New York

 

 

 

The Howe Award

 

Brent was told a few months ago that he was going to be receiving a Howe award for a project he had worked on a few years ago and that they wanted to fly us to New York for him to receive it. 

In the BIG APPLE

In the beginning I did not even consider going since I am not allowed to take days off of work.  Additionally, we had no options for overnight babysitters during the week.  Long story short everything worked out and I was able to go with him.

We arrived late on a Sunday night to the Ritz Carlton across from the Lady Liberty.  It was a perfect "welcome back to America" moment for us. 

Spain is great, but it is not the USA!  The USA has much to be proud of and it really is the best country in the world.

We also were greeted by a hefty Walmart.com order to fit into my empty check on.

All our essential junk (pop-tarts, fruit snacks, crackers, mint Oreos, hamburger helper, etc.) would have fit perfectly had they not thrown in the non-essential TP which we did not order (we can get that in Spain).

DAY 1 

 The 9/11 Memorial is now a must when visiting New York.  It was peacefully beautiful!  We began Monday not exactly sure what we would do, we had a few ideas, so we first went to the memorial and then called our on-call New York travel guide (my cousin Kim) to tell us where to go and what to see next.

The Trinity Church

This is the graveyard outside the Trinity Church.  I loved seeing an old American style graveyard.

 

The New York Stock Exchange, Wall Street, the Trinity Church in the background and T.J.Maxx. 

The Hall Memorial, built in the location of where George Washington is said to have been inaugurated.

The East River

 

The Brooklyn Bridge

 

 After China Town and Little Italy, we began the long walk back to the Hotel   We were exhausted after being on our feet for 5-6 hours straight with one short 10 minute sitting break to eat some pizza in Little Italy.

 

That evening BD had a dinner cruise scheduled for all the award recipients and their spouses. 

 

We cruised along the New York Skyline and up close to the Statue of Liberty.

Day 2 Central Park

I have never been to Central Park before this and I had no idea it was so large.  We rode the subway to the far end with the idea of walking through the park to meet my cousin on the other end. 

 

 After a few hours of exploring, we realized we were not going to make it all the way to the other end.  Fortunately, we still got to see much of the park, including a few lakes...

a castle, which was the last thing we expected to see in New York,...

 

 

more beautiful scenery...

fall leaves,....

 

 

lots of great picture opportunities....

a filming of some new crime scene show....

 

 

Here is a clip of one take we watched.  We are behind the yellow police tape filming with our inferior equipment as you can see. The actress communicates to Brent to quit smiling here since we were going to be in the background.

 

 

These street performing acrobats were quite fascinating. 

My sweet cousin Kim, who lives in New York, met us at the Metropolitan Museum of Art just outside Central Park.

This picture was taken on the top of the museum in the Gardens area.  Kim is on the far left.

 

This choir screen is from a cathedral in Valladolid Spain.  It was fun to see so many things from Spain in this museum.

The windows at least and I think most of the other pieces in here are from a castle in Southern Spain, bought by a New Yorker in the early 1900's and used in his home. 

 

 

 

The museum was amazing, and so large!  We only got to see a couple of hours worth, but we did see sooo much and had a couple of hours to visit.   

 

 

 

 

By the time we had to leave the museum we could hardly move, let alone walk. 

 

 

 Seeing this old French Hotel waiting room, made us really wish we were all the way back in ours.  Fortunately we were able to ride the subway back to the hotel.  

 

 

That evening was the awards ceremony and a dinner at the hotel.  We waited through lots of speeches, lots of awards and dinner before Brent's group was to finally receive their awards.  (Brent and I are sitting a little to the left of the center of this picture)

 

 

Brent received a nicely framed certificate and a very nice Tag Heuer watch for the project his team finished a few years ago in Sandy.  They developed a new safety IV catheter which has been very successful.  Unfortunately, I missed this by just 10 minutes since I had to leave to catch a red eye flight to Paris. 

 

 

 Brent stayed another couple of days to work in New Jersey, but I needed to get back to work.   We both made it back in time for Halloween which was made extra special since Grandma Bellon was still here. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Geez! BlogSpot will not let me delete this picture.

San Sebastian- Basque Country

My mom kindly offered to watch our kids so I could go with Brent to New York for an award Brent was to receive for a previous work project.  Of course we accepted her offer and planned a quick thank- you trip before we were to leave for New York. 

San Sebastian

San Sebastian had been well recommended to us ever since moving here and being one of the few areas left that we wanted to explore we made plans to take my mom there.

San Sebastian, also know as Donostia (Basque), is a northern coastal city located in the Basque Autonomous Community. The Basque Country or Basque Autonomous Community was granted the status of a nationality within Spain.  It lies on the coast of the Bay of Biscay, 12 miles from the French border. 

 



This sign is written in the 3 spoken languages within the Basque region.  The sign reads, from left to right, in Spanish, Euskera (the Basque Language) and French.  The language of the Basques has no known linguistic affiliation and is often said to be the only remaining language of the European cavemen.   Many of the Basque people want nothing to do with Spain and therefore refuse to learn Spanish.  They are offended by tourists that come wearing Spanish apparel including Spanish futbol team attire. 

This is the view from the back deck of the Hostel/hotel outside of breakfast.  The view would have been enough to take our breath away had we not been holding it due to the constant awful smell outside.

First Stop- Aquarium of
San Sebastian

This is just outside the doors to the Aquarium. This San Sebastian Aquarium opened in 1928. 

I think he is imagining what it was like for Jonah inside the whale or perhaps Pinocchio and his dad.

 

 

Amazingly this cool fish is entirely made out of cans.

 

 

 This is just half of the starfish case.  They had a great presentation of all kinds of dead sea creatures...

 and all sorts of pieces of them.

It also, as expected, had many, many tanks of a large variety of fish.   If I didn't know better I'd think Kaiya was licking her chops here. 

 

We could see into this tank from all sorts of angles. This tank housed several stingrays and sharks among the plethora of fish. 




We're not sure how they keep the sharks from eating all the other fish. 

 Once outside the aquarium we strolled along this pier and then into the town shopping all along the way while searching for the right place to eat. 

 

This is the end of the pier just before we entered through the city walls. 






The Basilica of Saint Mary of the Chorus is a baroque Roman Catholic parish church.  It was completed in 1774.

 

We eventually found this family friendly pub on the right with the green sign.  We ordered using the French menu we were given and walking outside to translate it with the English menu on the window. 

  

Here it is again on the left just before we arrived.  We had an extremely awful experience with our orders and walked out only to have to find somewhere else to eat.  We wasted nearly an hour of our day and thus we never made it very far into this city.  Good customer service is not expected here as it is in the US. 

 

 

Catedral del Buen Pastor  



Dating back only to the late 19th century, this striking Buen Pastor Cathedral features Neo-Gothic style architecture.  This is said to be the most important of the city's many religious buildings, with its spire measuring some 246 feet in height.  We never actually make it to this church, but we saw it in the distance several times.



Getaria

 

This will forever be known to us as the "Lost Shoe Beach".  It was a great teeny tiny city beach until the waves came up and washed away a couple pairs of our shoes that had been sitting at the end of this ramp. 



We quickly recovered 3 of the 4 shoes with the help of the tide but to recover the 4th we had to send Morgan in fully clothed.  We weren't too upset about the forever lost socks (one less stinky pair to wash).  We simply bought more socks in the next village (Zarautz). 

Zarautz

 Can you guess who is the bravest?  or the most spontaneous of the four?  Morgan was already wet so he had nothing to lose. 



They could have done this all night but after about an hour we started to get too cold to sit and watch any longer.

 

Back in San Sebastian

 Brent and Morgan spent some alone time together while the rest of us were spending some quality time together doing a little more shopping. 








The last morning in San Sebastian we took a quick walk around the hotel and walked (onto) these old ruins.

 Hondarribia

 Here is the beautiful harbor of  Hondarribia. We walked along (or on) the city walls to enter the old city. 

Morgan found the perfect place to climb this rampart. 

 This is the Weapons Plaza with the old Castle of Charles V on the far left. 

This was inside the old castle, which now is the home of a "Parador" Hotel.  The construction of this castle dates to the 10th century.

 We decided to explore the old town by walking along the perimeter. 

This town was quite enchanting.  It is one of my all time (in Spain) favorite towns we have been to.

Sadly, there was not enough room for Kamree on this bench. 

This is a lookout at the far corner of the city walls. 



After Hondarribia, we drove along the coast to find a beach to play on.  Unfortunately two steps forward here is a cliff straight down onto the rocky coast. 

 

The hills in the background of this picture are in France.

 We decided to drive to France since it was so darn close. Vitoria-Gasteiz- also written on these signs is where we spent our last night's stay on this trip.

Saint Jean de Luz, France

We finally settled on this beach in a the resort town of Saint Jean de Luz.  The kids did the usual beach routine: played in the waves, then in the sand, played in the waves, then in the sand and so on. 

We quickly walked around this charming resort town.....

 bought some churros (the only thing which we could afford) and headed back to Spain. 

 

Goodbye San Sebastian

 

 

Vitoria-Gasteiz

This was the view from the window of our hotel.  We arrived just before bedtime and left for home first thing the next morning to catch our flight to New York.