Trip and more...

It has been a while but we were on vacation, and this week was catchup on house cleaning, laundry, work, etc. from being on vacation. The vacation was wonderful. We spent the first 2 nights in Lake Placid, which is like a small-scale Banff if you ask me. We got a little lost (thanks to Google Maps and confusing highways in the states) but ended up finding our way and arrived in Lake Placid mid-afternoon on Sunday. We just wandered around that afternoon before dinner, ended up buying our "coming home from the hospital" outfit for baby at the Gap Outlet there (great deals - everything was on sale and an additional 40% off lowest price - if we knew the sex of baby we could have purchased MUCH more in there). The first evening we ate dinner at a small micro brewery, the Great Adirondack Steak and Seafood Company. Dinner was amazing and Ryan enjoyed tasting all the beers made on-site. Their brochure indicated you could have a tour of their brewing facilities that we asked about and they recommended we come back the next day. So the following day we went back to meet "Hutch" the brewmaster. By the sounds of the brochure we'd be meeting an older gentleman but he turned out to be around our age and got in to brewing by brewing beer at home. After the tour we went to Whiteface Mountain and High Falls Gorge; Ryan took this picture, to me it looks fake like a Microsoft screen saver or something...

Actually there were so many good pictures I had a hard time deciding which to post!

A picture of the pothole, described on sign below (not sure it will come across legible on the post)

So on day 3 it was off to New Hampshire for some sales tax-free shopping.. We first visited some outlets in Tilton, NH to hit a Brooks Brothers store. As an aside Brooks Brothers make the most amazing Men's and Women's dress shirts I have ever found. They are made of some miracle cotton that doesn't wrinkle. You simply wash them with the rest of your clothes, put them in the dryer for 10 mins. and hang them up. No ironing required. They are so fantastic I am slowing coercing Ryan to replace all the shirts in his closet with their shirts. We got 4 dress shirts for Ryan. We also went to a Clark's outlet where Ryan got 2 pairs of Bostonian shoes for $59.99 each and I got some Clark's Pr!vo shoes for $49.99 (at home I believe the same ones are $120ish and they NEVER go on sale). We also hit the Carter's outlet there and got a cute sleeper and some burp clothes and cute bibs. One of the bibs has a dog on it that looks like Sam and it says on it "Baby's Best Friend" and "I love my puppy"...I couldn't leave it there. I picked up a few of my favourite hand soaps from Bath and Body Works. At the end of the day we went to Tiny Totland in Manchester, NH to pick up our stroller and found out they close at 5:30, so we'd have to go back again.

We arrived at our hotel in Woburn (about 10 miles north of Boston) and checked in to find they had placed us in a smoking room, even though we booked non-smoking. I called the front desk and she told me she'd send someone up, to which I responded "to do what exactly because I'm pregnant and cannot stay in a smoking room?". Magically once you pull the pregnancy card the "fully booked" hotel has a room open on a non-smoking floor.

Day 4 we went in to Boston via train and wandered around. We visited the State House, had lunch at Cheers, and saw many things on the Freedom Walk. I did entirely too much walking that day and was exhausted at the end of the day.

The following day I could hardly walk due to the walking the day before (I didn't realize what carrying around an extra 18 pregnancy lbs does to your knees and back!). So we decided to drive back to Tiny Totland to pick up the stroller (about 40 mins. from the hotel). Tiny Totland was BY FAR the best baby store we have been to so far. We've scouted out strollers (as you know from my other blogs) at many stores in the Toronto area, including boutique type stores downtown but none of them compare to Tiny Totland. They assembled the stroller for us, got rid of all the packaging and spent a good half an hour going through all its features, how to collapse it so you won't pinch your fingers, etc. We decided on the Phil and Ted's in Charcoal grey by the way. They also don't do things by computer, my receipt was hand written :) That took up the morning and we decided to lunch at the Mall of New Hamphire (sounds much more grand than it really is). Ryan got a great deal on a Winter Jacket at JC Penney's, $36!!! Again, we couldn't leave it there.

Day 6 we were going to head to Syracuse and spend the night there for more shopping but we decided to come home. I had done enough walking and we had spent a lot of money on things we had to claim so we decided to head back to Canada. There wasn't much of a line up at the border (Fort Erie bridge) but it did take us about 15 mins. because the car ahead of the car in front of us got pulled over. The border patrol guy was completely on the fence as to whether or not to pull us over but ended up letting us through (again I pulled the pregnancy card when asked if we were bringing back any alcohol, when he looked at me I just said "no alcohol for me, I'm pregnant and cannot drink" we were then waived through). We made sure we were careful about what we were not claiming as I sure learned my lesson last time I was in the states.

All in all it was a great trip, the weather was sort of misty/rain the whole time but that was ok (if it were hot I wouldn't have been able to stand it). We realized that our next trip will be either with baby or to get away from baby, which is STRANGE! I also realized I must skip US Thanksgiving with the Gibbons crew this year as there is no way I'll be able to keep up with the marathon shopping they do with this extra weight I'm carrying around. Perhaps next year Ryan will watch the little one and I can have a shopping vacation for US Thanksgiving...