2013-04 Orlando, FL

Ray had business meeting in Orlando and we took the opportunity to have a small mini-vacation in the area.  Hailey's friend Lauren joined us on the trip, and we spent a couple days in and around Orlando.  It happened to be a good weekend to be out of Minnesota, as we had a late season snowstorm dumping over 6 inches of snow back in Minnesota.  This caused delays for both LeAnn and Hailey, and Lauren, who came down on a different flight.  Lauren didn't end up getting into Orlando until about 3:00 AM.  Despite that, we got up the next morning and headed to the Magic Kingdom.  This was all of the Blooms first visit to this park, although Lauren had been here before, so gave us some good thoughts and hints as to what to do at the park.

It was a very warm day, with the high int he upper 80's, a welcome change from the everlasting winter this year back home.  After taking a few group pictures at the beginning, we let the kids head off and see the sights and do the rides while we wondered through and took in our own sights and rides, deciding to meet up for lunch and dinner throughout the day.

 It was a very busy day at the park, even though spring break was over for most.  Many of the families were there with pre-school aged kids, which means they don't have to worry as much about school schedules.  The park was full of strollers, and whether they were parked in the parking area, or out in the streets and walkways, there we log jams and traffic jams everywhere.

The biggest disaster of the day happened to Lauren early in the evening.  She suffered a direct hit of bird poop by a low flying bird.  As she was trying to clean up and get the poop and the stink off, one of the Disney managers came up to find out what happened.  They brought her to first aid to help with the clean up and gave here a Disney t-shirt.  However, the poop had gotten into her hair and onto her shorts and shoes too.  She was able to clean most of it off, but still had a residual smell.  Hailey also had some collateral damage of a few spots on her clothes and shoes, but not nearly as bad as Lauren.

As the night approached, we got in a position for the electric parade, fireworks and light shows.  It is just amazing how they they can use Cinderella's castle as a theatre screen and project the colors and images onto a 3-D object and make them look like they are on a flat screen.  During the parade, I heard someone say that it was like the Holidazzle parade, only on a bigger scale, so I knew we in the vicinity of some other Minnesotans.

 After the fireworks, we worked ourselves down Main Street and into the queue for the ferry to bring us back to the parking lot.  The line moved along quite well, as do most of the lines at Disney.  We had utilized the fast track system when we could, which was so nice to just walk up to the front of a line and wait less than 5 minutes rather than stand in a 60 minute line.   A much better use of time for the popular rides.

 The weather changed a lot on Saturday as the highs were only the low 70's, and it was windy.  We had planned a beach day, but the weather kept us from spending too much time at the beach.  We did go over to Cocoa Beach and walked the shores, watched the surfers (in wet suits) and went out to the end of the pier.  As we were returning from the end of the pier, LeAnn ran into 2 of her preschool students and their family.  You just never know when or where you may run into someone you know.

 Saturday evening, we went to California Pizza Kitchen for an early birthday dinner since we would be travelling on Hailey's actual birthday.  We followed that up with a trip to Pirate's Cove Adventure Golf, always one of the kid's favorite places to go when we travel.  The soon to be 17 year old posed in front of her favorite hole.

On Sunday after checking out, we headed to the Nike clearance store, which was a true clearance store instead of one of their outlet stores.  On the way there, we passed a Thai temple which was having a festival for Sangkron, or Thai New Year.  We went back after shopping and wandered through.  There were tents selling Thai food, drinks and wares.  We tried some fresh pressed sugar cane juice.  It was very refreshing with the right amount of sweetness, but not overly so.

After the festival we headed back to the airport for our trip back to the frozen north, with another snowstorm on the way.  This will hopefully be the end of winter this year

2013-04 The Concorde at CDG

While coming back from Slovenia  Ray had a layover at CDG airport in Paris.  Adjacent to one of the runways is a memorial to the Concorde supersonic airplanes.  After the crash a few years ago of one of the Concordes, which was caused by debris on the runway, all the Concordes were retired from service as the cost to maintain and operate them had become to high. 

With the right angle of photograph, it almost appears to be in flight.  It is set up on pedestals at a slight angle to helpo give the illusion of flight.  One of the nearby taxiways goes right over the road, so it is interesting to see planes going over the cars.

I also saw 3 of the A380 double-decker, super-jumbo planes that Air France has.  Two were parked at a gate, and one was on a taxiway.  I didn't get an opportunity to get any photos of these, but they are very large planes.  When parked at the gate they show their full size as you can directly compare them to other planes parked nearby.  However on the taxiway, they don't look quite as enormous because the proportions are so different from most planes between the large body and the length, they look somewhat short

2013-04 Slovenia

Ray went on a business trip to Slovenia.  Slovenia is a relatively small country, about the size of New Jersey.  It split from Yugoslavia in 1991 and became and independent nation.  It is bordered on the west by Itally and on the north by Austria.  It has a small finger that extends to the Adriatic Sea

Since he arrived late afternoon, he had some time to explore the capital city of Ljubljana before heading to the hotel.  The town has a river running through it and has been built below a large hill with a castle on top.  The castle has been refurbished recently and is very nice.  A large clock tower also serves as an observation tower, allowing 360° views.

The mascot of the city is the dragon, and various dragons appear throughout the city, including at both ends of dragon bridge.  Much of the downtown area is closed to vehicle traffic, making very wide walkways through the city for strolling.  most buildings are at 2 to 3 stories tall with shops on the bottom level and living quarters above.


Just off the river near an area that housed many cobblers in the past, multiple shoes have been thrown across the electrical wires as a tribute to the original shoemakers.

One of the catholic churches in town has some beautiful bronze doors that have various scenes on them in high relief.  The doors are just beautiful.  They are also very functional and easy to open despite their weight. The door knobs are built right into the artwork and stay nice and shiny from constant contact and use.  The inside of the church has high ceilings and is brightly painted and colorful

One of the buildsings near the church had a vertical sundial on the side of the building.  I had never seen a veritcal dundial before, only horizontal ones.

After walking around the lower portion of the town, we went up to the castle.  There are two ways to get there, one on a funicular or incline railway, the other is to walk.  We took the funicular up, and then walked down.  During the refurbishment of the castle, they added a museum of Slovenian history.  There is also a restaurant up there and a large open courtyard used for various activities during the year.  The view from the top is spectacular in all directions, with mountains (including the Alps) in the background and a large valley in which the capital city is spread out in.

  After visiting Ljubljana  we headed to Trbovlje where Ray was staying.  He stayed at the Gostilna Martin, which is basically a guest house.  They have a nice restaurant and catering service, and 2 apartment rooms above,which is were Ray stayed.  Trbovlje is an old coal mining town nestled between two mountain ranges.  The streets are steep, but the views are spectacular.  

You can see some evidence of the strip mining activity in the mountains surrounding the town, and there are some large landslide areas due to the steepness of the mountains. 

When we headed to the airport, we went over the mountain on the scenic route and got to look back down into the valley to get one more view of the valley.  At the airport, there was an old DC-6 out in front of the terminal, but fortunately it was not they type of plane I was flying back on.

2013-04-06 Kappa Klassic Golf Tournament

Ray and Kara played in the Kappa Klassic golf tournament at Grand View golf course in Des Moines.  The tournament is put on by Kara's sorority Kappa Kappa Gamma, and is a benefit for the Children's Cancer Connection of Iowa.  This was the second year of the tournament and had almost 100 golfers competing, including sorority members, other students, and parents.

The Grand View golf course is one of the oldest public course west of the Mississippi river, built in 1902.  It has a brand new club house, sitting on top of the bluff.  The course starts and finishes on the top of the bluff, giving a few blind shots as the elevation changes dramatically    Most of the holes are below the bluff and fairly flat, although the greens have their share of slope.   The course is relatively short, but for a charity tournament with golfers of all levels (and so early in the season), it was a good fit.  I was surprised how well the pace of play went, as we finished in about 4 hours.  There were some backups though, as the last groups took closer to 5 hours, we were just lucky to be in the right part of the groupings.

It was a little windy and cool on Saturday morning, but considering it was snowing when I left Eagan on Friday night, this was much better.  We were teamed with one of Kara's sorority sisters, Ashley, and her dad, Rick.  Since this was the first golf for either Kara or myself this year, we each started a little slow and rusty.  We started to play better after the first 5 or 6 holes and using more of our shots in this best shot scramble.  We were able to use some of Kara's drives and she made a few nice putts.  My driver straightened out as the day went on, and also made a some contributions to the score.  We ended up -4 for the day with only 1 bogey.

Ray hit his best shot of the day on the 9th hole, which was the hole being used  for the closest to the pin contest.  He ended up about 10' out, which held up for the day in the non-student category, winning him a set of Iowa pork grilling skewers.  As a bonus, he made the putt for birdie.

After the tournament, Ray and Kara went downtown and ate at Zombie Burger. This is a very popular place as evidenced by having to wait about 45 minutes for a table at 2:00 in the afternoon.  All of the food is named after zombie and horror film names, places and characters.  They also make a wide variety of drink and milk shake concoctions.  The afternoon ended with a trip to Target, a must for any college student when the parents come to town.