It finally happened – I ran out of space on my blog. All my new adventures will be at http://hayleyiraina2.wordpress.com but you can still read all of my old posts here. See you at my new page!
What We Got Up To In January 2019
We started off January by ringing in the New Year with Kim’s family, we went for Japanese food first and then back to Kim’s Uncle’s house who had a house party. Americans like to watch a ball slide down a pole in Times Square in New York for New Years Eve so that’s what we counted down to on TV.
We took a day trip to Amherst, Massachusetts and visited the hot tub spa.
We’ve still been visiting the cat shelter to help out that’s down the street from us, we’re getting some sweet favourites like this friendly little guy.
We took a trip to the Spa at Norwich Inn one weekend and had a lovely room with a fireplace.
I discovered Kim has never lit a match before… I didn’t know anyone could be bad at striking a match but now I know how talented I really am.
We’d been to the Spa at Norwich Inn before so we knew the drill, we had afternoon tea and scones.
Wine, cheese…and lots of spa time.
Kim has a very nice friend who is also called Kim and she and her husband, Cam, live in Cape Cod where we drove for their baby shower. The weather was not co-operative but it was still the shortest drive we’ve had to Cape Cod because there was no traffic!
Would you just look at these biscuits?
Our Saturdays have been occupied with foster/adoption classes in the mornings and we just finished our second class. The other people in the class are really friendly and the classes are fairly positive so far so it’s going well – lots of paperwork! So it was only right to treat ourselves after class today. We took a trip to a tea shop in Mystic.
We had a Harry Potter themed afternoon tea, Kim was in heaven.
We tried to walk at least one of the cakes off around the Lebanon Green which I’d driven past a lot but hadn’t actually had a chance to look round before, the houses are all old (for America at least) and there was a lot of revolutionary war history there.
January feels like it’s flown by!
Christmas 2018
It’s January and I haven’t even written about our Christmas! Ugh It’s been busy! We cheated this year and bought our Christmas tree pre-cut.
We went to bright nights in Massachusetts to get in the Christmas spirit.
We found out there’s a cat shelter just down the road from us in Coventry so in December we started volunteering which I just love, kitties galore.
We finally tried out this place called Little Marks BBQ that we drive past a lot. It reminds me of a band my friends and I used to watch play when I was a teenager and the food was really good.
We went to whole foods to stock up on good munchies.
On Christmas Day we went to Kim’s parents house in the morning and had Christmas cocktails Kim’s sister made
And eggs benedict for breakfast.
And both Kim and I were thoroughly spoilt, I got some awesome gifts.
And that was our December round up, albeit a late one!
Amish Country, Pennsylvania
Kim and I usually do a little weekend away for our birthdays but my sister and Chris had come to stay with us over my birthday so we delayed mine a little bit and went after they had gone home. I had joked a while back that I wanted to go to Intercourse, Pennsylvania because I thought the name was funny. But then I thought meh… why not? And we actually did go. We discovered it was a vacation hot spot for the elderly and stayed in a nice hotel full of old lady coach parties which I enjoyed immensely.
The next morning we got up fairly early for breakfast before a nice couples massage Kimmy had kindly bought for us and I spotted my first Amish sighting! I am strangely obsessed with the Amish so the whole weekend mainly consisted of me trying to stare inconspicuously at others. I’m nice like that. I’m not entirely convinced these people were Amish though because the hotel had a whole lot of electricity but as we discovered there are a lot of loopholes to Amish using electricity. My Dad thinks the rules are made up to benefit older men and control women and children…. go feminist Dad!
After our breakfast and our lovely massage we went for a drive about Intercourse and the surrounding area (all with imaginative names like Blue Ball, Fertility, Bird in Hand etc). There were lots of Amish and Mennonite homes but also lots of regular people they live along side that don’t follow the same rules. The Amish call non-Amish people ‘English’… even though they’re Americans not English but the Amish people speak mainly Pennsylvania Dutch… which is in fact German and not Dutch. Confused?
We went to a recreated Amish village that had lots of handmade crafts that I found charming. I found myself wondering if I might need an embroidered apron or a faceless doll but instead we settled on a magnet.
Then we went on an Amish tourist bus tour, which I imagined the Amish must hate but I couldn’t resist, although as we drove around the tour guide was neighbours to a lot of the farms and the kids waved at the bus so hopefully that meant they didn’t mind too much. This tour guide knew everything about the Amish and told us about schools, families, history, weddings, funerals, church, clothes, farms, horse and buggies, health, inheritance… everything and anything. We stopped at an Amish business that relies on tourists and bought a delicious pretzel and a shoo-fly pie (which is a bit like treacle tart) for Kim’s Mom.
We drove past a couple of tiny one room school houses and a factory that makes the buggies the Amish drive (by hand of course!). We fed this little chap.
And had an all round lovely time. Then we wandered around the recreated Amish Village which allowed us to be nosy without annoying everyone.
A whole family fits into one buggy.
But look how big it is inside!
That evening we thought we’d avoid the normal chains to eat at and try somewhere local, the problem was that all of the Amish restaurants closed at 7pm (??) on a Saturday (Saturday night is date night for the Amish teens). So we settled on a place called Shady Maple Smorgasbord along with all the other elderly folk. It was immense, the website says that the main dining area can seat 1,200 people and there were literally hundreds of people wandering around with plates. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them had been left behind by their coach parties years ago and they just live there now.
The thing was, the buffet was so large that it wasn’t even crowded. There was food everywhere, and not just any food, old fashioned home cooked style food. My Uncle married a very nice lady originally from the Philippines and before she met my great auntie Lily (who is 90 this year) my Uncle told my Great Aunt what an excellent cook his new wife Lynn was. “I won’t eat rice Jim!” said my Great Aunt to my bewildered Uncle who had to spend the next 5 minutes convincing my Great Aunt that Lynn wouldn’t try to force her to eat rice. This restaurant would be an excellent place to take people like my Great Aunt.
Also, ‘I won’t eat rice Jim!’ is now a catch phrase at our house.
Luckily we found our way back to our table through the sea of people and we got to try some shoo-fly pie.
I took this photo for my friend Sarah, yes it is a toilet, but Sarah and I have this theory that old people love the colour beige. Old people love beige shoes, beige coats, even beige cars – and at this, the edifice of the elderly, the toilets were even beige. Fantastic.
What more could you want at a giant buffet?
A 44,000 sq ft gift shop of course, yes, that is over an acre. An acre of tat. I loved every minute of it.
After that we had a little swim back in the hotel before escaping what seemed to be an entire hockey team of teenagers on tour who ended every sentence in “Bro” or “Man” or the big one… “Duuuuude”.
And that was the end of our lovely weekend, we got home and got a nice Christmas tree from our local garden store Cropleys and put all our decorations up, including a new one we got in Amish Country.
NYC & Thanksgiving
The day before Thanksgiving we took the train from New Haven to Grand Central in New York City. The last few times I went to NYC we used the subway exclusively but this visit we were all cold and tired and we didn’t go on the subway (worlds shittest underground) and only used Uber – they turn up instantly and as there was 4 of us it almost wasn’t worth getting the subway anywhere. Bronte’s boyfriend Chris is a farmer from Wiltshire so it was pretty funny watching him stare around at the massive buildings.
We stopped at a Japanese restaurant.
And after that we went to the top of the Empire State Building to see the city lit up at night.
Now somewhere that day Bronte and Kim must have picked something up because they were both super sick that next and the next day and then Chris was sick the day after that (I was fine) which wasn’t timed great as we turned up to watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in the city.
We got there early and it was absolutely packed and freezing cold at 17f (that’s -8C for you metric chaps).
We were all feeling the cold, perhaps slightly less than these cheerleaders.
Kim, who wouldn’t stay at the hotel for fear of missing out, kept having to scamper off to vomit in a flower bed.
And Bronte managed to keep down the vomit but had forgotten her gloves and just sort of gave up miserably and sat on her handbag.
I had a lovely time though… after a little while we gave it up as a bad job and missed the rest.
And we had to leave Bronte and Chris in the city for the rest of their vacation and make our way back to Connecticut, poor Kimmy slept almost all of the way home and I had to drive her car back but it was still lovely to have my sister and Chris to visit… even if they were all sick! Back home when recovered Kim made my belated cake construction – the theme this year was The Sims. Hmm…
Toronto & Upstate New York
After Niagara Falls we took a drive further north to Toronto in Canada. We got stuck in traffic (a theme for us) because Toronto had some Santa parade so the road to our hotel was actually closed but I think the hotel felt a bit sorry for us when we got there and upgraded our room to a fancy two bedroom suite. We took a walk through the city back to the dining in the dark restaurant O’Noir where Kim and I had eaten before and Bronte and Chris wanted to try out. It was even more fun this time because I got to stab my sister in the dark with a fork. We made buddies with the people at the next table and all compared notes of what we thought we were eating. I enjoyed my starter which I found out was mushrooms… which I hate… it took me 30 years to discover I don’t hate mushrooms.
After dinner we went to the top floor of our hotel that looked out over the city and got in the hot tub with some random Ukranian guys who offered us swigs of vodka from a water bottle… um… no… thanks. But they left and then we had the place to ourselves.
The next day we went to Ripley’s Aquarium of Canada.
They had a really cool walkway through a massive tank of sharks and turtles etc.
They had some scuba divers cleaning the tank which I thought were pretty funny as we traveled underneath them on a moving walkway.
Then we went through a load of jelly fish, wobbling about.
Then Bronte, Kimmy and I went crazy for the touch tank where we could pet the rays.
Then we mooched around a bit.
Bronte and Chris went to the CN Tower.
Kim and I found a fancy arcade/coffee shop and hung out before the long drive back to an Airbnb that Bronte had booked for us all in upstate New York.
It was pretty adorable.
It was all log cabin-y.
And decorated for Christmas.
The house was on a farm that had barn cats, one of them was especially friendly so we adopted him for the night. We called him Heathcliff and I was very temped to steal him but he seemed to enjoy frolicking about outside with his many brothers and sisters.
The farm also had some deer we visited.
But I was mainly sold on the trillions of kittens we kept spotting everywhere.
The house was in the middle of nowhere and there were some Mennonite neighbours who drove a horse and buggy.
When we got back to Connecticut the next day we were all worn out and had a gingerbread house building contest.
Bronte & Chris Visit
Last month my sister Bronte and her lovely boyfriend Chris came to visit with us over my birthday and Thanksgiving. The November weather up until their visit had been fairly mild until the night we needed to collect them when we had a big snow storm. It didn’t start until we left the house (naturally) and it dumped down, we got delayed 4 and a half hours, stuck in traffic whilst the snow flurried down, passing cars stranded along the highway (including one with a man dressed in shorts digging his car out). I was pretty worried my sister and Chris would have been waiting for us for all that time but luckily (or not…?) they got delayed for just as long stuck on the runway in London and New York, by coincidence we both arrived at the airport at exactly the same time!
We didn’t get back to our house in Connecticut until about 4am and we had to dig a channel through the snow in the driveway to get the car in – needless to say we slept in pretty late! In the morning we introduced our guests to IHOP and some shops and ended up at Dave & Busters a big arcade.
That evening Chris and Bronte got to meet some of Kim’s family and we went to hibachi for Japanese (more sake, more sexy).
The next day was my 30th birthday, I got a ton of lovely gifts from everyone but I couldn’t stop too long because we started our road trip that day and headed through upstate New York on the way to Niagara. I had a not very fancy birthday lunch of pizza by the slice.
When we got through the Canadian border we got to our hotel which Bronte and Chris had upgraded as a treat for my birthday and our room over looked Niagara Falls, we could see all of the mist rising up.
And my Mum paid for us to all have a nice fancy dinner over looking the falls.
Where weirdly enough they had a fireworks contest that night so we got to see a really long fireworks show as we ate which was cool.
The next day it wasn’t too cold out so we were feeling strong about going on the last boat that was still open this time of year on the falls.
We lined up and got our highly fashionable waterproof ponchos on, Bronte and Chris laughed at Kim and I tying ours up tightly around our faces and tucking everything in, when the barriers opened we all decided we’d stand up top at the front of the boat because we could take a little mist.
We sailed past the American Bridal Falls with no issue, a tiny bit of spray and we all got photos. Then we rounded on the Canadian Horseshoe Falls and got hammered with water, we were soaked, the water got so heavy we all raced downstairs with everyone else to shelter, until I realised half way I’d lost Bronte. Before we set off for the day my Mum had made me promise not to let my sister (who is legendarily clumsy) fall over board so I went back up to find her and she was standing alone, shocked with her arms out dripping with water… oh Bronte. They completely understood why Kim and I tied up our ponchos so tight.
New Family Members
At the beginning of November we discovered we had an unused gift card from one of Kim’s neighbours and thought we’d put some money towards it and buy a robot vacuum cleaner. Enter Bob, the bObsweep vacuum cleaner. Bob came complete with birth certificate.
Bob is quite a good chap, he ambles about cleaning and he gets all the pet hair up very well.
We also went to see Fiddler on the Roof at the theatre around this time which is usually my Christmas tradition (traditiiiooonnnnn) but we made an exception. It was good.
Christmas seems to have exploded in the shops.
And we have been signed up for foster/adoption classes that start at the end of January, we couldn’t make the ones that start in September because of the cruise and my sister coming to stay. So that’s exciting, they last quite a while so watch this space. Also I ordered Bob some stick on eyes, it’s only right that he should see.
Halloween, Dominican Republic & Back To Miami
We were on the cruise for Halloween, and whilst I was sad to miss out on all the neighbourhood kids costumes we did get to see the ship costumes and people really went all out. Here is Godzilla singing karaoke to “I’m sexy and I know it”.
Kim and I went as Wilma Flintsone and Betty Rubble. Jen and Andrew copped out with Halloween t shirts but they were in the minority. We saw an Addams Family, a Titanic couple, Beetlejuice, Dracula, super heroes, Jasmine and a genie half in a lamp (that worryingly had writing across it saying “rub my lamp”).
The next day we saw a showcase of all the different towel animals they make (I got slightly obsessed with towel animals).
After Halloween we stopped at Amber Cove in the Dominican Republic.
Amber Cove is just a cruise port and shopping center which I think is a good idea because it must stop the island from being over run with tourists from the cruises.
They had all the duty free shops like the other ports but of course we had an excursion booked. Now it was seriously hot and we were all signed up to do zip lining but Kimmy chose to switch us to go to a luxury resort and I was glad she did because when we got off the ship the last thing I felt like doing was climbing about the trees in the heat but Andrew and Jen went zip lining and came back covered in bruises but they had fun. They had a lot of excursions where you could swim with dolphins etc but since the Blackfish documentary I’ve felt a bit wary about things like that.
Kim and I went to a luxury resort where it apparently was mostly time shares where people had these big luxury villas and each villa came with a golf cart to drive around the resort in. I thought time shares were a thing of the past but apparently not.
The beach was nice but lots of little stones and seaweed about the place.
 The beach bar had swings on it.
After a while at the beach we went to the pool which wasn’t very busy because apparently most of the villas have their own pools.
After that we browsed around the shops and headed back on the ship to a towel bear.
The next day was another day at sea, the highlight of which was the hairy chest contest where a series of men who didn’t seem to know what they’d signed up for got publicly humiliated for everyone’s amusement.
And that was it, time to go!
We left the ship in Miami and Jen & Andrew had organised a rental car for the day so we had a mooch about in a minivan that Andrew hated with a passion but also seemed to grow quite attached to by the end of the day.
Then it was back on the plane to Hartford on an evening flight. Have you seen this before? A water vapour air conditioning thing? I wasn’t sure if we were being gassed or if we were on fire (luckily neither).
So that was that, but we have our cruise souvenirs from Kim and I winning the Harry Potter trivia contest on the book case to remember the (mostly) fun times we had.
San Juan & St Thomas
So remember how in Grand Turk Kim’s Dad Jerry had swallowed sea water and had a panic? He went to the medical center on the ship to get checked over and they kept him there because they thought he’d had a heart attack! So that threw a spanner in the works. We were all back and forth to the medical center to sit with him and rotate eating, and bringing him clothes and stuff – the staff were really good and kind. It was agreed that he would be taken off the ship by ambulance at the next port which was San Juan but that he was stable. So Kim’s Mom stayed with him over night and Kim, her sister, her sister’s husband and I were all unsure of what to do as there wasn’t much we could do to help. We went to see the show for that night which was a Spanish themed dancing show and then had an early night.
The next day we sat around in a hospital in San Juan and Kim and I got paid back for every time we were frustrated that our patients at work couldn’t speak English because although San Juan is in Puerto Rico and is part of the USA hardly anyone could speak English. None of us could really speak much Spanish apart from the odd word here or there. The doctors in San Juan said they thought Jerry had had some kind of cardiac event but they couldn’t tell until they took him to the cardiac cath lab so he had to stay in San Juan for a week (spoiler alert – it turned out he didn’t have a heart attack and was completely fine so he missed out on the cruise for nothing, ugh!). Kim’s Mom stayed with her Dad in San Juan, luckily there was a hotel directly above the hospital (weird?) and we continued on with the cruise with Kim’s sister Jen and Jen’s husband Andrew as obviously everything had already been paid for very kindly by Kim’s parents.
It was evening time when we escaped the hospital and we had a nice walk around old San Juan and looked in a couple of shops.
Moaned about the irony of Kim’s parents booking a big family holiday that they then couldn’t go on.
And then headed back to the ship.
The next day we went to St Thomas which was a lovely island but it was ridiculously hot. So. Hot. We were booked on a tour excursion and we started out at a beautiful beach and had a swim. There were pelicans flying over the water (no one was excited about this except me!).
I spotted my style icon for when I am an old lady.
Next we went up a mountain top with a good view. We were transported around in these mini bus taxi things. Ours was called ‘best taxi’… it was decidedly not the best taxi. A white knuckle ride up and down jungle strewn hills with tight narrow forked turns where the driver would beep his horn to alert people he was coming at breakneck speed. I was packed in with a ton of Americans who were going “Oh my lord!” and a Texan saying “I think there’s smoke coming from your wheel?!” as I grabbed on to Kim so she didn’t fall out of the side on the bends.
 Anyway, we all lived to tell the tale and got out at a duty free shop at the top of the mountain which claims to be home of the banana daiquiri.
So we got one, would be rude not to really.
And then went out to enjoy the view, drink in hand. “Make sure you stir it, it’s strong” said the lady who made them, so what did Kim do? Drank it without stirring of course, and was rewarded with a hefty dose of banana liqueur.
After that we looked around the market place and shops.
But it was the kind of heat where you’ll do anything to stand in the shade so we sat it out after a while and went back to the ship after a lemonade.
Back to our towel dinosaur.
hayleyiraina 