Share your tips for our upcoming adventure

I have been so excited to share the news that we have booked flights for a trip to northern California and the Pacific Northwest! Colin and I have been talking about this trip for a few months, trying to find the best time to go, and we finally found dates that worked for us.

We will have 15 and a half days to explore northern California, Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia/Vancouver.  As I read through the travel books on the area, I look forward to all of your suggestions on places to visit and things to do while in the area.  We have a flight into San Jose and a flight back from Portland, but the days in between have yet to be filled.  My initial itinerary has us spending a few days in San Francisco, followed by a drive up the coast of California to the Redwoods. From there, I'm torn between heading inland versus staying on the coast. I think it'd be cool to check out Crater Lake, but I also really want to see the Oregon beaches.  We will definitely be visiting Portland, Seattle and Vancouver, but I would like to see some of the national parks that are around the cities.  Some of the parks I'm interested in (based on travel book reviews) include Olympic National Park, Mt. Rainier National Park, Mt. Hood National Forest, and we can get into all of the national parks for free with our America the Beautiful Pass.  But every day we spend in one of the parks, or driving to a park is a less day we have to explore the cities.

I can't wait to get some use out of our National Parks Pass

Here is my challenge to all of you, my friends, family, and blog readers who have some knowledge of the area: please share any amazing things to do, places to see and stay that I should consider on our journey.  


We will likely camp in some of the parks, and look for airbnb.com room rentals and hostels in many of the places where we go. We'd like to keep our itinerary fairly flexible so we can spend more time in places we love and avoid places where weather might dampen our experience (pun intended) as we go.

I look forward to your suggestions and can't wait to share our experience with you later in August and September!

For now, I'll leave you with the process for booking our flight:
For the past 7-9 weeks, I've been checking flight prices every Tuesday and Wednesday, looking for a good deal from Raleigh to San Francisco (and surrounding airports) and back from either Seattle or Portland. During most of those weeks, roundtrip flights were ~$499 per person.  About 2 weeks ago, that rate went up and I got nervous that we hadn't made any plans.  These past two weeks, I've struggled to not look at flights daily.  I think flight searches are monitored and can cause prices to go up, so I kept waiting until Tuesday to look again.  With Raleigh flights hovering in the $530-$550 range this week, I extended my search to other airports in the area.  This search proved fruitful when I found a flight from Charlotte to San Jose (near San Fran) for $135 and a flight from Portland back to Charlotte for $153.  That's right, the roundtrip flight came out to $385 per person. Even if we park at the Charlotte airport for 16 days, at $5 a day plus the cost of gas ($35 a tank), the $885 we'll spend flying through Charlotte is still less than it would have cost us to have one less day on our trip and fly out of Raleigh.

I will admit the process can be tedious, but being able to take a great trip every year is worth it and Colin and I are overdue since we didn't get to take a "vacation" to a new destination since 2010. That year we were so lucky to visit New Zealand/Australia for the Christmas and 2009-2010 New Year, and then use miles to go to Cabo San Lucas for a wedding just 3 months later!

Thank you all for reading the blog.  And remember to share with me your suggestions for our trip. I can't wait to hear them since so much of my joy comes from the planning!

Final Leg of the Tour de Northeast - Boston

Now that it has almost been a month since our "Tour de Northeast", I figure it's about time to wrap up the details of our trip.  If you've been reading along, you know that we fit a lot into those 5 days!

After a relaxing morning and lunch in Albany, spent with Colin's parent's and his best buddy, Brian, we drove a little over 3 hours to my friend Erin's house near Boston.  We had spent the weekend in Burlington with Erin, as she was one of the UVMers, but I had not yet met her 14-month-old daughter, Reilly. To meet Reilly and make it convenient for our flight out of Boston on Tuesday, we decided to spend Monday evening with the Leonard family.  Their cute New England home sits just steps from the beach in Marblehead, on the north shore of Boston, and we enjoyed our evening with our wonderful hosts!

Erin and her husband, Paul, at the wedding in Burlington

Playing with Reilly

Reilly is such a sweet girl, and was very willing to hang out and play with Colin and I. She spent the evening taking care of her baby and showing us her toys and cars.  She joined us for a delicious grilled dinner, but didn't quite make it through the whole thing before it was time for a bath and bedtime.  In my experiences with babies, they do need to stick to their routine and we were not about to ruin that!

We adults did finish our meal and chatted for a bit, but didn't last much longer than Reilly before it was time for us to go to bed.  

Tuesday morning, Paul was gracious to drive us to Boston's commuter train and we all took the train downtown.  After grabbing some breakfast burritos from a local deli/breakfast bar, we walked to the waterfront to enjoy the view as we ate.  The tall ships were supposed to be in Boston, and I looked for them, but could not see any. I've probably been to Boston (to hang out) a total of 10 times in my life and I'm pretty sure I've been there more times since leaving RI than when I lived there!  Needless to say, I didn't even know where to look for the ships.

After enjoying our breakfast and walking along the waterfront for a bit, we found ourselves in the Italian section of Boston - the North End.  Back in May, when Colin and I went up to RI and NY for Mother's Day (I didn't get around to blogging about it), my brother took us to the North End for dinner.  On that trip, we ate at the Florintine Cafe, which served us two mediocre (and rather expensive) Italian meals.  The highlight was obviously not the dinner, but rather the canolis and cookies from Modern Pastry Shop.  My brother and his friend taught us about the pastry war between Modern and it's rival, Mike's Pastry, and I believed it seeing the long lines at both places. Since we had bought Modern Pastry canolis and cookies on that last trip, we decided to try Mike's on this trip.  At 10am, there was no line and all the delicious pastries looked fresh.

Cupcake and Cannoli from Mike's Pastry

We took our cupcake and cannoli to go and continued our walk through Boston to Faneuil Hall, where we enjoyed them in the cooler air under the trees.  Both the cupcake and the cannoli were very tasty, but not any better than Modern Pastry.  And, I will admit that neither cannoli in Boston was as good as the ones we had from Termini Bros in Philadelphia.  Hands down, those were the best I've ever had!  If you love Mike's Pastry, take solace in my disclaimer that I was still not feeling 100% when I ate the cannoli from Mike's Pastry. I may have to reevaluate when I'm back in Boston and feeling better!

Enjoying desserts under the trees near Faneuil Hall

From Faneuil Hall, we made a quick stop at Boloco, a burrito joint found mostly in Massachusetts.  Boloco was listed on the sustainable food website, EatWellGuide, and admits to environmentally conscious practices on their website. I'm not really sure what is meant by "naturally-raised meats" but they do use organic tofu, and claim to compost, reuse and recycle.  We wanted to compare the burritos at Boloco with our favorite burrito shop, Chipotle.  Chipotle, similar to Boloco claims to offer "food with integrity."  I appreciate Chipotle's description that they try to support local, organic, and/or family farms and try to use antibiotic and hormone-free meat. I recognize the challenges companies face in producing food for the masses, but I prefer a company that is honest about what they are really trying to do. The word "natural" always brings out distrust in me because there is no definition for what this means.

With our Boloco burritos in tow, we decided to navigate Bostons' public transportation system to the airport, something we had not really done before.  We took the blue line subway to the airport stop and then connected to the free bus shuttle to the airport terminal.  While I may not know Boston, living in NYC taught us both a great deal about public transportation and using maps, and I'd say we looked like we knew what we were doing!

Navigating through the airport was not stressful, although our burritos leaked a bit in our bag, which caused security to investigate.  Aside from that minor hiccup, we arrived at the gate with plenty of time to enjoy our lunch. The burritos were not as good as Chipotle, but again, I must admit that my senses were still "off."  And, though we may have paid a premium in Boston, but I find Chipotle's enormous burritos (which sometimes give me 2 meals) to be much less expensive.

Our quick, but adventure-filled trip to the northeast ended with a smooth flight back to Raleigh. While the plane was calm and steady, my head congestion gave me severe ear pain and pressure on the descent, which lasted a few days after the trip.  I was grateful to have Wednesday (4th of July) off to recover before the short, two-day workweek.  But, once I felt better, I wanted to get back north because of the intense 100+ degree days that are frequent in July!

I hope you've enjoyed the recap of our trip. Stay tuned for details about an exciting trip we have planned for August!  I'll be looking for suggestions on things to do and places to see and will be asking if anyone would like to join us!  Expect the post on Friday.

Where have you had your favorite cannoli?
What is your favorite restaurant in Boston?