Cruise & Grand Turk

So we were aboard on the cruise, I’ve never been on a cruise before so I didn’t really know how things were done. Our luggage was dropped off outside our cabin. We had a little porthole. Kim’s parents had a room with a balcony but it was virtually identical apart from that.

Once you leave port you’re just out in the middle of the ocean and there isn’t a ton to see except a few seabirds here and there.

Cruise life basically revolves around eating, you get up when you like and make your way to the breakfast buffet. You can also eat your lunch here or pay more to go to a restaurant but we never bothered with that. The food was good quality and you could pick whatever you liked, there was a huge variety. Also if you didn’t want what was at the buffet they had a sushi station, omelette station, pizza station, deli sandwiches etc. Juice and coffee is free in the morning, soda in the afternoon but you pay for alcoholic drinks or anything more fancy like a latte. Soft serve ice creams were free too, or included in the price I should say!

In the evening you eat in the dining room, you always get the same table and the same wait staff which was nice because you get to know them a little and the service was really great. A lot of the service staff came from India and the Philippines, the entertainment staff came from the USA and the UK and the ship staff and officers seemed to be from all different countries.

Each night there was a main show, I didn’t expect this to be very good and thought it would be a bit Butlins-esque (only the UK people will know what I mean by this) but all the shows we saw were really good, I was impressed.

In addition to the main show they had entertainment around the clock, you literally could be entertained all day and all night by different contests, shows, music, games etc. We all got quite into a ship wide game of Clue (Cluedo in the UK).

When you have a day where you are stopping at a port you have a ‘debarkation’ time (I don’t like the word ‘debark’ – it sounds like a painful veterinary procedure for dogs, I think I prefer ‘disembark’) and you can get off the ship at this time if you like and return before the ship sets sail. What you do in the port is up to you but there are lots of excursions offered (anything to get your money, right?).

Our first stop was Grand Turk, which I believe may be a bit misleading. A better name might be Fairly Small But Nice Turk as it is tiny and Caicos (of Turks and Caicos) is much bigger.

We docked at the cruise center port which is clearly aimed at tourists, although as I am a tourist I don’t really mind because I want to actively be sold tat and souvenirs that I don’t really need. We could have ventured out to the delicately named Cockburn Town but Kim’s family had booked us all for snorkeling and a catamaran.

The sea was lovely and clear, we went out on the massive catamaran and stopped a little way out from Grand Turk to snorkel with the fish. The fish were all different beautiful colours and swam around us whilst the tour operators threw little bits of bread in the water which the fish like. Now this is where we hit a slight snag, Kim’s Dad’s mask didn’t fit him very well because of his moustache so he swallowed some sea water and had a bit of a panic in the water. Luckily Kim’s brother in law Andrew fished him out and he sat down on deck for a bit. After that the catamaran took us to a tiny island with a little shack on it and not much else.

We had the beach to ourselves and it had powder fine white sand, we all had a nice rum punch.

After that they played music and we had more rum punch on the catamaran and got back to Grand Turk.

Kim’s family camped out at the beach and Kim and I went to look around the shops.

We stopped at regular intervals to lather up Kim with sunscreen because she is the whitest person ever. At one point we came across Kim’s Mom wandering around alone and tipsy after too many rum punches so we ushered her back to the beach giggling.

And then we headed back to ship to cover the bottom of our shower with all the sand we picked up that day.

 

Hartford To Miami

Life has been busy lately, busy busy. But I thought I’d tell you about our cruise last month. We started our trip with a flight from Hartford to Miami. We stayed over night at Kim’s parents house to leave at 3am (who doesn’t love that?). The princess Diana plate gave us her blessing.

We left but then looped back round to the house because Kim’s Dad forgot all of his shoes.

I hadn’t been to Hartford airport before… it was pretty average, a few shops and that was it. We sucked down some coffee.

When we got to Miami we were boiling because we were all in our cold weather clothes. Kimmy had worn her Uggs and said she had a sweaty soup in there until she was able to switch footwear.

So we stayed in Miami for a night and had a wander around that evening.

The hotel was nice but I didn’t really care for Miami as a city, I didn’t really like the architecture or over crowded feel. Also it felt very Spanish speaking and I can’t say anything other than ‘hello’, ‘cheese’ and ‘tequila’ in Spanish.

That evening we went for a sunset cruise around the cost of Miami which was gorgeous.

It was cool to see all the buildings lit up and all the mansions along the waterline.

The next morning we had to check in for the cruise. The security checks were pretty basic.

So we left our luggage with the staff who drop it off at your room. We went up on the deck for cocktails and to watch the ship leave.

And that was the start of our cruise!

Odds & Ends

We’ve been pretty chill lately.

I made us a fancy afternoon tea.

Kim threw her back out when we put our canoe away.

Luckily before that we managed to have a lovely paddle around our lake.

I love being nosy and looking at the back of people’s houses.

We visited the Saville Dam one weekend.

Which has a beautiful little turret over looking a reservoir.

I discovered an arcade chain called Dave & Busters.

Luckily it still had the same air hockey game as Kim and I liked playing in Great Yarmouth in England so that was great.

The weather is a lot less hot and humid thankfully and all the neighbours have their Halloween decorations up. We’re away over Halloween sadly so we won’t get to see all the little kid’s outfits.

The Big E 2018

Each year the state fair for all the New England states is on in the summer – The Big E. And Kim very thoughtfully bought tickets ahead of time and we decided to go one Saturday… little did we know it would be the day it broke the record for highest attendance ever! We got stuck in gridlock traffic for hours, for so long in fact that we gave up and went home only to return to try again the next day…

Luckily we were much more successful and there was no traffic at all (go figure!). Even better was that Kim’s parents could come along on the Sunday so we had some company.

 We had a great time browsing around all the animals and shops.

Kim visited her nemeses.

And we watched some chicks hatch. We got to pet a chick and it was so soft.

I got to see my favourite pig race. This year featured Jennifer Lopig, Britney Spare Ribs, Piggy Azalea, Kim Kardashiham, Kevin Bacon, Hamuel L Jackson, Mark Truffalo, Sowie Mandel and the star of the Starwars round…Ham Solo.

We went on a ride.

And looked round each state’s house. Kim’s Mom likes the Rhode Island House because they have a state trooper there in uniform and she likes their hats. We looked around all the big buildings where people sell all kinds of things.

And I had a dilly dilly dog which is a hot dog, within a hollowed out pickle in batter (without the pickle Americans call this a corn dog). It was very nice.

And that was the state fair conquered for another year.

Martha’s Vineyard 2018

We spent a lovely weekend away at Martha’s Vineyard a couple of weeks back. There was a lot of traffic driving down to Cape Cod.

But we finally made it onto the ferry, it’s expensive and there are limited spaces to take your car on the ferry to Martha’s Vineyard – also when you get there there is not a lot of parking so we just used Uber to get around like last year.

We stayed at the Pequot Hotel where we stayed last year – I’m not usually one to go on holiday in the same spot twice or stay in the same hotel but we had such a nice time last year and as it’s only for the weekend I think it’s allowed.

We were up bright and early Saturday to look round Oak Bluffs, there were a lot of dogs out. I think if you’re the type of person who likes to take your dog on holiday this is the perfect spot.

It was Tivoli day in Oak Bluffs so there was lots of market stalls along the main street.

We browsed the shops, and the houses. I saw a little skunk (lots of skunks on the island) meander past which I was very pleased about, Kim less so.

And then we borrowed some deck chairs and an umbrella from the hotel and went to Inkwell Beach for a paddle.

In the afternoon we took an Uber to Edgartown, a different part of Martha’s Vineyard, it seemed to attract a slightly wealthier tourist and a more nautical crowd.

We got some gelato and walked around the shops and town.

Murica was alive and well.

Then we found a lovely seafood restaurant that had a roof top terrace.

And it had a lovely view out over the harbour and over to Chappaquiddick (famous for the downfall of Ted Kennedy).

 Then it was back to our hotel.

We had a jolly nice breakfast, and then we toured the original gingerbread houses in Oak Bluffs.

All these beautiful decorations and some idiot puts up a Liverpool FC flag!

And that was our glorious weekend.

Newport RI

Another year has passed and it was Kim’s birthday again, this year we took a little weekend trip to Newport in Rhode Island which was a very easy hour and half drive away.

When we got there Friday afternoon we headed straight to the harbour for dinner.

There’s a lot of money in Newport, it’s a fairly pricey area and there are lots of big boats and big houses, designer shops etc. But it is also where the rich people used to build their summer mansions in the ‘gilded age’ (think Great Gatsby) along the cliffs.

There’s also a big maritime history in Newport and we found a lot of ivory being sold (!). Now I thought that this would be illegal but it turns out the law changes depending on what animal the ivory comes from (e.g. walrus, whales, elephants, rhinos etc), how old it is, if you take it across state lines etc. It was pretty horrible.

Kim’s parents bought us a touristy trip on a sailboat around the harbour which was really fun, they told stories about the area and had drinks.

Including one about this funny house called ‘Clingstone’ built in the middle of nowhere where the owner took the city to court, and won, to stop paying property taxes as he said the city doesn’t plough any roads for him, collect his garbage etc… which is fair enough! You can rent this house out for thousands if you don’t mind spending years on the waiting list.

On Saturday I discovered how to use a waffle iron at our hotel.

And we set off out to look around the Newport Mansions. These are fancy Mansions that were previously owned by a lot of wealthy miserable people and then sold off and preserved.

There was a rather good free audio tour in each house as you walked round at your own pace with information about the house and who used to live there.

Each family described seemed more tragic and unhappy than the last.

I’m not sure what they had to moan about though, money might not buy happiness but I’d be willing to give it a go.

For all the mansions lovely decor, they were not air conditioned and it was a very very hot day and all the mansions were stuffed with other tourists milling about.

Thankfully most of the schools had gone back so there were hardly any children so that was nice not to add screaming to the heat! Although looking round dusty old mansions would probably be a small child’s idea of hell. The owners of all of the mansions were clearly nouveau riche and did not think it was at all tacky to stuff their New England houses with Italian marble, to floral, to gothic cathedral style rooms leading into completely different Grecian themed ballrooms.

One house even had a Chinese tea house in the garden! It was like each house had tried to out do the next set of neighbours to seem more daring and exotic.

We stopped for lunch in the tea house.

And then it was back on the road again. On a map the Mansions are deceptively close to one another, but what you forget is that each one is massive and takes ages to walk between them. They had car parks for each one but a couple of times I said “Oh the next house is only next door, let’s just walk” to Kim – only to regret it miles later in the blistering heat (I exaggerate, but still!). There were lots of these little two seater scooter things zooming about between the houses, I got the impression that they annoyed all other road users but I thought they looked quite fun.

But we soldiered on. It was about $30 something to see 5 houses and you could pick which ones you saw – you could see more but it took us the entire day just to see 5 so you would have to spread more over a few days at least. I thought the price was a little steep at first but after looking around the size of the houses, the upkeep, the quality of all the tours and all those staff members it seemed very reasonable.

We started out with the biggest houses owned by the Vanderbilts and the such like.

And worked our way down to the slightly smaller mansions.

In the smaller mansions we got a tour guide instead of an audio tour, all for that one admission price.

The tour guides were great but the small tour group size made it all the more noticeable when we got stuck with a man-splainer who seemed to think he should be running the tour… a different one each time, what a treat for us!

Then we went out for a fancy dinner.

On Sunday (Kim’s actual birthday) we headed back to the fur babies and I constructed this year’s cake. You all remember the rules, birthday person chooses the theme, and the non-birthday-person must construct the cake with NO COOKING. This year Kim didn’t know what to pick and chose a surprise so I chose to depict a homage to the epic classic 80s song ‘Africa’ by Toto as Kim enjoys singing it loudly with the wrong lyrics at the top of her lungs. I was pleased with the results.

And just like that it’s September… crazy.

Sunflowers and Powwows

It’s slowly drawing towards the end of summer, the end of blistering heat moving towards snow.

A couple of weeks back we went to Groton to see the sunflowers and get ice cream with about a million other people.

Work has been busy with a new manager and a couple of houses have had their survey. I found this in an old 70s first aid manual when I had a clear out… it’s the old Heimlich manoeuvre which I thought was funny. You have to climb on top of the choking person!

The humidity has been pretty crazy so I haven’t been walking as much as I would have liked, sometimes stepping out of the air conditioning is like walking into a warm bath with your clothes on.

Luckily there’s a lot of thunder storms to cool things off and it gets less humid for a day or two! Our little portable A/C has been worth it’s weight in gold, which is saying something as it weighs about a ton.

I went to the Mohegan Powwow which is like an Indian festival, they sell a ton of hand made items, clothes, various dead animals which I did not purchase…

I tried some grilled corn and some fry bread which was really good with honey.

Indians from lots of different tribes came to compete at dancing and they had drum circles and singing, it was really different and really loud.

But a lot of the time I’ve been spending inside… where it’s cool!

Stadium Time

I took Kim on a drive the other week, I told her we were going out to a meal but she got suspicious when we pulled into a service station for pizza and I told her we were actually going to Taylor Swift as part of her birthday present (we’re taking a trip to Newport for her actual birthday). Much screaming ensued. We made our way through heavy heavy traffic up to Massachusetts to Gilette Stadium and when we finally got through the thousands of people we got to security.

There were bins full of purses because there was a clear bag policy which I guess some people didn’t pay attention to then couldn’t get in unless they took their bags back or threw them out.

The stadium could hold 66,000 people and it was packed.

I’m not a massive fan of Taylor Swift like Kim is but she was a good entertainer.

We all got light up wristbands that flashed different colours.

When the weekend came round we were at another stadium, although much smaller this time.

We went with Kim’s parents to see the Yard Goats (a minor league team in Hartford) play baseball. I’d never seen a baseball game but it’s pretty much identical to rounders.

It was great, you had the game but the organisers seemed to anticipate that baseball isn’t exactly the most gripping entertainment so they’d added little distractions around the stadium like goats.

They broke up the innings with amusements like the kiss cam, singing various American songs (which the Americans stood up clutching their hearts for, of course, passionate!) and the stud cam.

We got peanuts and crackerjacks (popcorn stuck together with a kind of hard caramel) because that’s tradition, and hot dogs.

They had dancers and mascots and even the people raking the sand had to do a dance whilst raking.

We lost miserably but I was genuinely having such a great time I didn’t care.

At the end of the game they had fire works!

Best sport ever!

Mohegan Sun

It’s been a year since I came to the USA, it’s gone by fast! Kim kindly treated us to a weekend away at Mohegan Sun, a big Indian casino not too far away that has different restaurants, shops, spas etc. We didn’t do any big gambling but we watched for a while.

We stayed over night which was a feat because finding where we needed to park was like navigating a maze.

One day we went to the Pequot Museum which was on the Indian reservation.

I wasn’t sure how good it was going to be, there weren’t a ton of artifacts left.

But on the bottom floor they’d transformed the room into a forest scene Indian village, everyone got a free audio tour where you could explore the village and type in different numbers and they’d explain different things like food, tattoos, hair styles, occupations etc it was amazing.

For the rest of the weekend we had cocktails by the pool and enjoyed the restaurants.

On Sunday before we left we went to a big brunch, there was so much stuff it was hard to pick what to have but we left about 11.30, Britney Spears turned up to the same restaurant at about 12 so she just missed us (I assume she was devastated), she had a concert at the casino.

Another good thing that happened after I’d been here a year was that I finally found a package store (off licence) that sells Kopparberg pear cider – flavoured cider is not popular here yet so this is a big win!

4th July/Coventryfest

A few weeks ago it was Coventryfest which is the town’s celebration for 4th July but is on the weekend a few days early. We went down to our beachy area that morning at the lake for a swim and people were already reserving the picnic benches at the beach by leaving things out then driving off to return later! We left the beach just as it was starting to get busy and when we came back for the fireworks it was absolutely packed. Our beach is shared by about 3 streets but usually it’s pretty empty. All the boats were out on the lake with their lights shining across the water, waiting for the fireworks to start.

I wasn’t sure what to expect but it was a really good display, we sat in our fold out chairs with wine, liberally covered in bug repellent and saw what $10,000 worth of fireworks looked like.

That weekend we browsed the flea market my friend tipped us off about at the drive in movie theater.

There was a lot of random things including probably every Fisher Price toy and Barbie Kim and I had ever owned, bizarre junk, china, old Americana.

It just went on and on, we enjoyed having a good browse but settled on some plants.

On Independence Day I got the day off from work which was nice, we went to visit the in-laws and have a little swim in the pool and a cookout.

I got introduced to the world of competitive eating… a yearly hot dog eating contest they said, that sounds funny I thought… ew. Turns out watching a man eat 74 hot dogs in 10 minutes is not pleasant to watch. See in background – hot dog hats!

Then I got introduced to bull riding, I thought this might be a bit cruel but from what I could see the bulls looked well cared for and didn’t get hurt… the riders however, they got bucked and trampled on and run at which was quite entertaining. One poor man got trampled in such a way that made me wonder if he was still fertile afterwards but I suppose that’s what you get for riding a bull? Perhaps it’s natural selection. When a rider comes off they have rodeo clowns that try to distract the bull away from goring the guy that fell off. All the riders have a ranking but the bulls also have a ranking on their difficulty level. They each have a funny name like Buckeyed-Bill or Heart Break Kid. So I enjoyed that.

We got out in the canoe again which was beautiful, we’re getting the hang of it.

The weather has been making it difficult though because it’s either blistering heat or chucking it down with rain alternately so not ideal! Lucky we live in an age of air conditioning.