Team Greene: November 2009

As our time here in CT draws to a close, we were so excited that Mama could come visit us this past week. Mama arrived on Monday evening as I was heading to my last day of work before I had 3 days off. So Tuesday morning when I got off work we looked up a good breakfast spot since we were all ready to eat. Funny thing was I had found a magazine at work with "the best of CT" and there were several breakfast spots. So we picked out the closest one to us and headed down the road. It was about 30 minutes away but well worth the drive. On our way back to Hartford we stopped in little towns to see if we could find anything to get into. Not much found, but once we got back to our area we took Mama to Stew Leonard's which is a grocery store. But it is the craziest grocery store you will ever go to. It's kinda like a carnival with singing and dancing figurines and foods to sample that is made in the store! After all that excitement we headed over to the mall to eat dinner at Rainforest Cafe. That was an experience too b/c our waiter was crazy. I guess he was an actor and he sure played the part well. After dinner we headed back to the room to get ready for the next two days. We got up Wednesday morning at 4am to catch the bus to NYC. We ended up getting into the city around 8am and headed over to Good Morning America. On this particular morning the final 3 sets of contests for Dancing with the Stars were there which was cool. We got to see Kelly Osborne, Mia, and Donnie Osborne. Emeril was also there cooking a Thanksgiving feast! After hanging out there for a bit we headed over to Roxy's for breakfast. After breakfast we went to Radiocity to see the Rockettes Christmas Spectacular! This was an AWESOME show!!! I suggest if you are in the city around the holidays to go see this. Before the show we did have a couple of minutes to kill so we took a peek at the Christmas tree and ice skating rink behind Radiocity. I just wish we could have seen the tree all put together. Oh well, maybe next year. After the show, we went over to Central Park and did a carriage ride through the park. Before the carriage ride we showed Mama FAO toystore and while we were in there Joan Rivers was in there buying her grandson something. It was funny b/c you knew she was a star just looking at all the plastic surgery she has had. After you get across that then you can look and see WHO it is. Finally we checked into the hotel after carrying our bookbags (belongings) on our back all over the city. Lucky for me Pinkberry was right down the street from our hotel so we stopped in to have some after 6 looong months of living without it. It was a sweet reunion! After realaxing a bit we headed over to the inflating of the parade balloons. We did dinner afterwards at Toloache our FAVORITE mexican food spot to have dinner. And of course it was GREAT! We told the waiter that we were repeat customers and he ended up giving us 2 free desserts!!! So after dinner we walked a little around Times Square and then headed back to the room to get some rest considering we were getting up at 4:30 the next morning to get a good spot for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade!!! Thursday morning we woke up at 4:30am and we were out and in our parade watching spot buy 6am. We stood in place til 9am when the paraded started. The wait was well worth it. The parade was AWESOME!!! I would definalty do it again!!! I hope that I do get the opportunity to do it again. We had a front row view and it was really cool! I was so sad when the parade was over, but we had more fun stuff to do afterwards! We were needing a little snack before lunch so we had spotted this cupcake place "Crumbs" the day b4 so we stopped in to check it out. BEST cupcakes EVER!!! I got the pumpkin, Mama got the carrot cake and Patrick go the chocolate. Sooooo good!!! We went to Madame Toussaud's the walked to the Empire State Building. We then proceded over to Ted's Montana Grill to have lunch. After lunch we headed over to Ground Zero and got a "far-away" look at the Statue of Liberty. We were about out of time so after grabbing a couple of souvniors we headed to the bus station to head back"home". All in all it was a GREAT trip and a GREAT Thanksgiving!!!Now I'm back to work :( but I only have 6 more shifts/days left here in "wonderful" Hartford, CT. It's not going to be fun working 6 in a row but it will be fun being home in 6 days....I guess I can officially say 5 more days now!!! So until next time....(We'll be in NC!!!!)

~m

Since the last time I wrote, Patrick and I have ventured to Cape Cod and Plymouth and then another trip to Boston and Salem. We started off our two day vacation in Plymouth a couple of weeks ago. We visited the Plymouth Plantation and then headed over to a recreation of the Mayflower (called the Mayflower II) and this is where you could see Plymouth Rock. Plymouth Rock a was little bit of a disappointment. It was a lot smaller than I had imagined it to be. We also took full advantaged of being on the coast and ate a lot of seafood!

Our 2nd day on the Cape we headed up to P-town (aka Proviencetown). On our drive up there we made a pit stop at a deserted looking beach house on the ocean and let the puppies out to run around on the beach and stick their feet in the ocean! P-town reminded us a lot of Key West. Very laid back. We had some really good seafood here too at the Lobster Pot! I decided here that I like clam chowder, yum! After walking around P-town we created our own tour of the Cape's Lighthouses. We actually got to see about four of the lighthouses before we ran out of daylight. After the sun went down, we found another seafood restaurant to have just one more delicious seafood dinner!

So about a week later we took a trip to Salem and Boston for Halloween weekend! I have to say that everyone needs to experience Salem for Halloween at least once. I have never seen so many crazy costumes! We had a blast in Salem. We did a ghost boat ride which was a lot of fun. Not too scary but the boat ride was fun! After that we enjoyed walking around the town looking at all of the costumes. In the evening hours we went to the Witch Museum and after that we went to The House of Seven Gables. That was my favorite. It was a walking play. You walked to all of the rooms in the house and there was a character in each room telling their story. It was really neat! After that we were beat so we headed to the hotel to get ready for Boston the next day. So on Sunday we did one of those hop-on-hop-off tour buses. So we got a pretty good tour of Boston in a day. We really enjoyed Boston. By far one of our favorite places we have gone and we definatly have to go back because there were several things that we did have time to do that we would love to do. But while on the tour we got to visit the Old North Church and Paul Revere's house. We stopped off at the USS Constitution. We also got to eat dinner at Cheers!! After dinner we sadly headed back to Hartford, already looking forward to our next trip out of town!