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on Carnival Ship for pictures from the BASH!!!
March 1997: Our trip to Hawaii - we hope to make some movie files from the videos we took. We also got to see the Honolulu festival which featured Japanese culture and the St. Patrick's Day parade and party! Also, we were very lucky that we got to train with Aoyagi Sensei (aikido) while we were there. We were in Waikiki beach on Oahu. It is a great place to vacation. You can get good airfares if you watch for them and the hotels can be quite inexpensive if you do your research. If you want the name of a very nice, inexpensive hotel about 3 blocks off the beach, email me. There is a ton to do and a lot of it is free or very cheap. We've been there several times and still haven't done everything on our list. We want to go snorkeling at Hanauma Bay (you can take a bus there) but we haven't done that yet. We also haven't climbed Diamondhead yet. And there is a wonderful buddhist temple on the other side of the island that we want to visit. But this is somewhere we go at least every couple of years so we will get to do these things. There is also a great little japanese internet cafe tucked away on an upper floor of a hotel off a side street that is great! Easy to get to, friendly and inexpensive with beer and coffee and TV and computers and it is kind of eccentric and interesting. It is called the Web Story Cafe. And you can eat very well and very inexpensively at the International Marketplace Food Court. There is a restaurant there where you can get 4 vegetables and a main dish with rice for about $6. Try the Teriyaki Chicken or the Eggplant dish. Both are outstanding! We would stop there and pick up something to eat at the hotel. The hotel has a full kitchen so we would load up on fresh cut papayas with lemon and other staples at the nearby (on every corner!) ABC stores. And Sean surfed every day, sometimes twice a day. We really love Hawaii, it is so relaxing, yet has so much to do. I guess I should write up a review! I keep thinking of new and interesting things, like the Thai restaurant with the Thai dancers, the IMAX, the other Internet Cafe, the buddhist sangha we visited for their group meditation, etc. Well, maybe I will. In the meantime, if you have anything you want to know, email me.
July 1997: Trip to San Francisco in July 1997. including: San Francisco Gay Pride Parade and American Library Association Conference We stayed at the Villa Florence hotel. We also got to visit with Sean's brother, Nat and to train at Aikido West with Frank Doran, sensei. The Villa Florence was very nice and a great location. I also like the Triton, next to the Chinatown gate. It is very funky and avant-garde. And Chinatown is great fun to walk thru and poke around in. Lots of really neat oriental things can be bought there. Sean and I have both gotten chops (carved name sticks) at various times there. And the Empress of China is a great restaurant in Chinatown that we went to on a previous trip. Sean stepped out of the elevator from the restaurant and was face to face with Cindy Crawford! I didn't see her, but I woudn't have minded ending up face to face with her then-hubby, Richard! <s> The gay parade was a blast and it was huge! Quite colorful and fun. The conference was also huge and very interesting. I bought a ticket to the exhibits and visited them with Sean. I love books so I had a great time. There were several authors signing their books too. We took the train down to Aikido West one evening. We caught a bus to the train station and then caught the train to Redwood City and then our ex-sensei, Jane, picked us up and took us to the dojo. It was very easy and cheap and we could see some of the countryside. I enjoyed it a lot. The train is a very good way to get around if you are going a distance.
August 1997: Royal Olympic cruise to Greek
Islands and Turkey. I went by myself, it was a birthday present from Sean.
I also spent 3 days before the cruise in Athens at the Divani Caravel and
saw Delphi and the Acropolis/Parthenon.
I loved Greece, but had some problems with Royal Olympic. I DO
NOT recommend them as a cruise line. Here is my review:.Royal
Olympic Greek Cruise Review
September 1997: Info on our Carnival cruise in September with the first annual Cruise Bash from the Cruise Compuserve forum on Carnival's Eastern Mediterranean Cruise on the Sensation.! and Read my Review of the Carnival Sensation and Cruise.
Click
on Carnival Ship for pictures from the BASH!!!
This was a great cruise and I highly recommend Carnival. They were an excellent value and the cruise was a LOT of fun! And as always, if you want more info on the places or cruise line, email me.
November 1997: Sean went to the San Diego Surfing Academy. It was TERRIBLE! DO NOT GO! Here is the review of it: Review of San Diego Surf Academy
December 1997: I had a Borland conference in Washington DC and Sean came along with me for the first 4 days (we went early and had the weekend there too). We had a great time! We were near the metro so we went all over. Sean got to see the Star Wars exhibit at the Smithsonian. We both went to the main ASU Aikido Dojo in the US which is in Tacoma Park (suburb of DC) and trained and I was lucky enough to get to train there on Tues and Wed when Saotome Sensei, the head of our organization was teaching! I was very lucky. It is very easy to get to the dojo from the metro too. We also got to visit my uncle and cousins and had dinner with our travel agent and her husband. And the conference was fantastic too. I learned a lot more about Java, C++ and Delphi. If you ever get to DC, go to the Smithsonian! It is free and is just off a metro stop and could keep you amused for a good solid week! I never see as much of it as I want to. Sean and I plan to just go to DC for a week sometime and train at the dojo and visit the Smithsonian. Sounds great to me! Also, DC has the best metro system I have been on. Paris is second-best, in my experience and was very good, but DC is best. It goes everywhere, runs frequently, is cheap, is easy to use and has lots of friendly metro employees who are very happy to help you if you are confused. I have heard that London's metro and Atlanta's metro is good to but I haven't ridden them. Sean's review of the Washington DC dojo.
December 1997: We had hoped to visit my mom in Clearwater Florida and also maybe go to Sarasota for Aikido Winter Camp but I am in the process of transitioning from my current company to IBM and I couldn't get the vacation. Hopefully we can visit and do camp next year.
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