I've been resisting the urge to go around and see everything and anything because I'm just tired, I even skipped a blog post! Shocking I know! But really I need a couple of days to just get into vacation mode, to just lay like broccoli for a short period of of time. It not like I've done absolutely nothing... actually I've done a lot of walking!
Punctuated through the last two days has been me getting all the paperwork organized for my trip to Portugal. My tickets are purchased, I'm registered for the conference, my hotels reservation is submitted (but not confirmed yet), and I'm not just searching for a hotel to book for the last two days we are staying in the main part of town in Lisbon. Making progress! Luckily, being pretty jet lagged, I'm getting up at 4:30 - 5:00... you can get a lot of emailing done when the world is still dark and the sun is not calling.
Thursday morning I decided to start my trip like I ended my last trip to Hawaii with a walk to Waikiki Beach. This time I didn't go swimming (I didn't even bring my bathing suit), I just brought my Kindle and I bought a towel along the way. I found a grassy sunny spot with a great view of the ocean and settled into listening to the beach and reading my book. I was there for about 2 hours before a guy showed up with music which set the annoying mood for everyone in earshot. Good sign to start the 45 minute walk back to Anna's place.
By then Anna was just about back from work and we headed to the mall to pick up a few things for the Harry Potter party planned for Friday night. We got all the supplies to make wands, chocolate frogs, and decorate her place like the Gryffindor common room. We hit Walmart for the crafty items and candy. In the candy / chip aisle I found this. Now I'm quite sure what is worse... the fact that you can actually buy microwave pork rinds (and they don't need to be refidgerated!) or that there are sold out! All I can say is eep!
We then hit Whole Food! OMG, it was so so freaking great! It was about dinner time so it made for more dinner choices. In the end I think I bought three meals because they all looked so good. I got a mushroom barley soup, two great salads (a noodle one with peanut sauce and roasted veggie couscous one) and then what I ended up eating for dinner that night was a lemon aioli mahi-mahi with two sides, roasted asparagus with mushrooms and an amazing vietnamese kale salad... I don't know what it is about kale but when I eat it, I want to eat more! It was SO good!
Friday, I spend a lot of the morning figuring out how I was going to get the hotel reservation into the hotel. Thankfully Anna give me a hand by printing it and scanning it so I could return it to the hotel on Friday. Although given the time delay... she may not get it until Monday. Fingers crossed it all goes well! But that meant I got to go see Anna at work with her cool standing desk set up and beautiful view!
From there I picked up a few last minute items for the party, including some gummy frogs to dip in chocolate. While I was at the drug store scanning the candy for frogs I came across these - Canada Mints. Which upon closer inspection they appeared to be English Mints. Could it be a conspiracy rooted in the US civil war ousting all English products!? So bizarre! Moreover if you look closely there's an registered trademark symbol after Canada. Logically I'm hoping it's because Canada has a lock on our own name... but if not, whoa.
From there I settled in to watch the first couple of episodes of Breaking Bad. Then it was decorating time and Anna's friends and kids showed up. It was a great time! The kids got a great kick out of the decorations, wands, and letters from Hogwarts! We ordered from California Pizza Kitchen. It was pretty decent pizza.
Brand new day today! Big plans to see the Farmers Market and head up to the North Shore for some snorkeling and Thai food.
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