Vida

A couple weeks ago we sat around and decided the find a cheap flight for a Labor Day trip likely was not the best tactic since we're watching our pennies a bit through transitioning into having a full-time student (Mike) and our move to St. Louis.  We just want things to balance out a bit before we start spending. So we had been taking an informal poll from people we talked to: Nashville or Memphis.  (Both a reasonable drive from St. Louis.)  It was actually really close!  We decided on Nashville for this trip, but I'm sure we'll make our way to Memphis at some point. I clicked around on hotels.com and hotwire because this is a budget trip after all!  We ended up getting a great deal on a 4-star hotel downtown that we were really excited about: 21c Museum Hotel.  Two floors of the hotel are a museum! When I had a spare moment I started looking for places for us to visit in our 2 night, 3 day stay.  I knew right away I wanted to go to Hatch Show...

Mike & I have been going back and forth on honeymoon plans.  He's starting his graduate program a week after our wedding.  Originally we thought we'd just put it off for our one year anniversary.  But let's be real, maybe we can go somewhere for our anniversary AND somewhere small for our honeymoon, just to celebrate the two of us. First we thought, we'll drive to Nashville or Memphis for Labor Day and spluge on a fancy hotel. Now we're exploring doing one of those searches on kayak where you say, take us anywhere, whatever's the least expensive.  We think we'll take a look right after the wedding and just go, we're last minute planners anyway.  A surprise for everyone! Have you ever done something like this?  Any tips?

Saturday Morning discussing Napa vs. Sonoma: Boss: "I did a little research and I saw a comparison.  Napa is for the Land Rover, Sonoma is the Jeep Cherokee."  I now understand this reference since Mike has many favorite car shows. "We're not Napa people." That was all the convincing I needed. My boss was planning to go after we finished work Saturday and fly back to Chicago Sunday.  Mike was on his way out to join me and we hung out in San Francisco for a few days.  We decided we would rent a car for one day and head out to wine country. We started out early and visited Big Muir National Park first.   Then we made our way to Sonoma.  We started out at Buena Vista since it has a lot of history.  Then we eavesdropped other tasters to figure out we would go to Ravenswood. I loved it.  I was pretty exhausted from the push to get through my work event Saturday and then Mike & I walked over 10 miles on Saturday and Sunday.  Mond...

Last weekend, Mike & I took a long weekend to visit Palm Springs, California.  How/Why?  I've been wanting to visit Palm Springs and on a whim about a month ago I looked at flights.  There were flights from Chicago to LA for $200! We stayed in the town over to save some money.  If I had all the money I would stay at El Saguaro.   For sure!  It's nickname is the rainbow hotel.  We stayed at a Residence Inn with free breakfast. :) Budget travel...from hotwire. We tried to squeeze in a lot of activities in little time.  Relaxation through movement.  Here's a little recap if you'd like to see. Let's start with El Saguaro since I already mentioned it above.  It's nickname "the rainbow hotel" is no joke.  I loved it and would stay there in a heartbeat.  We ended up just walking around the lobby and having lunch at their restaurant. #vacation We walked around their downtown and then drove...