Regrettably Back From Vacation
We had a really good and much needed trip, though I think next time I’d prefer to drive rather than fly. Priceline doesn’t honor your seat selections, so Alana and I were seated apart on most of our flights. Someone was nice enough to switch with us on our last flight so we could sit together. Priceline also doesn’t show you the seating arrangements or what kind of plane you’ll be flying on, otherwise I might have opted for something besides Air Rickshaw. Additionally, the US Airways self service kiosk interface is terrible, and doesn’t allow you to step back a screen. So if you make a mistake, an airline employee has to come clear it out and start the whole process over again. Other than the flying/airport part our trip was great.
The weather was pretty moderate, so we didn’t swelter and there was always a nice breeze. We had an excellent day at the beach and barbecued. We took Alana’s little sister to the park and a playground where we fed egrets.
I bought a great bottle of single malt, a Macallan Cask Strength (annoyingly if you want to visit that link you must first go to the main Macallan page and enter your age or nothing will display.), which was also the first cask strength whisky I’ve tried. It’s a deep red color, with notes of vanilla and apricot. I also had some of my old standard favorite, the Macallan 18. Both go quite well with La Gloria Cubana cigars.
We took Alana’s other sister to Cloverfield, which was not nearly as dumb as I expected and was actually a pretty fun movie in spite of the theater’s horrific teenager infestation problem. The theater bathrooms had the fabled Dyson Airblade hand dryer. I tried to convince everyone to go to the Burt Reynolds and Friends Museum, but strangely no one was interested. I was hoping they sold fake mustaches.
For the first time in my life, I visited a sunny locale without getting sunburnt, which was perhaps the true highlight of my trip. I also finished The Omnivore’s Dilemma which had an extremely dry and excruciating first chapter but turned out to still be a great book.
On our last day we visited the South Florida Fair, which is perhaps the largest county fair you’ll ever see. Alana was scammed by a carnie, narrowly missed out on winning a mechanical bull ride from a pig race (her pig stopped to poop), and rode something called the Dream Catcher which should be renamed the Puke Catcher. We ate terrible fried food. The fair is also the best place to collect type specimens, because there must have been 50+ food vendors all with hand-painted signage. We took our picture with a sea lion, it put it’s chin on Alana’s head. We fed a bunch of eager goats in the petting zoo, and saw tigers jump through a flaming hoop. By her Dad’s request we visited some Ye Olde Timey town where I got some great pictures of old phones and switchboards.
You can see my Flickr set of all the vacation photos, including all the fair events.
Where exactly in Florida were you Beth? Miami?
We were at Alana’s parents’ house. They live in Jupiter, a suburb of West Palm Beach.