When you start to get overwhelmed at work and need a break, you start looking for where you can go quickly and cheaply. For me, that ended up being the Gulf Coast so I could finally cross some more states off my list. As far as the basics, I got a cheap $75 round trip flight on Spirit from O'Hare to New Orleans and found a condo right on the Alabama coast for $56 a night. You can't really get a better deal than that! Every time I fly Spirit I say I won't fly it again and then I do. The advantage on a short trip like this is I did not need to bring a bag bigger than my backpack so it was worth it. This time the flight left on time, arrived on ... read more

We had one full day to check out the sights and sounds of Vegas. We slept in (for us) after our late night and left our hotel around 9AM to do some walking. And boy did we walk! When you look at a map, it looks like each casino is right next to it's neighbor, and that is true, except each casino is roughly the size of a city block. The nice thing is that the strip is very accessible for pedestrians. There is a wide sidewalk on either side of Las Vegas Blvd with multiple pedestrian bridges to get from one side to the other. And you can reach the bridges by stair, escalator or elevator. Our plan was to head north on the strip as all the places we wanted to see were in ... read more

Our flight left Boston this morning at 7 AM so we were waiting for the shuttle at 4 AM. Jet Blue has a great system at the airport with tons of kiosks for self check-in. If you have bags (like we did) you attach the labels and proceed to the bag drop where they scan everything and send them on their way. Everything went quickly and there were no issues. The security line was rather long and both our backpacks had to be inspected, but that's why I like to get to the airport early! Our plane left early and got to O'Hare in a quick 2 hours. I think we landed at the farthest spot possible as we spent a good 20 minutes or more taxing to the gate. Luckily we were at one of ... read more

Today was our last full day on Terceira. It's hard to believe our week is almost over! The weather looked like it was going to be perfect, mid-60s and sunny. We planned to walk around Angra, hopefully see inside some churches, do some shopping and eat. As most places don't open until 10, we ate a slightly later breakfast and sat on the balcony until heading out. We started our morning at a little store tucked away along the sea wall that sells handmade embroidery and other made in the Azores items. I was lucky and found a cute little hand carved nativity set to add to my collection! From here we walked down to the Misericordia Church, hoping it would be open this time. Luckily it was and we were able to get a short ... read more

Side note, last night we went out to dinner for the first time! The other days we ate late lunches and were too tired to wait for dinner. Last night we walked into town and found a small cafe that was serving even though it was only 5:30. I had a really good salad with chicken and cheese and Mom had a beef sandwich. According to my weather page, today was going to be cloudy in the morning and then rainy starting at 1 PM. We decided to try visiting some sights and if it started raining, we would just head back to the hotel. Our first stop was the Furnas do Enxofre, a protected geological area where you get the reminder that you are on a volcanic island. The drive here was really pretty. It ... read more