The Next Adventure

Today we were in town to see the Rockettes' Radio City Christmas Spectacular, something that had been on my bucket list for a long time.The day trip was organized by a member of the Ladies of Bowie. Very early this morning, I drove the small group of us to the BWI train station to take the 6:45 AM Amtrak for the 3 hour train ride to Penn Station, NY. It had been many years since I've visited New York City, so almost everything was new to me. We arrived at the huge Moynihan Train Hall at Penn Station at nearly 10 am, so we had a couple of hours to walk around before our show at 1:30 pm. Since we had different interests, the group agreed to split up to walk around on our own. Even though it was the last day of November, stores had already started decorating for Christmas. As I slowly headed towards Radio City, I passed by a number of iconic buildings. Spent a few minutes window shopping at Macy's. Decided to get a quick bite to eat before the show; got a hotdog (of co...

A week after I returned from Birmingham with my RV, Nadine and I went camping together in Ohiopyle State Park in PA. She booked two side by side campsites for 3 nights: that's her Thor Tellaro on the left and my Thor Rize on the right. We took this opportunity to plan our cross country RV trip next spring. It rained on my way to the Park. Google Maps misdirected me and I got lost on some rough roads. The drive was harrowing, with curves and steep up and down slopes; the evening got dark and foggy. It was a good test of the van's road handling capability. It passed with flying colors although the driver (me) was pretty stressed out by the time she finally arrived at the campsite. Over the next 2 days, I spent time familiarizing myself with the RV, learning from Nadine who had 3 years of full-time RVing experience in her Tellaro. I used the stove to make cup noodles, the microwave to warm up food, made coffee and took a shower in the RV. I drove to the local Walmart to buy ant...

Here is my new RV, a 2023 Thor Rize 18M built on a Ram Promaster 1500 van. Bought it from Susan, an awesome lady who lives near Birmingham AL. We hit it off from the minute she picked me up at the airport on Wednesday, Oct 30th; it felt like we have known each other a long time. She offered me a room in her house for 2 nights as we went through the paperwork and she showed me how the RV worked. I also had a great time observing Halloween trick or treat in her neighborhood, with what felt like a thousand kids and their parents roaming their street, most of whom were very creatively dressed. I drove out with the RV the next day. It took a few hours to get used to driving the RV as I headed north on Hwy 81. Susan was kind enough to set me up with comfortable bedding and pillows, so I had a bed for the night. I was not prepared for a leisurely drive. We had drained the fresh tank since we thought we were going to winterize the RV before I head home. But I decided not to winterize immedi...

We returned home after almost 3 weeks in Japan, visiting Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, Himeji. It will take some time to post my experiences in the land of the rising sun, in reverse chronological order. Will also cover my month long trip in Italy back in May/June; that may take a while to complete. To start, these are the luggage covers I bought from a Mega Don Quixote in Tokyo. We got covers only for the new suitcases that we checked in for the flight back to the US. The medium one was bought in Kyoto, the large in Tokyo as we, i.e. my daughter, accumulated more purchases. Sure made it easy to find the cases in the luggage claim area! Will describe Don Quixote a bit more in a separate post about shopping in Japan which we did a lot of! I decided to stay at the Hotel Villa Fontaine Grand Haneda Airport, to make sure that we did not miss our morning flight. This was a very nice and modern hotel located in the Haneda Airport Garden, right past the new shopping arcade. Easy access to the c...

We spent most of the day at DisneySea. It was cloudy but still humid. We were curious about this Disney park, available only in Japan (found out later that the Japanese parks were not part of Disney, but under license to use the name and characters/images). Bought tickets from home about a month ago, using the Klook app. A new attraction in the park, Fantasy Springs, opened recently and we hoped to get passes to that. Those free passes were only available through the Disney Resort app after admission into the main park itself. I have read that passes to popular attractions and rides are gone very early as many people arrive 1-2 hours before the official opening time, and the park lets visitors in before the official opening time. We simply could not get up early enough to line up at the entrance. Also, unlike Universal Studios Japan where our hotel was just steps from the entrance, we had to take the hotel shuttle and the Disney monorail to this park. Sure enough, once we got in, a big...