Mystic Seaport and Mystic Aquarium.

I'm SUCH a tourist! I just LOVE going places I've never been and taking over 500 pictures (of course only about 250 were actually in focus and bright enough to see!) and doing all the touristy things you can do...

We drove up to Mystic on Friday morning. Friday, our 9th anniversary. And we spent it driving. Together. In one vehicle. And I wasn't driving. 'Nough said.

We got there with no traffic events and that includes no traffic over the George Washington Bridge. I think that's the first time I've driven over it and not hit disgusting delays. We took our time on the way to Mystic, stopping once at the Connecticut Tourist Center on I-95. We picked up, oh, I don't know, 20 or 30 pamphlets which, for the rest of the trip, were strewn on the car floor under my feet. (I should have thought to take a picture of that - THAT would have been a great scrapping picture! Perhaps I can recreate it...)

We went to the hotel and couldn't check in; we were too early. We drove to Mystic and walked around the shops. It was like someone was smiling down on us: no traffic on the way there, parking right on the street... We saw the Mystic Drawbridge stop traffic for several minutes while some GORGEOUS boats passed through below us.

We went back to the hotel after 3pm to check in and there it was: my 1st mistake. I booked the room online but didn't notice the miniature cigarette on the room icon. It was a smoking room but I didn't know it. I DID notice they didn't ask me if I wanted smoking or non-smoking so I put a note on my reservation for a non-smoking room. When we were there to check in they told us they were sold out and didn't know if they could move us. While we were there she answered the phone a few times and each time the person was told, "Sorry, we're sold out. We have no rooms. I don't think there are many rooms available in town..." They offered to put some kind of machine in our room to take out as much smoke as possible, some sort of air purifier or something, so we thanked them, opened the window and put the A/C on 60 degrees, then left them to clean the air.

We went back to town and ate at Mystic Pizza. (Tourist here, remember?!?) And the pizza was, indeed, terrific! The movie was playing (no sound) on several TV screens around the room so DH and I spent the time reciting dialogue... Can you tell we've seen the movie?!?

We walked around a bit more and returned to the now freezing room. There's no way, for the record, to get smoke out of a smoking room. So we left the window open and the A/C on, put our pillows on the window ledge to air out, called the front desk for another non-smelly blanket, turned on the television and watched some mindless stuff for an hour or so. They were very cooperative and brought up a blanket within 10 minutes or so. At least that helped when it was time to go nappies...

On Saturday we went to Mystic Seaport. We went in every building, walked in/on/around every ship, visited every shop in case they had some have-to-have-it junk, and had an absolute BLAST checking out all the wooden boats that were docked there for the Antique Boat Show we didn't know would be there!

On Sunday we went to church in the morning, then went to Mystic Aquarium. It rained ALL.DAY. Not part of the day. ALL.DAY. So the 30% of the Aquarium that was outside we were lucky enough to tour in the early morning so we didn't get too wet; it was drizzling then. The skies opened around lunchtime, with such thunder and lightning, and we spent the afternoon indoors. A bit damp and a bit chilly, but not soaking wet, at least! We left around 3pm for the trip home and didn't get home 'til around 7:30 - a much longer return trip than the trip there.

We didn't eat any lunch; we stopped on the road, ate some tortilla chips and salsa, then continued on our way. By the time we got home we were ravenous! DH made himself an omelet and I ate my leftover Citrus Chicken (mmm!). Then we just sat down and relaxed.

On Monday we got up and went to Home Depot (surprise, surprise!). Then our friends M & G called and said they'd love to go with us to the lake and see the house (I had to go pick up a book). We took them on a mini tour on 1 side of the lake, stopped at a house that was for sale, a house we were all interested in... It's under construction, framed, sided, windowed, and roofed, with 2 tubs installed (or possibly just set into place), and a deck, but nothing else. No electric, no plumbing, no anything else. We called our realtor to get a price for M & G, but if they're not interested, to be quite honest, DH and I are! I just wish the real estate market was a bit better. It would have been PERFECT to get it at the price our realtor recommended three years ago, fix it and resell it, when homes were still moving at if not top dollar, at least for what they were worth. Now it would be a tough thing to do; we'd be carrying it for a while. Not sure it's something we really want to get into, but we're mulling it over...

Well, I'm at work and at some point I have to get back to doing what they pay me to do, so I'm gonna sign off now! Toodles!