2011 Vacations in Review (Pt 3)

June

Mom and I went to New York in June for a few days and did things that we haven't done before.  We stayed at the Doubletree in Times Square, which was a great central point for getting around.  We took a Walking Tour of Times Square, had a backstage tour of Radio City Music Hall, saw a Broadway musical, and had a wonderful brunch on Mother's Day in the revolving restaurant in the Marriott Marquis.  

It was so much fun to go see the Broadway production of 'How to Succeed in Business...' on Saturday afternoon and, then, sit in the hotel room on Sunday night and watch John Laroquette win the Tony Award for his performance in that play.  We hit the deli on the corner and relaxed in our room with great food every evening.  Great way to make sure we were ready to go again the next day!

July

 As always, we spent the entire week of 4th of July at the cottage.  Steve, Stacy and the kids were there for much of that time, while Ian and Alex joined us for a couple of days following their time in Minnesota.  The weather was really, really good so there was a lot of fishing and swimming and playing outside.

Stacy and I went to Antigo and bought 28 pounds of strawberries from which we made 52 half-pints of strawberry freezer jam, plus we had a lot to eat fresh as well as quite a few that we packaged up and froze.  The month of June wasn't very helpful (from a weather standpoint), so we weren't even sure that there would be any ripe berries, but we got lucky!  On the drive over, we saw a black bear cross the road and spotted some vultures circling over something on our way back.


August

In the middle of doing some web browsing, I came across an advertisement for a stage production of 'Pride & Prejudice' to be held in an outdoor theatre in Door County.  It was about a 2-hour drive up to Bailey's Harbor where we took part in an afternoon tea that included lots of different teas and things to add to the tea, plus finger sandwiches, etc.  I totally loved it!  Actors from the production came in while we were having tea and mingled with the group while staying in character.

After the afternoon tea, I killed time seeing the area and scouting out the location of the theatre, before returning back to the same restaurant and having a truly fabulous dinner.

The stage production was a lot of fun and very faithful to the book, and held outside under a lovely star-filled sky.  I wrote up the whole thing for the Wisconsin JASNA newsletter.

No more travels during 2011, but September marked the beginning of the new theatre season at the PAC and, with my season tickets, I'm expecting to have mini-adventures each time I hear the opening bars of the music!