Sunday, July 22, 2012

Puerto Rico, Part 2

So, I got a little side tracked and forgot to post the rest of the pictures from Puerto Rico, better late than never :)
These are from the day we went to the resort's private island. They had a huge beach with all kinds of activities. We of course decided to hike to the other side of the island where there was a more secluded beach. The picture above is looking down on the regular beach and then below is a picture of the secluded beach with no one on it. Yes, it was private but unfortunately there were rocks and coral in the water so you couldn't really swim :(
And just in case one hike wasn't enough, the next day we went hiking in the rain forest :)
The rain forest is managed by the US Forest Service so it had great paths the whole way. You could drive part of the way up the mountain and stop and check out different areas. We decided to drive as far up as possible and then hike about 45 minutest to the Mt. Britton observation tower.
When we first got to the top of the tower it was sunny and you could see forever.
Then the clouds started to move in and it was like we were in them! The wind was so strong the clouds were just swirling around us, it was very cool :)
On the way down I took my sweet time and took tons of photos.
I was having a blast, apparently John got a little bored (yes, he's texting in the rain forest) :)
The last night of our trip we went on a kayaking tour of the bioluminescent bay. This was by far one of the coolest things we did and probably something that makes the lifetime coolest things list! Unfortunately we couldn't take our camera out on the kayak and it wouldn't have been able to capture the illumination any way so I'll just have to tell you all about it.

We went with a tour guide and were in a double kayak; to get to the bay we had to navigate through a mangrove covered canal that opened into the bay. Our tour didn't leave until close to 9pm so it was pitch black and the majority of the tour group had never kayaked before. It was comical to say the least!

Once we go to the bay it opened up and we could really see what the fuss was about. The bay is home to micro-organisms that light up when disturbed so every time you paddled you could see a swirl of glowing water. If there happened to be fish around you could see them move in the water too! It was such a neat experience and a really awesome way to spend the last night of our trip :)

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Puerto Rico

In another effort to take advantage of living in NYC and having cheap non-stop flights at our disposal, John and I took a quick trip down to Puerto Rico for the fourth of July. The night we got there the resort had fireworks over the ocean, a very nice welcome to Puerto Rico looking out from our balcony :)
The next morning it was pouring rain so we decided to drive around and ended up going to Ponce which is a couple of hours from where we were staying. On the way we stopped at a beach side bar for lunch. I could definitely get used to eating lunch overlooking the beach, even if it is in the rain!
Once we got to Ponce we took a tour of the family home of one of Puerto Rico's largest rum distillers, Don Q. Apparently its called the house that rum built, it was quite nice :)
The house was built in 1930 up on a hill overlooking the city. We couldn't take pictures inside but the first part of the tour was all in Spanish so even if I had pictures I wouldn't be able to tell you anything about them! 
There also happened to be a gigantic cross that is an observation tower above the house, it was kind of weird to be honest. The hill used to be a watch post so I think the cross is supposed to be a memorial of some kind. Again, all the plaques were in Spanish :)
John and I have been practicing take pictures when its just the two of us and no one is around to take one for us. This is by far one of our better ones and the unveiling of the John's launch beard! He isn't shaving until he and his co-founder launch their start-up, customer.io.
Here are a couple of pics from the resort we stayed at in Fajardo. Its perched up on a hill so you have a great view!
The view from our balcony had one of the pools below and then the ocean. Way off in the distance is the resort's private island! Since the resort is on a hill there isn't a beach so they ferry everyone to their own island all day long. It was pretty awesome :)
I'll post pics from the day we went to the island and the day we went hiking in the rain forest next. I've made up arbitrary rules about not putting too many photos in one post :)

Sunday, July 1, 2012

Whirlwind Weekend

Last weekend was jam packed with all kinds of fun. Saturday night John and I went on a Hudson River cruise to end a tech conference he had just participated in and then Sunday I co-hosted a baby shower for one of my sweet friends, Susy.

The river cruise started at sunset and was on a beautiful new yacht. Lots of food and drinks, a nice breeze and a great view, lots of fun!
Out of sheer luck we got to end our cruise watching fireworks over the Statue of Liberty :)
All of my free time outside of the river cruise was spent preparing for the baby shower. I, like usual, have a tendency to go a little overboard when crafts are involved :)
Our theme for the baby shower was really just navy and yellow, we thought anything preppy would be great since the shower was hosted by two girls from Arkansas for our other friend from Arkansas! The yellow chevron fabric was my favorite, I even painted little yellow chevron chalkboard frames (or at least I tried, after two I realized that was really hard and so the others got a different pattern) :) 
 Susy got lots of great gifts at the shower which is awesome, she's due in August and I'm soooo excited!
 All the Arkansas girls :)
It was a super fun weekend but I was definitely a little tired afterwards. It didn't help that work was insane that week too. Now I just have to get through two more days of work before John and I are off to Puerto Rico for a much needed vacay!