Tag Archives: road trips

Sliding into 2025: Happy New Year!

I like to think that we are sliding into 2025 with a happy New Year vibe that comes close to these festive boaters at this year’s Venice Canals Holiday Boat Parade. Or at least our goal is not to hit the new year like we are going over Niagara Falls in a barrel. Tomorrow, I

Read More

Festive Boats and Christmas Lights at the Marina del Rey Holiday Boat Parade

Christmas lights, Hanukkah decorations, and a Festivus nod made it into decorations for the always fun Marina del Rey Holiday Boat Parade. While I uploaded the drone lights images the other day, I thought you might enjoy a few videos (I’ll be uploading more throughout the day) of the parade itself.  Every year, boaters in

Read More

Drone Lights Over the Marina Boat Holiday Parade

Drone lights in the sky are all over social media and the news right now. While I can’t give you any info about New Jersey (or anywhere else they have appeared), I can tell you that the drone lights in the sky over Marina del Rey on December 14th were all about the holidays. Here,

Read More

The Holiday Lights on the Bridges of the Venice Canals

If you need to lift your spirits, head to the Venice Canals in the early evening to see the holiday lights that adorn the bridges. While many of the homes also feature Christmas decorations, there is something special about the glow of the bridges as they arch over the water. We got a chance to

Read More

Discovering Napa Valley Olive Oil

A visit to Napa Valley Olive Oil in St. Helena, California, was a long-held desire for Andy. And it makes sense. He does most of the day-to-day cooking and loves experimenting with different types of infused olive oil. If you also love cooking (or have recently become obsessed with watching all of the past seasons

Read More

Touring a Japanese Garden in Pasadena

You would be amazed at the many stunning Japanese gardens located in and around Los Angeles. We first started seeing them pop up on television shows. Knowing that the shows were filmed here, we did some research and saw that some of them were reopening following renovations and COVID closures. So, we made a soft

Read More

Tips For Your First Napa Valley Wine Tasting

A Napa Valley wine tasting tour had been my goal for several years. Andy and I almost went five years ago for his mother’s birthday, but fires were raging. Needless to say, his mother’s celebration was moved elsewhere, and we postponed the trip until the area could recover. Finally, in May, we decided that the

Read More

Visiting Francis Ford Coppola’s Inglenook Museum

One surprising highlight of our Inglenook wine tasting was the chance to leisurely roam through a mini museum. It turns out that when the Coppolas restored the Chateau, they created a museum that reveals the winery’s extraordinary history and filmmaking history. We were almost giddy with the chance to explore it all. So, I masked

Read More