Montreal

Last week I was lucky enough to be on vacation.  And doubly lucky in that I was actually able to go somewhere on my vacation: Montreal, Quebec!  Why Montreal?  Well, Muse is on tour and Montreal was the city that best worked out for me, my sister, and my brother-in-law to all go see them (they live in Central New York, which, relatively speaking, isn't that far from Montreal).  Plus, it had been over a decade(!) since I'd been up there and I quite like the city.  I also have a friend who lives there, so it was an added bonus to get to hang out with him.
I headed north to my parents' house on Saturday and Sunday Martha and Ed came and got me and we were off to the great nation of Canada (with a brief stop in Potsdam to go Eben's Hearth and see all the new construction at Clarkson)!  We didn't do much on Sunday except check in to the hotel and grab dinner with my friend, Blue at The Three Brewers (very tasty!).  Monday, though, it was time for a little sightseeing!  And me, being horrible about such things, only took pictures at the first place we went to, St. Joseph's Oratory. 

We were also lucky to have very nice weather

Blue had recommended we check out the oratory, but I also wanted to go there so I could get this picture:

Look at that lovely young couple!

And why did I want that picture?  Why, because I had this picture, of course!:

Look at that lovely young couple!

That would be my Grammie and Grandpa at the same spot, some many, many years earlier. 

We didn't go see the reliquary, but we wandered around most of the rest of the basilica.  It has a huuuuuge organ.

I don't even know how you'd play that.

And, naturally, quite a few pretty stained glass windows.

Ed said the color theme reminded him of the Scarlet Monastery

The oratory also has a museum, which houses approximately one bajillion versions of the nativity from all over the world.  They range from very simple depictions:

From Eritrea

To very fancy-pants:

Who knew Jesus was born in a very gaudy palace?  Thanks Poland!

From cute and simple:

Don't remember where this was from.

To horrifying:

Gaah!  Curse you, South Africa, marionettes are creepy!!

Abstract:

Yep, those are bowling pins

Silly:

If you can't tell, those are snowmen.  USA, keepin' it classy!

Overly complicated:

This is just one side of this one from Germany, and the whole thing is this busy.

And just plain pretty and tasteful (this was one of my favorites):

Don't remember where this was from, either.

There were a lot more, and I took pictures of many of them, but I think you get the idea.

And since this is where I stopped taking any pictures, I'll just kind of gloss over the rest of the trip.  We went to the planetarium next, which was super neat.  We got there in time for the English presentation and the played around with some of the interactive exhibits for a while.  Then it was back to the hotel and dinner at the Irish Embassy Pub & Grill where Ed got their peanut butter bacon burger, which I find the concept of to be horrifying, but Ed said it wasn't bad.

Tuesday!  I was in rough shape from trying to keep up with people who have longer legs than me and who also have been running races.  But, I hobbled along and tried to keep my complaining down to a minimum.  Ed really wanted to see the Formula One race track out on Ile Notre-Dame, so we headed out there.  He thought it was pretty neat.  I thought it was a road and thus not particularly interesting.  La Ronde is out there, too, but unfortunately doesn't open until May, so no roller coasters that day.  After wandering around the track for a while, we all decided we were pretty tuckered out and headed back to the hotel to rest up a bit for the concert that evening.  We stayed at the Hotel Espresso which, while not the fanciest of hotels, was reasonably priced and about two blocks from the Bell Centre, so we were able to just walk on over for the concert.  And the concert was sooo great!  Our seats were pretty high up, but we were off to the side of the stage, not all the way across the arena, so we could still see pretty well.  It was a lot of fun!  The 2nd Law isn't Muse's best album, for sure, but those boys sure can put on a show.  Poor Blue had originally planned on going with us, but got stuck having to go to class, so we hung out for a while after the show.

Wednesday!  Time to leave Montreal and head back home.  Blue took us to breakfast at Chez Cora where I had an incredibly delicious crepe full of raspberries and cream cheese.  And then it was time to go.  Unfortunately, we hit road construction and a huge detour, so it took a lot longer to get back than anticipated, but we went straight to Stefano's where we had garlic knots and pizza, which made it all better.

Thursday!  Back to Virginia!  Ugh, that's a long drive.  But I stopped in Richmond on the way for dinner with my friend Josh, so that made it a lot better (and also allowed me to avoid the worst of the traffic on 64).

Friday!  Yeah, I didn't do much.  I played Dishonored and did a little housework, and that was about it.  And Saturday it was back to work.  I really had a great time in Montreal.  Hopefully I'll be able to get back there (and/or Ottawa) again sometime before another decade goes by.

Boldt Castle

Last week I got to go to a conference for users of the Polaris integrated library system.  The conference lasted three days with a pre-conference training session on using SQL and there was much learning, networking, and alcohol (and most of it free, too!).  Luckily for me, this year's conference was held in Liverpool, NY, which is not all that far from family.  I was able to spend a few days before and after the conference doing things in the area, like visit my grandparents.  Unfortunately, the weather was generally uncooperative (stupid rain!), but I did manage to make it out to Alexandria Bay and visit Boldt Castle, which I hadn't been to in at least a couple of years.

Boldt Castle is in the 1000 Islands region (that's really a misnomer; there are actually 1,864 islands) of the St. Lawrence River.  And yes, it really is a castle.  In the very early part of the 1900s, George C. Boldt decided to build a castle in the 1000 Islands for his wife.  Sadly, his wife died in 1904 and the project was abandoned.  In 1977, the Thousand Islands Bridge Authority bought the property, has been fixing it up, and opened it to tourists.

The castle and playhouse

I've visited Boldt Castle many times and am always amazed at how well they've been fixing it up.  I remember when I was much younger, the place was a wreck filled with graffiti.  Some of it, mostly on the upper floors and below where the pool is, still are.

This is how the whole place used to look

The earliest date I saw on any of the graffiti was from the 1920s

However, thanks to a lot of time, effort, and tourist dollars (as well as donations), the castle is increasingly coming together.

The library

I think this was Louise Boldt's room

The fancy-pants dome in the main entry

There are several outlying buildings as well.  One of them is Alster Tower, or the Playhouse.

Unfortunately, this was completely closed to the public on the inside on this recent visit.  There's also the Power House.  This was going to house the electrical generating plant as well as water pumps. 

I love all the little architectural details around the castle and other buildings.  There are lots of hearts (the castle is on Heart Island).

There are also lots of harts.

Plus, there's a spectacular view.

There are lots of pretty flowers on the grounds, too.

After spending a couple hours wandering around, I decided it was time to head home.  It was starting to get cloudy again anyway.  On the way home, though, I decided to stop at the Burrville Cider Mill.  I didn't get any pictures of the mill itself (it was crazy busy anyway), but I did manage to snag some hot mulled cider and a couple of fresh donuts (and a couple of half-gallon jugs of cider) and hang out by the waterfall in the back.

That was a good day.

Vacation, Part 2

I finally nabbed some of the pictures that Christina took while we were in Japan, so here they are!  Let's see if I can remember what everything is...

This first picture was taken at the restaurant Noriko took us that first evening.  It's also one of the few pictures that has me in it, thus allowing me to prove that I was there.





Next up are a couple of pictures from Hase-dera, that Buddhist temple we went to visit in Kamakura (I would also like to point out at this time that Blogger is awful for trying to do any kind of picture layout):

Next up: Yokohama's Chinatown!

Now for another picture that has me in it (taken at the Meiji shrine):











Here's a shot of the Shibuya crossing by the train station.  There are a LOT of pedestrians there.  I'll leave this one big so you can really see it, but a still photo doesn't really do it justice.

And finally, a picture of a shop in Harajuku.  And yes, they sell exactly what you think they do (unless you think they sell condos).

So that's it for the pictures I'll be posting of the trip.  I kind of wish I'd bothered to take more pictures, but I'm pretty happy with the ones that I did get.  Maybe the next time I go (here's hoping for 2013!) I'll have a better camera and I'll, you know, actually use it.

Vacation

I haven't posted in a little while and that's because I've been on vacation.  IN JAPAN!!!!! (yes, it does warrant all those exclamation marks)  I and my friend Christina had been wanting to go visit our other friend, Noriko, who lives in Tokyo for a couple years now and things finally worked out both time-off-wise and financially.  So, off we went the week of Thanksgiving.  It wasn't a very long trip; we left on Monday and came back the following Monday, giving us 5 whole days in Japan.  It was, however, a very fun trip and I very much intend to go back as soon as I can.

I did realize something about myself from this trip, however.  I mean, I'd always know it was true, but with this trip it really hit home: I suck when it comes to taking pictures.  Not that my pictures turned out bad.  Some of them actually look pretty good.  But the whole time I was there, I only took 73 pictures, some of which are duplicate shots when the first one didn't come out very well.  I partially blame my camera.  It's very fussy about trying to focus and can take forever to do so (which is why I didn't ask anyone to take pictures of the three of us) and it eats batteries like crazy.  I'd like to think I'd do better with a newer and better camera, but honestly, I'd probably still be awful about picture taking.  Luckily for me, Christina doesn't share this problem, so when she sends me her pictures, I'll post some of hers here, too.

I have no idea what this is, but it's sooo good!

Big damn roll (half gone)

The first night we were there, Noriko took us to this restaurant whose name I can't remember and we got tasty food, the name of which I also can't remember, but here's a picture of it!  It's pork and bean sprouts.  Reeeeeeally tasty.  We also got one of these that had chicken as well as the biggest damn dragon sushi roll I've ever seen.  Unfortunately, Christina started feeling rather poorly, so she didn't have anything.  More for me!  Though, that sushi roll didn't get finished.  Noriko and I made a valiant effort, but it was just too much.

The next day involved much sleeping on my part (I woke up pretty early, then took a "nap" and didn't get up again until 2:30), which was ok, since Noriko had other things she needed to do that day.  When she got back and everyone was conscious, we went to wander around the Imperial Palace.  The palace buildings and inner gardens aren't open to the public, but the outside grounds are quite lovely. 

 

I'm not really sure what that thing is up above this sentence (some kind of lamp maybe?) but I thought it was pretty neat looking.  Nor do I know what that little building off to the left is, but I thought the old-style architecture in front of the modern city buildings was kind of neat.

Fancy!

Then it was time to head to Asakusa and do some shopping!  But first, a quick trip to a mall for a bathroom break.  While there, I saw these on display.  Again, not sure really what they're for, but they sure are fancy!

Kaminarimon

 One of the most notable features here (and a very popular place to take pictures) is the Kaminarimon.  Once you go through this gate, there are about a million and a half shops lining the street to the temple at the end (Sensō-ji, I think).  Since this was the first day we really went out and did much, and I'm definitely not a big-city girl who's used to large crowds and lots of hustle and bustle, I was pretty overwhelmed here.  That didn't keep me from buying lots of things, though!  Once we got down the street, we got to the big temple, which was pretty cool.  I also got a pretty good view of the Tokyo Sky Tree, which is the tallest tower in the world (though not the tallest structure.

Sensō-ji

Sky Tree

On our trip, we also got to go visit Kamakura, which is about 30 miles or so outside of Tokyo.  While there, we visited one of the temples (Hase-dera, I think) and saw the Daibutsu, a great big bronze Buddha.  It was around here that I started getting super bad about taking pictures, but here are a few that I did manage to get:

 

 



















Later that same day we went to Yokohama's Chinatown where we got dinner, but like I said, I kind of stopped taking many pictures by this point.

Another thing we got to do was go to Sunshine City's 60-story skyscraper (Sunshine 60) and get a panoramic view of Tokyo.  Here are the pictures I took there:

 Tokyo sure is big.

The last two pictures I took were at Meiji Shrine:

Of course, we did a whole lot more than what I've got pictured.  With any luck, Christina will be able to send me some of her pictures soon and I'll be able to post more!  As for now, I've been at this post for about an hour and a half and dinner is just about ready, so I'll talk more about my trip later.