES COMING SOON- WE ARE GETTING THEM DEVELOPED SINCE WE DIDN'T WANT TO TAKE A DIGITAL CAMERA FOR THIS TOUR

After lunch, the ziplining tour gave us a tequila tasting since their primary business is to raise agave plants and make tequila. We learned that the "worm" is unnecessary if the tequila is made with 100% agave. Puerto Vallarta is the only place where 100% agave tequila is made. There are no added sugars/coloring. We tasted this kind of tequila along with flavored tequilas like pina colada, jaca, coffee and tasted almond (obviously I didn't try this one). We had a dusty ride back and were back at the Sheraton by 2pm.

We went swimming for a little bit and then walked downtown again.

Matt sitting in front of the Opal Mine on the Malecon. The Opal Mine was one of the neatest places to see because the inside of the shop was set up as a mine and the coal carts were actually displays of the opals and other jewels. It was also air-conditioned, yes!



This time we went further to Old Town, which is past the Malecon. This is the area where there are 4/5-star restaurants. We went to an Asian restaurant called Archie's Wok that we researched earlier. Matt had yummy mahi mahi that was wrapped in banana leaves while it was cooked. I had a Filipino dish called Pancit, it was pretty good. On the way home, we walked on the Malecon and saw the amphitheater was packed with a Mexican kid's skit. We went home and called it a day.

Puerto Vallarta Trip Part 2

Monday Continued...

For our anniversary dinner we had the concierge make reservations at Barcelona. It has Spanish food as opposed to Mexican food. They had really good tapas and sangria. We found this place highly reviewed on Fodor's and other online sites. The view alone makes up for the 70+ stairs you have to climb to get to the third story. We had scallops, a veggie omelet, goat cheese, and spicy potatoes. We made it a point to come here before sunset so we could watch it go down over the ocean. Here are a few photos:



This picture doesn't show how the ocean seems to go on forever. Also it was really cool to look down and people watch. We could also see a few points of interest that we had just walked to such as the church and malecon.



This anniversary is going to be hard to top!

When we got back to the hotel we soaked in the hot tub at our resort. We did this a few nights in a row and every time we did, we met new couples and people from around the US and Canada.



Tuesday- We hung out by the pool today. I had to get a mango margarita, but I don't think it was as good as Matt's on Sunday. I started reading my Book Club book "Into the Wild". I wore a beautiful straw hat that I bought earlier in the week. I felt like I was in a classic movie with classic fashion. Nice!

One of the pools at the Sheraton. This is the view looking down from our balcony and the pool that we usually hung out at.


We had lunch in the room and then went to the massage cabana on the beach for a couples massage. The massage was one of the best I've had; we had an all-body relaxing massage. They did our heads all the way down to our feet. I think the weather, the ocean breezes and just being relaxed to begin with helped make the massage great.

The cabana


For dinner, we went down the street to El Andriego. It was our first chance at authentic Mexican food. The atmosphere was great. The best part about that atmosphere was the singer who strummed his guitar and sang American oldies in Spanish like Sweet Caroline and Margaritaville. It was funny when people sang along but in English. A few times the singer would forget the words and just hum the tune! Our hotel gave us a free appetizer coupon when we asked them for directions!





A mariachi band came by later and surrounded our table because we were near the entryway. It was funny at first but luckily as it started to get annoying (and as they were asking for tips) they decided to move to other tables and surrounded another family instead! hehe

Puerto Vallarta Trip Part 1

We came back from Puerto Vallarta very early Saturday morning. I put "Part 1" for this entry because I am going to attempt to write about each day of my trip and I might not blog about it all in this post. Let me start out by saying after a really miserable winter season it was really nice to enjoy some great weather. The temperature was in the mid to high 70s every day and we got to see the SUN every day!

Sunday- Our flight to O'Hare and then to Mexico were on time - big shocker for the O'Hare segment since that airport has a bad track record with me and I'm sure everyone else. If I can avoid it, I will fly somewhere else for the connection, but this was the cheapest and best timed flight. Luckily it worked well and we were in Mexico a few minutes earlier than anticipated! I was a little dehydrated from the flight, it was just 4 hours, but I have to make myself drink water sometimes even though I don't feel thirsty. I was fine once we were outside of customs in the air-conditioned airport and changed into a short-sleeved shirt. We exchanged dollars for pesos in the airport. They had a horrible exchange rate but we only exchanged a little bit so we had some pesos in our pocket to pay the taxi driver to get to our hotel. The receiving area of the airport was CRAZY. There were tons of tour shuttles, people with signs, people trying to book you on a tour shuttle, etc. just to get you to your hotel. The economy of Puerto Vallarta, and I am sure most of the beachy Mexican cities, center around tourism so they try very hard to sell anything they can to us vulnerable and gullible Americans/Canadians. We were able to get a taxi and were brought to the Sheraton Buganvilias Resort. The hotel was AMAZING. After a whole week of seeing many, many resorts, my parents' timeshare is by far the best on the strip. The location is wonderful too. It is in walking distance to the Malecon, the downtown strip where tourists go every day.

Here is a picture of the hotel zone- looking north from the hotel and away from the Malecon:



We stayed at the hotel to eat at one of their 5 restaurants. We ate at the Italian one. We asked for a table on the beach and not under the tent. Here's a picture of us at the restaurant with the lanterns/tent behind us. Matt ordered a mango martini which was so good! I thought I didn't like mango.



We went to bed soon after that because we were exhausted from our flights. But before we went to bed our hotel was having some fiesta and there were fireworks that we could see from our hotel room. What a nice way to end the night!






Monday- It's our 2nd anniversary today!!! To celebrate, we decided to attend the timeshare presentation in our hotel. Because we were guests of owners (my parents) and not the actual owners we were invited to it almost the minute we checked in on Sunday. How nice (said sarcastically). But we did go because we get to have a free brunch under the HUGE palapa (a thatched hut) and discounts to 3 or 4 things we wanted to do including half off the fiesta, and discounts on ziplining, restaurants and massages. We also got some free drink tickets to the swim up bars. It was definitely worth it. The salesperson didn't push us much probably because we were a young couple and everyone else was retired or older and really looking to buy. We honestly told the guy we were not going to buy and he let us go on our way.

Here's a picture of the palapa where we had brunch:



We took a bus to Walmart to buy provisions for the week such as tons of water and breakfast food and snacks. We have a kitchenette in our condo/room so we could store things in the fridge and use the stove or microwave if we needed to.

Ok to really celebrate our anniversary we decided to go exploring in the city and then finish the day at a restaurant for dinner. We walked on the famous touristy Malecon, which is only a 10-15 min walk from our hotel.

A view of the Malecon:



A cute Mexican family feeding birds in a town square:



A beautiful church in the middle of small shops and narrow roads:



The rest of Monday to be continued!