Top Destinations

Trip Advisor publishes its top 25 destinations - with categories of World, United States, Europe, Caribbean & Mexico, Asia and lots more.  Check it out.  What a great way to plan your travel bucket list.

http://www.tripadvisor.com/TCDestinations

Windsor Locks Canal Trail

From Connecticut

I've driven by the Windsor Locks Canal Trail for years and wanted to do something outside today, so I stopped by to check it out.  It's not bad - not an especially exciting hike (very flat) but the cool part is that you have water on both sides of the paved trail - the Connecticut river on one side and the canal on the other.

The trail itself is raised so you can't really get near the water except in a few places.  Near the parking lot is a small spot with sand.

I saw what I think is a muskrat swimming along me in the canal and I'm definitely going to have to ride down on my bike.  There were a decent amount of people out with kids and dogs and everyone is friendly.

Check out the State of CT's site for a map of state parks.

Naples

I flew down to Naples, FL to check it out.  Never had been, but heard great things.  I'm in the airport on my way home and I can't wait to get back.  Naples is very pretty but BORING.  Boring.

If you like the beach and golf you're ok.  If you want much else, you're out of luck.  The food is expensive and not that great.  The most enjoyable food experience I had was a Mama Mia's where I got a couple of slices of good NY-Style pizza.  I had some crappy cupcakes for dessert at a nearby cupcake specialty shop.  I saw a reviewer on Yelp ask "Do the old people in Naples lose their tastebuds?"  I have to agree.

The beach - pretty beach, but just beach.  And you park at a meter and pay .25 per 10 minutes.  Mmm kay.  The big attraction is the fishing pier.  It's just a pier.  It's kinda long.

I did go to the zoo which I liked, mostly because I got there before all the kids poured in and it combines a zoo with a botanical garden.  The plants were great but it was a little depressing to see the beautiful lions pacing in boredom.  They have little islands with primates which are fun to watch.

Watch out for the old people drivers.  They are TERRIBLE!

Brazil 2010

This year I spent the holidays in Brazil.  I'm not doing a play-by-play but here are the highlights:

Bagé
Hot, humid and busy were the streets with lots of people buying sundaes and cones.

Cassino
Claimed to be the longest beach in the world, it was (thankfully) much cooler and pretty windy - though that made the intense sun barely noticeable which led to my burnt thighs.

People pushing ice cream carts honking horns, selling corn on the cob, hotdogs, sunglasses, hats and even clothes - there was always someone coming by.

At night, people walk the avenida with some parking on the grass in chairs people watching.

New Years - New Years Eve is big at Cassino Beach (Praia do Cassino) - it's tradition to jump seven waves for good luck and they set off lots of noisy fireworks - not so much of the pretty ones, mostly just the loud ones.  At midnight it sounded like we were being bombed.

Our New Years Eve dinner was a little bit of a disaster.  Jose set up a nice table outside and just as he was wrapping up, it started to rain.  No sweat, there is a sheltered area still outside so we started moving everything there.  Jose hit a outdoor shower with the table, which dumped some water on him.

Then we had trouble getting Mauricio to calm down to eat since he's terrified of fireworks and they had already started setting them off around 6 pm.

Just as we were about to eat, the power went out.  It was off for about 2 hours.

Another tradition is to eat lots of little things that symbolize abundance, like lentils and grapes.  We were eating grapes and Jose reached in the dark for one that was on the table that turned out to be his father's teeth.

I elected to stay home for midnight, while Jose, Michele and Cilene went to the beach.  Apparently just as 2011 arrived, it poured.  I hope it's not a sign of things to come for the new year!

São José do Norte
(Literally) Sleepy little town on New Year's Day - everything was closed except for a small truck selling food.  It had a pretty blue and white church, though, and was a pleasant little trip via ferry.

Here are the photos...

San Fran Afterthoughts

Some post-trip thoughts:

• A friend noted that people in San Francisco don't like to wear deodorant (I noticed) and they can tell who is not local because they wear nice shoes and cologne when they go out.
• I'm glad I didn't drive because 1) parking is either hard to find or really hard on really steep hills - I don't know how they don't slam into each other trying to parallel park and 2) driving over some of those crests is scurry!
• Go in September or October when the weather is the nicest - Summer is cold
• Yelp Yelp Yelp Yelp!
• iPhones really do suck royal elephant balls in San Francisco.  WHY?  At least the phone portion... data seemed OK (except Four Square)
• I really miss Naia gelato

San Francisco Day 6

From California 2010

After our host Rick made us some scrambled eggs with salmon, Jose stayed in to rest for his performance in Venus and Adonis (he is cupid) and I went with Rick to the Asian Art Museum where he was going to a lecture.

I checked out the museum's displays and walked around the city hall area for a little bit.  The city hall itself is really nice - it looks like a state capital building.  There were some characters on the streets around there - one random woman asked me if I had a phone for sale, laughed and said she was serious because she missed her phone.

I met Jose back at the house and we had lunch at the Baker Street Bistro nearby and Jose had several coronaries while watching the Blue Angels practicing over the city for Fleet Week.

Then it was time (sort of, we arrived pretty early) to head to Menlo Park near Palo Alto for Jose's concert at St. Patrick's Seminary - nice place.  The concert was actually what's believed to be the first opera in English and it was only an hour long - not bad!

After the concert, we had dinner at a Thai place in Palo Alto.

San Francisco Day 5

From California 2010

Today Jose and I went down to Pier 39 for a cruise on the harbor - it goes under the Golden Gate bridge and around Alcatraz island... it actually gets pretty close.

After that, we had lunch at the Crab House - holy fast service.  They apparently take your order at your table with a wireless device because our food came literally like 5 minutes later.  I had the "killer crab" which was half a dungeoness crab in garlic butter.  It was good, but the garlic butter actually kind of overpowered the crab a bit.

Jose went home to rest and I did the rest of Pier 39 and the Aquarium.  The Blue Angels were practicing over the harbor for Fleet Week, too.  Jose told me later he wasn't able to nap because of them.

I walked up to Washington Square Park and had some really great gelato at Naia - you can get two flavors in a small cup, so I got pistachio and Ferrero Rocher - both were excellent.

I took the bus to Golden Gate park and went to the Tea Garden that Jose and I skipped the other day.  I decided to go after seeing photos of it from a friend of mine.  I got some tea and mochi at the tea house in the garden and spent a while just relaxing a bit.

I went to the Conservatory of Flowers just in time to see it before it closed, some very nice flowers - and the jungle room was sooo humid!  My glasses fogged up as soon as I walked in.

I walked to Stow Lake just as the sun was starting to go down and ate a little of the mochi I got to go.

My friend Dante was out of work by this time so we met in Castro for dinner at Thai Chef, caught up (it had been YEARS since we'd seen each other), and he took me around to pretty much all the gay bars in the area for literally about 5 minutes each, LOL.  They're all pretty small and "clubs" are pretty rare - they're really just bars and strangely enough they were showing baseball - but because the Giants were playing.

We took a quick ride to SoMa and Folsom street and then he dropped me off back at the house!  It was great to see him again but by then (about 10) I was pretty tired.