travel
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Nooga Lights and Chattanooga Choo Choo Ice Skating
After spending the day at Renaissance and Coolidge Park (see my post here), we checked in at our hotel and headed out for dinner. My friend Rachel was great with her recommendations for our stay. We ate at Fiamma’s pizza for dinner and I thought our wood fire pizza was very tasty. We then drove about 25 minutes to Chester Frost Park for their Nooga Lights Show. The week after Christmas was $23 per car, and you were able to do the loop as many times as you wanted too. I did think it was overpriced (I think it should be $15 at the most), but we did enjoy it…
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Chattanooga Parks: A Must Do with Children
My friend Rachel introduced me to Renaissance and Coolidge Park in Chattanooga. These 2 parks are right next too each by the river and near all the food and shops. Parking is fairly inexpensive and is easy to get too. On our overnight stay during the Christmas break, this was our first destination. I had spoken to the boys about the hill where you can slide down on carboard boxes and they were excited to see what I was talking about. This hill is in Renaissance park and it took us a few tries to figure out how to get going and how big the carboard piece needed to be…
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Sunsets on the Gulf of Mexico
I don’t always get up early enough to see the sunrises at the beach but I can always catch the sunset. When you go to the beach in the fall and winter, between the time zone and it being in the central time zone, sunsets come early. In fact, it is all the way dark by 5 PM. I have taken so many pictures of sunsets that this year I tried to focus on trying to compose the pictures with interesting pieces whether nature or man made. The picture above is my typical sunset picture. Beautiful sun and beach! The following picture is compliments of my oldest! I like how…
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Bike Ride to Seaside on 30A, Florida
One of the reasons we have been choosing to rent on 30A on the gulf is the beautiful beaches as well as how quaint and pretty the towns are along that 17 mile stretch. Many of the pretty towns like Seaside, Rosemary and Alys Beach are way out of our budget but there are small ones like Blue Mountain where you can find less expensive rentals. One of our favorite thing to do is rent bikes and go for a bike ride. We only rented bikes for a day and while it was not the most budget friendly outing, we really enjoyed our ride. We only rode from Blue Mountain…
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Field Trip: Cowboy Festival and Symposium
Now that all of my boys go to school, I have been able to accompany some of my children on their fieldtrips. Last month, I accompanied my 3rd grader to the local Western museum which holds a yearly cowboy festival and symposium. The field trip took place outdoors on probably the coldest day we have had this fall. However the booths and interactive presentation were well worth getting cold. I really think this festival should be called something else than a cowboy festival as the cowboy part is only part of the presentations. A lot of the booths and activities devoted themselves to life as a Native American in the…
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Doka Coffee Plantation Part 2
Did you enjoy Wednesday’s post about our visit to the Doka Coffee Plantation? Today is a continuation about how the plantation works. My husband and I really enjoy the tour and we have been loving the coffee we brought home. We love it so much we are having his best friend bring us some back when he goes. Doka Coffee Estate is the oldest wet mill still working. The water is 12 feet deep and separates the good coffee beans for the lesser quality ones. The good coffee has more density and sinks to the bottom. The big red box above can hold 10 cajuelas and it takes 2 hours…
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Doka Coffee Plantation Costa Rica Part 1
The day we visited the La Paz Waterfall Gardens was the same day we visited the Doka Coffee Plantation. When looking at tours, these two locations are usually grouped together but after realizing that a tour would requite us to be on a bus for quite a while picking up people at different hotels we decided to visit these two places on our own. It was cheaper this way and gave us more freedom on getting up later and having our own timeline. The Plants This tour was really interesting and we learned a lot about coffee production. We were lucky to be the only 2 on the tour and…
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La Paz Waterfall Gardens, Costa Rica
Well, I wish I was back at La Paz Waterfall Gardens! This week has been a long one with lots of time spent on the phone to resolve different things, and family members taking turns not feeling well. We visited La Paz Waterfall Gardens our last full day in Costa Rica. I thought the price was excessive at $50 but I will say the waterfalls were amazing and the grounds well taken care of and quite gorgeous. The Animals After seeing animals in the wild at our resort earlier, seeing the enclosed animals was not as awe inspiring! However these are all rescue animals. There were monkeys, butterflies and felines.…
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Grand Hotel Hilton, San Jose, Costa Rica
Staying in San Jose was quite a different experience than staying in the country side and nature. The first evening was an adjustment as we arrived at our hotel Sunday night. There were many people hanging out in the plazas near the hotel, people in line for different things and no nature in sight. The hotel though was quite beautiful and luxurious and we used our hotel points to book our room. We stayed at the Grand Hotel Hilton in San Jose. We missed the turn for the hotel entrance and valet so we had to go around the block but were thankful we did not have to worry about…
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The Pacific Coast of Costa Rica
When planning this trip to Costa Rica, I had to make the decision of which coast to visit: the Pacific side or the Carribean side. The pictures I saw actually did not help the decision. I ended up basing my decision on the location of the Manuel Antonio National Park which we ended up not visiting. However the landscape where we stayed is very similar to the park. We stopped in a couple of spots for pictures on the way to Quepos from San Jose but were a bit hurried as I was ready to reach our destination. The first thing I will say is that none of the pictures…