Veg Honeymoon Awesomeness

So Eric decided that for the length of our honeymoon, he would keep vegetarian. I don't think he really looked at it as a sacrifice even though he is an omnivore. After all, the Northwest is very vegetarian-friendly and we ate at some amazing vegetarian/vegan restaurants! So I didn't take photos of them all but here were the highlights of where we ate.

First stop was Portland, Oregon. What a great city! We loved it here. Portland is a compact and really friendly city, a town that attracts all sorts of people from hikers to bikers to dog lovers to vegans! Yes, a vegan-friendly city. Portland is the home of the world's first vegan mini-mall. This mini-mall is home to Food Fight, an all vegan grocery, along with Herbivore, a vegan clothing store, a tattoo artist who only uses vegan inks, and Sweet Pea, a yummy vegan bakery. We visited all of the above (with the exception of the tattoo artist). We shared a yummy cookie at Sweet Pea and bought a couple things at Food Fight. Would have bought most of the store if we didn't need to worry about stuffing it all into already-overstuffed suitcases! I thought their sign was so funny! Can you read what it says on the door?


We had dinner at Blossoming Lotus on our first day in Portland. Though it just looks like a tiny cafe in a yoga center, they actually have amazing food! All vegan and lots of it is raw too. Even vegan soft-serve! We had some amazing raw chilled avocado soup here.


Lunch on day #2 was at Karam, a Lebanese restaurant. We had lunch here with Eric's former coworker who moved out to Portland a couple years ago. This was a good place to eat and veg. friendly.

We had to make reservations to get a table at Andina, a lively Peruvian restaurant. Neither one of us had ever eaten Peruvian before and we were eager to try it. The food was amazing! Plus the restaurant has a separate vegetarian menu with several vegan options.

Another Portland favorite was the Vita Cafe, a mostly vegetarian diner-like restaurant. Here we had some awesome "buffalo wings," and I had a tempeh reuben. I think Eric had the seitan cheesesteak. Oh, and their vegan caesar salad rocked too.

We stopped into Veganopolis for a vegan milkshake. Veganopolis is a vegan cafeteria/restaurant. Unfortunately, we didn't get to try anything else there though.


Next stop: Seattle! Our first night here, we walked 1 mile (uphill!) to Carmelita's , a great vegetarian Mediterranean restaurant. Food here was great and they had a lovely patio which we ate on.

The next day we had dinner at Vegetarian Bistro, an Asian restaurant in Chinatown. We very much enjoyed the food here. The "Mongolian beef" reminded me of pepper steak, an old favorite from my pre-vegetarian days (many, many years ago)! Tofu with mushrooms was tasty and how often can a vegetarian/vegan order the won ton soup at a Chinese restaurant?

Our favorite Seattle restaurant, hands-down, had to be Cafe Flora. According to their website, "Cafe Flora's award winning menu features modern and sophisticated vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free cuisine that is inspired by international culinary traditions and created with local, organic and sustainable ingredients." In fact, we liked it here so much that we ate here twice! Loved the vegan caesar salad and the vegan portobella french dip. The Thai skewers were pretty good too. Eric had some tacos that he really liked here and some tasty coconut tofu with lime sauce.

Before heading North to the Cascades, we had lunch with Betty Tisdale at Tamarind Tree, a Vietnamese restaurant. I haven't eaten a whole lot of Vietnamese food before, but boy, was it tasty!

I'm skipping ahead to Vancouver now because there isn't much to say for anything we ate on the road or in the Cascades region. However, we did stop at a farm stand for some fresh berries. Ever hear of Cascadian Farm? You've probably seen their organic products in the supermarket. We had some fresh blueberries and I had a soy smoothie from their stand.

We loved Vancouver, but I can't say the restaurants we ate at were all that remarkable. We had some good Indian food and enjoyed Hell's Kitchen. The Szechuan green beans were tasty and we liked their thin crust pizzas (mine was without cheese) and beer selection.

Our last stop, Victoria, had a great selection of vegetarian restaurants. We ate at Rebar on our first night here. This was a delicious choice!

After our whale watching excursion the next day, we ate lunch at Green Cuisine's extensive and all-vegan buffet! Wow! Of course, when you are paying by the pound, it comes out to be tres expensive too! But worth it!

We decided to do take-out for dinner after a long, exhausting day! Vegan pizza from The Joint Pizzeria!

Be sure to check Eric's blog for his writeup of wine and beer tasting!

Honeymoon Pics!

A mere five miles from Mount St. Helen's

Okay, so I took most of the photos, and then Eric made the nifty slideshow on his laptop...then I spent hours uploading everything to Snapfish...well, these aren't all of them. We DID take 1000 photos or so. Here's 100 of our favorites from Portland to Seattle to Vancouver and Victoria. Enjoy!

Day One of Honeymoon

Here's a photo of us from the first day of our honeymoon. We drove the historic Columbia River Gorge Byway and saw lots of cool falls and Mount Hood too! We've got tons to blog about like amazing sites and wonderful restaurants but here's a teaser for now...

One Week Anniversary

Well, today is our one week anniversary. Yup, we're officially married. Everything went wonderfully and almost all as planned! We're enjoying our honeymoon and will be posting pics when we have time! Portland was wonderful and tonight is our last night in Seattle.

Anyway, here's a photo from Josh Lynn, our amazing photographer. There's a few more here. Jenn posted some photos on her blog too...

The Bachelorette

Yup, that's me with the goofy hat. Last Saturday was my bachelorette party. We had so much fun!!! Eight of us girls took a limo into New York, and let me tell you, the limo ride alone was half the fun! By the time we got to where we were going, we were all pretty buzzed!

We met three more friends at Lucky Cheng's for dinner, drinks and fun with drag queens. After dinner, we sang karaoke with a live band. It was awesome, but a lot more difficult than traditional karaoke.

Here's another fun photo. This is after the drag queens pushed my face into the cake.
We're now 13 days away from the big day, which explains my very infrequent postings! But we're almost there. The wedding plans are just about complete--we're now enjoying the process of planning the honeymoon! Eric and I are looking forward to exploring the Pacific Northwest including all of the awesome vegetarian restaurants!

Ever sleep in an igloo?

Last night, we watched a special on the Icehotel in Sweden. I'd heard of the Icehotel before but the show we watched was fascinating! Everything in this hotel is sculpted of ice. In your hotel room, you're sleeping on some animal skin on a bed made of ice and snow. The hotel bar, a happening place, is made of ice. Instead of having some ice in your drink, your drink goes in a glass made of ice. Amazing! In the morning, you're awakened with a glass of hot lingonberry juice. According to the website, they suggest you spend one night in the icehotel and all remaining nights in a heated chalet type hotel.

Activities include ice sculpting, dog sledding, car racing on an ice track, snowmobiling, and northern lights excursion tour.

They even have an icechurch for people who would like to get married here.

Every year, they must rebuild the hotel. Of course, it melts when the weather warms up!

I clicked on the availability on their website just out of curiosity. I tried a couple random dates--for the year 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011. And they were all booked up! This place isn't cheap but isn't as expensive as you'd perhaps think. After you convert to the US dollar, the iceroom runs about 300 per person, per night.

I think I might add staying at the icehotel to my lifelong list of places to see.

The Daily Bread

One of my very favorite places in the whole, wide world is Burlington, Vermont. I've been there many times in the past seven years. On my first visit there, I came across a little bakery cafe called The Daily Bread in the town of Richmond. This was a lucky find, I tell you. I was with my buddy, Dave, and I don't even know how we came across this place. We had coffee and the best home fries with cheddar cheese and tempeh. Perfectly spiced. This place was so yummy that on every visit to Vermont, I'd drive 20 minutes from Burlington to this little town for the home fries and blue corn pancakes.

On my last visit to Vermont, two years ago, my sister-in-law and I drove to Richmond. I raved about the amazing breakfast foods we could eat here.

But, the restaurant was gone. Don't you hate when that happens? I was devastated. But Lauren and I found another little bakery across the street called On the Rise. Whatever we had was very good but there was no room for sitting and eating in this bakery.

Eric and I made plans to go to Burlington, VT for a weekend in November and it got me thinking again about the Daily Bread. So I did some research.

I found an independently published cookbook called Made From Scratch, written by Betsy Bott, creator of The Daily Bread! And Eric ordered it for me! It arrived today! Its a wonderful cookbook, full of recipes and stories!

I also found out that On the Rise is owned by somebody who has worked for The Daily Bread for many years and many of the recipes are the same. And its now in a larger location with seating, Sunday brunch and live music at times. Yay!

Football Sunday

The real reason we made the trip to the West Coast was for Sunday's Raiders vs. Lions game. There was a tailgate party first in the parking lot.



The game was fun but the Raiders lost. Here's the post I wrote during half-time.

Its halftime and i am at my first football game ever. The Raiders are down to the Lions. I am sporting a black and silver jersey that Eric got me from the Raider Image here in Oakland. I am trying really hard to get whats going on. Football is so much more complicated than I thought it would be. Its so mathematical. Yards and downs. Baseball is simple. Three strikes, you're out. But I guess you can say football is an exciting sport. I think I just need football for dummies. Maybe if I have a SuperBowl party this year I will actually pay attention To the game. On a side note we attended a fun tailgate party and the stadium has veggie dogs. Yummo!

I Heart San Francisco

We spent all day Saturday in San Francisco. First, the Farmers Market at the Ferry Building. I'd never seen such a huge farmers market! It was fantastic! We didn't buy anything other than a cheddar scone but I had loads of free samples!







After the Farmers Market, we took a streetcar to the touristy part of town, Pier 39 and Fishermans Wharf. I didn't really care for all the touristy shops but wanted to see the pier, foggy views of Alcatraz and the Golden Gate.


And the sea lions, of course!



We then walked the ten blocks or so to Ghirardelli Square for their 12th annual chocolate festival. Yum! You pay to get samples of chocolate--and all the proceeds go to a good cause.

We had dinner that night at The Stinking Rose. It's a garlic restaurant! Yum! Vampires keep out!

Fine Wining and Dining

Eric and I got into the Bay Area Thursday night. We drove from San Francisco to Oakland in our silver Pt Cruiser rental and after a Japanese dinner, we settled into our temporary home away from home.

Friday, we woke up bright and early to make the one hour drive to Wine Country. You can spend days here--we didn't have the luxury of excess time--so we planned an afternoon outing of it.



What we saw of in the Napa Valley was just beautiful. Rolling hills and vineyards. I'd never seen so many wineries in my life! Thats obviously why they call it Wine Country!

I scoured a "Best of Wine Country" brochure for coupons. I had read that many wineries in this region manage to charge at least $15 for a tasting! Well with our clever planning, we got to try out the wine at three separate locations! For free!

Our favorite was Bouchaine. It was the first one we went to. We were actually able to sit out on a patio sipping our wine enjoying the breeze and the sun and gazing at the outside gardens and vineyards. It was heavenly. We liked the wine there so much that we plan on ordering a few bottles when we get home.

Pretty Gardens

Through the Wine Glass (I tried really hard to get this shot--and Eric got it right on his first try!)

Then we went to Jessup which keeps reminding me of Jesser--a blog I really enjoy reading! I like Jesser the blog better than Jessup the wine. Jessup mainly makes strong red wines and I favor whites.

Our last winery of the day was Napa Cellars. The wine was perfectly good here--but all of a sudden I got wined out! Couldn't drink any more!

Friday night, we drove into San Francisco for dinner. I made us reservations for a French Viatnamese restaurant called Le Colonial. It was my first time trying Viatnamese food and it was yummy, yummy, yummy! We liked it so much that we will probably try out Le Colonial's NY location soon!

California Here We Come!

In a little while, we are leaving to catch our flight from Newark to San Francisco (with a layover in Charlotte :( .

Our main purpose of our weekend in the San Francisco area is to go to a Raiders game on Sunday. There's also some tailgating involved with other Raiders fans that Eric knows and a Raiders party Saturday night. Its my first football game too. Ever.

We're also going to Wine Country tomorrow. We'll spend Saturday exploring San Francisco and Sunday is the game.

Then Monday we'll fly home!

A Fun Filled Day--Part Four

Friday was a great day--for the most part. Here's what happened...

We woke up bright and early and Eric headed off to the career fair, once again to work for his newspaper. Then I headed off on my adventure.

I made the nearly one hour trek to Homestead, Florida for a series of adventures. First and foremost, I wanted to visit the Everglades. I could have went to the Everglades National Park. But I decided I wanted to go on an airboat ride so I went to the Everglades Alligator Farm instead. I saw some alligators up close!


I even held a baby alligator!




Then I went on an airboat ride which was awesome!



Saw some more gators and sea turtles.





Egrets and lots of fish!

They call the Everglades the River of Grass. It's also the only place where crocodiles and alligators live side by side--in the world!






After the airboat ride, I headed to Robert is Here fruit stand. Not just any fruit stand, but Robert specializes in exotic fruits and he's known for his exotic fruits milkshakes. I had a pineapple milkshake. YUM!

Non Fun Part Disclaimer: I hit a big rock in the road on my way to Robert's. After the fruit stand, I headed to Walmart Tire and Lube Express to make sure my tires were okay. The man said they looked fine. Phew...for the record, I hate Walmart. I only went because it was a necessity.

Next, I hit downtown Homestead where I checked out a few antique shops. Got lots of old postcards for my collection!

Then: the winery! I went to Schnebly Redland's Winery--the southernmost winery in the US! All of their wines are made from tropical fruits! I had a tasting of their five wines--mango, lychee, passionfruit, carombola, and guava. I ended up buying two bottles--carombola and passionfruit. Unfortunately, they don't ship to NJ...

Nope, my day was not over yet. Then a visit to the Fruit and Spice Park, a 35-acre tropical botanical garden growing over 500 varieties of fruits, spices and nuts. I took a tram ride around the park. Our guide, Marie, explained what a lot of the fruits were and what they were used for in different countries. And I got a mango to bring home! Ooh, and I nibbled on a stevia leaf, some Thai garlic and mint. Fun!

Look for another post detailing my evening with Eric!

Not-So-Fun-Filled (Part Tres)

So Eric and I did make it to South Beach Thursday night. I didn't find it particularly appealing, nor did Eric. I found it too touristy, too trendy, and quite expensive! There were a million restaurants all in a row and lots of them had a waiter or staff member pushing the menu on you. If you stopped to look at their menu, they try to sell it to you. Reminded me of Little Italy with palm trees.

"Come on, try it, the food is the best."

"We have a steak special, only $15, so good, usually worth $36."

You get the idea. Annoying as all hell. We ended up going with an Italian restaurant. We sat inside because I couldn't take anymore of the Florida heat. Well the door was open to the outside so it was hotter inside as it turned out. By the time our dinners came out, I was ready to pass out. It was 10pm and I was not only really hungry but sunburnt and suffering heat exhaustion, I think. So we took our food to go and I was feeling better once we got to the room. We had to miss the Salsa party. Oh, well.

Greetings from Miami--Part Deux!

Today its sunny and bright outside in South Florida. This morning, I chose a lovely beach to visit--Bill Baggs State Park on Key Biscayne. Even with a sunblock of SPF 50, I still suffered a burn to my shoulders and back. I was smart to reapply constantly, however, when you're attending the beach on your own, its kind of hard to reapply to your back after splashing around in the clear aqua water. Its a good thing I only stayed on the beach for 2 hours. I saw some new and unusual butterflies and birds. I even saw a pelican!





Don't go in the water if you see a purple flag!



After the beach, I came back to the hotel and chilled for a couple hours. Then, I took the free MetroMovers monorail over to the Bayside Marketplace a few blocks away. It's an open aired mall, complete with a Hard Rock Cafe and because its right on the water, you can take a touristy boat ride right from there! I contemplated the pirate cruise. Oh well. Maybe later on this weekend...


Look! A wet bird!




Tonight, Eric and I are going out to dinner in South Beach and there's a possibility of an AAJA Salsa Party there as well. So we'll see...

Tomorrow's the Everglades and Biscayne National Park. I think.

Once again, pics to follow...

Greetings from Miami!!!

On Tuesday, after a yummy Thai lunch, Eric and I flew out to Miami. Though its vacation time for me--lots of relaxing and exploring, Eric's here for his AAJA Convention. Lucky me. But he's stuck in workshops all day and working the Career Fair for his newspaper.

Yesterday was fun. Florida weather in the summer is simply...awesome. Extremely hot and humid with nearly daily thunderstorms. So yesterday I met up with my friend Bret for the afternoon. He moved to Florida a year and a half ago so it was the first time I've seen him since. We met up in Hollywood, Florida. My first time there. It started pouring when I was nearly there. Pouring cats and dogs.

We had lunch at a place called O'Malley's Ocean Pub. A cool place on the patio with an awning with a Key West atmosphere. But many of the restaurants on Hollywood's "broadwalk" are open air. Even though it was pouring, we stayed dry during lunch and were able to watch the ocean.



Then we walked on the broadwalk. And had ice cream. And fudge.



Then Bret and I parted ways and I had time for a sweet nap in the hotel before Eric got back. Last night, we had an opening reception to go to. Today, I'll hit the beach and tonight we have a free evening.

From the opening reception at the opera house...