California Here We Come!

My cousin Neil got married in May 2003 so my parents and brother headed out to San Francisco with us for the event and we all decided to stay a week and make a vacation out of it. We spent some time in San Francisco and then also spent some time in the Napa Valley to do some wine tasting. It was the first time any of us had ever been to California and we had a great time.

Here are Andrew and I on the Powell-Hyde trolley line, which is the famous San Francisco trolley car that still has the original old-fashioned look. We took a trip through the hilly city and it was often a bit of thrill ride when the trolley needed to stop midway up a steep incline or coasted down one of the streets.

I loved visiting Fisherman's Wharf and we tried to do all of the touristy things while in the area - Ghirardelli Chocolate Square, Alcatraz Island, Pier 39, and I made sure to sample some of San Francisco's famous seafood. That clam chowder in a sour dough bread bowl was my warm welcome to the city!

Here are Mike and I in one of the jail cells on Alcatraz Island. We took the nighttime ferry over to the island for a tour and the dark, foggy night definitely added to the creepy feeling of that place!

The three of us visited an arboretum one day while my parents went shopping and Andrew was able to take a photograph with the giant redwoods that he had been wanting to see. We walked through the botanical gardens and loved seeing all of the different foliage and fauna in bloom.

Our camera's highlight of this trip was definitely on our last morning in San Francisco, actually on our car ride out of the city to the Napa Valley. We had had nice weather while in the city, but as it was San Francisco, there was not a day that was perfectly clear without any fog. In fact, the fog was so heavy for two of the days that we were there that we could not even see the Golden Gate or Oakland Bay Bridges! However, on our last day, we had a beautiful, clear blue day and we hoped that we would be able to catch a glimpse of The Golden Gate Bridge since you have to see this landmark while in northern California! So, we rounded a curve in the road and immediately we saw it clear as day. It's amazing that just the day before this bright orange bridge wasn't viewable at all!

The second half of our trip was devoid of many photos since it basically constituted eating, drinking and relaxing at the pool and in the spa, but we did capture a photo of our favorite vineyard along the way, a small family-owned winery in the Sonoma Valley en route to Napa. It is called Viansa and the wines there were fabulous. Apart from this winery, we also had a good time at some of the larger wineries in the Napa Valley such as Rutherford Hill, Domaine Chandon, Beringer and Robert Mondavi. Viansa:

London and Paris Getaway

Our first big trip after a year of recouperating from our honeymoon expenses was to London and Paris for ten days in September 2002. It was both of our first times to London and Andrew's first time to Paris; I had been there twice in the past while in school. We were in each city for four nights and of this time spent one entire day out of town on a daytrip in each place.

First we went to Paris and instantly fell in love with the french way of life, particularly their food! We ate in some wonderful restaurants and also had just as much gastronomical delight at the nightly crepe and panini stands. Wow, we never knew that "fast food" could be this fresh and good until we were walking the streets of La Grande Paris par la nuit chowing down on banana and Nutella filled crepes! In fact, this experience was so memorable for us that we actually bought ourselves a bona fide french crepe maker (and I mean "the real deal." None of those stove-top pans that are sold under the name of crepe maker) for one of our anniversaries after this trip.

Here we are dressed to the nines as we headed out one night:


A few scenic photos of the city. It's amazing how beautiful a steel structure can look when lit up at night.



Here is the Jardin et Palais du Luxembourg, which was located a few blocks from our hotel. It was a scenic garden in which we enjoyed walking around and picknicking.

Here's one of the highlights in my book, the Opera Garnier, which is otherwise known as the famous Paris Opera House in the Phantom of the Opera play, a favorite of mine. We toured the inside of the building and saw the chandelier that falls on the audience during the famous play. One memory I will always have of touring the opera house on this particular trip is that amongst all of the french language being spoken, we heard a couple speaking english and asked them to take our photo for us. It turns out that they were from Allentown, PA. What a small world!

Below is a photo of the Arc de Triomphe and also a shot of me ascending the famous arc. We must have walked a few miles in stairs during this trip since every attraction seemed to come complete with numerous flights of narrow, winding steps!

Finally, here are two pictures of Andrew, one of them atop the Catedral de Notre Dame and the other one in front of the Louvre museum. Poor Andrew woke up one morning with an awful cold but because we were in Europe and on vacation he didn't want that to put a damper on our trip. So, I reached into the back of my brain, pulled out my old high school french and we succeeded in getting him some medicine that helped him to feel well enough to go out for the day. Poor guy!

Our daytrip while we were in France was to Versailles to see the famous palace. We had a spectacular day and truly loved seeing the palace, the grounds, and the town of Versailles. It's hard to imagine just how large Versailles Palace is, but this photo had to be taken in three parts and then pieced together in order to view the entire panorama. It's spectacular!

For the remainder of our trip, the Martins took on London, and what a wonderful time we had there. Below are just a handful of our favorite photos.

Here I am with one of London's notorious red phone booths. The only thing more fun to see than the phone booths were the bright red double decker buses!

Here's a scenic picture of Big Ben and Parliament. We took a boat tour on the Thames and got to enjoy all of London's best architectural sights via water.

I don't have any photos, but we had yet another coincidence while we were in London that rivals our meeting an Allentown, PA couple in Paris. While we were touring Westminster Abbey on our own in London, we turned around and out next door neighbor, Adrian, was standing next to us using the Rick Steves travel guide that we were also using to guide ourselves. We didn't even know that the other was travling to London so that made it even more of a coincidence!

Our daytrip while in England was to Windsor, home of the famous Windsor Castle, the royal residence for part of every year. Here's Andrew with the castle and then there is me pictured with another highlight of Britain - the beefeaters! In case you can't tell because the photo is quite small, this shifty guy is either really on guard and thinks I'm suspicious looking so he needs to be extra cautious around me or he is checking me out. We were laughing so hard when we first looked at our photos and saw that I was clearly being eye-balled!

Barnabas Martin

Barnabas Martin, our Yellow English Labrador Retriever, came to live with us when he was about 7 weeks old in May 2002. Barney quickly became part of the family and will always be our faithful companion. He was 8 pounds when we first picked him up from his breeder in Spring City, PA, but quickly grew to be close to 80 pounds even though he still thinks he is a lapdog! Below are some photos we've taken of him throughout the years:

Honeymoon in Paradise

We spent close to two wonderful weeks in Hawaii for our honeymoon and had an unforgettable time away on our first vacation together. We were on Kaua'i for 7 nights, Maui for 3 nights and O'ahu for 2 nights. We loved Kaua'i the best with Maui coming in at a close second, and O'ahu was also fun and something we are glad to have seen, especially Pearl Harbor.

After a l-o-n-g flight from Philadelphia, we were so glad to arrive in that utopia known as Princeville, Kaua'i and to know that we would be staying there for the first week of our trip. What a beautiful place! The landscape and seascape were close to perfect and were so completely relaxing. If it weren't for having to upload our digital photos to Andrew's laptop every night - since the memory cards weren't nearly as large five years ago as they are today -- we would have felt completely removed from "the real world."

Here's a picture of us when we first arrived at our condo in Kaua'i after traveling for about 13 hours. Tired doesn't even do justice to how we were feeling but the excitement of being in Hawaii on our honeymoon seemed to keep us going. The flower leis are remnants from the tradition of being "lei-ed" at the Honolulu airport whenever a tourist arrives. Talk about a warm welcome!

Two words come to mind when I look at these photos - young and thin! I had just turned 23 a month earlier and Andrew would be 24 in about two months.

Here's a photo of the beautiful pool area at the Bali Hai Villas, where we stayed. I think I could have sat by the pool for the entire two weeks if I had been given the option.

We golfed one day at the Kaua'i Lagoons Kiele course at the Marriott Hotel on the island. It was my first (and last!) offical round of 18 holes. Even with "fudging" my score a bit, I am probably the worst player the Marriott has ever seen! But, in keeping my glass half full, I will atest to thoroughly enjoying the scenery, LOVING riding the golf cart to the halfway house for lunch and being completely picture happy with our new digital camera! Here are a few photos of the course and of us in action on the course. Wow, I really do look like a serious golfer, don't I? Hee hee...

We did some really neat things while on the island - a catamaran cruise around the Na Pali coast, a hike to the Waimea Canyon, a helicopter ride around the entire island, and an off-road tour to show us the landmarks where some of the many movies that have been filmed on Hawaii were shot.

A picture from the Weimea Canyon:

Some photos from our Ohana Helicopter tour. Andrew and I were selected to sit up front with Nick the Pilot so there is one of me strapping myself into the cockpit. What a wild experience, especially for lil' ole undaring me! The last photo is a shot of the Na Pali coast from the air. We loved the catamaran tour we took around the coastline, but none of the photos we took on that trip could beat this aerial shot.

Finally, just one picture from the movie tour that we took. We saw where various films such as Outbreak, Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park, Fantasy Island, and South Pacific were filmed. Here we are in front of the famous Jurassic Park gate.

After a spectacular week in Kaua'i we took a short flight to Maui and spent three wonderful days there. We did a beautiful scenic roadtrip called The Road to Hana, which was probably the highlight of our time on this island. We loved it!! Thankfully neither of us are prone to motion sickness since it is about a 90 mile drive on a long, winding, single-lane road with various attractions along the way. The scenery was out of this world. Of course since we knew we'd be doing this long drive, we had to upgrade our rental car to a Sebring convertible!

Here are some of our favorite photos from the Road to Hana:

One of the stops along the way was a black sand beach. Literally. It was formed by lava rock sand and was such a neat sight against the clear blue water.

At the end of the road was the piece de resistance, the Seven Sacred Pools of O'heo Gulch. This is literally a seven part waterfall with water deep enough to swim in (but cold enough to keep you in for only a few minutes!). People were jumping off of the cliffs from one pool into the next and if the water were not so cold, I fear that Andrew may have been one of them!