Incidentally, we did complain about the Northwest trip and we did get some coupons for a discounted flight in the future. Not much, but something. Oh, and I found this link via boing-boing.
We’ve just finished the first part of Will’s birthday week celebrations, a trip to Great Wolf Lodge. As an aside, I like to claim the idea of the “birthday week” as my own, though really, it’s something Annette S. and I were in on together. I like to drag out my birthday as long as possible, and I’ve even come close to making my own birthday week celebration stretch into a month. So far be it from me from denying my child the birthday week.
But I digress.
Part one of Will’s birthday week was an over-night stay at the Great Wolf Lodge in Sandusky, OH. This is a hotel with a water park built into the middle of it, and this particular one is on the strip of touristy stuff a couple of hours away from here near Cedar Point. Now, given that I don’t swim and just generally don’t like being in water, I personally find the idea of going to a water park about as entertaining as, um, going to a water park. But I’m happy to report that Will, his friend Eli, and Annette had a good time, and, to be honest, I had fun too.
Here’s a little movie:
A few additional random thoughts about our stay:
While I am certainly no specimen of fitness, many of the pale fatties walking around at this place really boosted my self-image.
Along these lines, it’s clear that a lot of people have made some very bad choices about tattoos.
I did actually spend a bit of time in the water– maybe 15, 20 minutes. I rode in the lazy river and I went down one of the water slides once. There wasn’t any water deeper than four feet, so that wasn’t an issue for me. I just don’t get into water, unless I’m bathing in it. I guess I just wasn’t in the mood.
Happily, the kiddie-oriented water park did feature adult beverages, so as the kids played until the park closed at 10 pm, Annette and I enjoyed beers and margaritas and read magazines.
A good time by one and all.
BTW, the video was made with my flip video camera, which I am very much looking forward to taking to the “Ren Fest” this weekend. Stay tuned….
A “significant proportion” of the city’s bars and restaurants are now operating two or even three price lists: one for tourists, another for locals, and a third for “sympathetic” tourists who make more effort than the usual grunted demands.
“There are different pricing levels,” said Franco Conte, the head of the Venetian branch of Codacons, the Italian consumer rights group.
“If you are Italian, a croissant and a cappuccino costs €3.50 (£2.40),” he said. “If you speak another language, it costs €7.
“In restaurants, a pizza and a drink for two people costs between €20 to €25 for locals, perhaps cheaper for Venetians – but €50 to €60 if you are forestieri.” In Italy, the word forestieri applies to all strangers, who are said to be “from the forest”.
The solution? Brush up on some Italian phrases, according to the article….
This is the first time I’ve been up near Traverse City when I actually didn’t have a whole lot to do with Traverse City. We were staying out at a place near Lake Ann, and we actually only went into to TC one day, in part because we were up there during the dreaded Cherry Festival. Mostly, we hung around Glen Arbor, Empire, and the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lake Shore.
My parents rented this gigantic vacation home/cabin called “The Eagles Nest.” We never inquired, but hopefully it had nothing to do with Hitler. Seriously though, it was a great place. Slept 18 people comfortably, great views, very comfy, etc., etc. It made me appreciate cabin aesthetics, too.
This is the first trip I’ve taken like this where I’ve thought about how it would be cool to have a cabin. Nothing like this place we stayed of course, but just a place a few hours away in the pseudo-wilderness. It’d be nice to have a place like that to go and write and read and hang out. Maybe someday.
Lotsa hiking around with friends (John and Karen M!) and family, mostly through good weather.
Some fun golf at a place just down the road from us called Mistwood which turned out to be just a fantastic course. My dad and I played there one day with Will and one of his cousins (just 9 holes, and Will spent most of the time reading), and then the next day me and him for 18, and then my mom and dad the day after that for 9 holes. There’s a lot of great deals up there– my regular golf friends and I might need to check out some of the deals up there.
It probably was a good idea for me to not have regular Internet access up there. Relaxing. I might have to figure out how to ration my WiFi access in “real” life, too.
And now we’re here in Ypsi-Arbor for the rest of the summer. No European travel this year, but maybe some gardening.
Blogging (and most everything else, happily) will be very slow or completely on hold this week as I am with my extended family (my parents, sisters, brothers-in-law, kids, etc.) “up north,” in a small town near Traverse City. This is the view from the back porch of this house; very peaceful.
I suppose it’s a good thing too that there isn’t any internet access out at this place—I’m sending this message now from a coffee shop in TC. It’s perhaps a good thing for me to unplug at least a little before I head into full-frontal sabbatical-fueled scholarship/ research work.
Passengers on a Continental Airlines flight had to hold their noses for hours as sewage overflowed from toilets while they were high over the Atlantic.
“To be blatantly honest, I was more nervous than I had ever been on a flight,” said Collin Brock. The University Place man was on board Continental Airlines flight 1970 from Amsterdam to Newark, New Jersey last week when things went bad.
“I’ve never felt so offended in all my life. I felt like i had been physically abused and neglected. I was forced to sit next to human excrement for seven hours,” said Brock.
I’m curious to see what bad flight experience is gonna top this one….
Via the Huffington Post (and the Des Monies Register, apparently) comes this item, “Rob Lowe visits Iowa, kills state bird.” Given that he did it with a golf ball and that the goldfinch is a pretty dinky bird, you kind of have to hand it to the guy. In a backhanded sort of way, I guess.
I have never ridden the Detroit People Mover, which, as I understand it, is basically a monorail to nowhere. Kind of like on The Simpsons. For some reason, I think my parents actually went on this thing once… Anyway, a cool video.
Blogging (and most everything else, happily) will be very slow or completely on hold this week as I am with my extended family (my parents, sisters, brothers-in-law, kids, etc.) “up north,” in a small town near Traverse City. This is the view from the back porch of this house; very peaceful.