A little over a week ago Megan and I went on vacation to Mexico. We wanted to use our passports this year for vacation and we also did not have much time this past spring to really plan out a trip, so an all-inclusive resort seemed like the perfect sort of trip. 

We booked our travel arrangements through Costco Travel and I have to say that I was super impressed. The itinerary that Costco provided was very thorough and they were even quick to assist me with a passport issue a couple days before. If you happen to have a Costco membership I would highly recommend you take a look at the travel options. 

Let me start of this series of blog posts by stating that I had an absolutely wonderful time in Mexico. The people were absolutely wonderful there and it really was an incredibly charming country. I wouldn't hesitate at all in recommending someone go there for a vacation and I would absolutely go back. We were impressed at how friendly not only the employees in the tourist areas were, but how friendly and genuine all of the Mexicans who were also vacationing were. We met a wonderful man named Luis who was vacationing from Mexico City and he just sort of summed up the who feeling we got about Mexico. More about him later though. 

Our flight leaving Chicago from O'Hare was of course delayed. Megan and I were stuck sitting in the airplane at the gate for about forty five minutes while another passenger had to deal with a passport issue. I guess they didn't have Costco Travel. Once we left Chicago our landing was also delayed in Cancun by about another hour due to a major storm in the area. Finally though we were able to land and get into Cancun where we hopped on a shuttle at took an hour ride south to Playa Del Carmin where our hotel was the Royal Hideaway Playacara.

We arrived at our hotel close to 5:30 that evening and it was a long day. I have to say though that the hotel was incredibly impressive, as were most of the hotels we saw. All of the hotels had these incredible, open courtyards. When we checked in we were seated at a desk and met one on one with the staff to get our keys while they gave us lemon towels for hour hands, champagne and chocolate. The concierge then made a reservation for us at the hotel's restaurant while we had our luggage brought to our villa. 

Now the hotel was gorgeous. All of the guest rooms were set in several villas that housed about twelve rooms apiece around the property. The villas had open courtyards in the center of each and they each villa had its own concierge who would help setup dinner reservations, etc. 

Our dinner that evening was at one of the four restaurants at the hotel and it was called Azia. As you can expect it featured Asian inspired cuisine. We order sushi and sake, had a few cocktails and then Megan ordered a Salmon dish and I had roasted duck in a curry sauce. 

Our first full day at the hotel was us just basically hanging out at the beach. The large storm from the day before made for some good waves and we had fun just swimming in the ocean, which was quite a bit warmer than the pool. Breakfast each morning was always fantastic. It was a large buffet with all sorts of Mexican food, a huge assortment of fruits (Chinese pomegranate anyone?) as well as fresh smoothies, omelets, etc. Fresh orange juice was also always served. 

The past couple of trips that I have taken have been to major metropolitan areas. New Orleans, Sand Diego, New York, etc. I have found that my iPhone has been invaluable in these areas when trying to find my way around the cities and finding things to do. Here is a list of my favorite travel apps (for the city)

Transit

I put this one first because I think it is the least well known of the bunch. Transit is a must if you are in a city where you will be using public transit. Open it up and you can instantly see all of the public transit options around you. What is really nice is that you can set your destination on the map and it will automatically calculate your public transit options for you. It also has real-time updates of routes for those cities that make that data available. 

Foursquare

The split of Foursquare last year was a tough one, but to be honest I have found it to probably be good for the company in the way the apps are used. The new Foursquare is a way to find things around you and is more than just for restaurants, but that is where it excels. I like it over Yelp, because it categorizes restaurants and locations using a crowd sourced tagging system, which I think is very efficient. It is super easy to pop the app open and see what are the best tags at a place for food, etc. 

Swarm

Swarm is the other off shoot app that came from the Foursquare separation. I not longer find it quite as useful, but checking in is still a fun process, especially if you are separated from other people on your trip, it makes for a fun way to keep track of where someone has been throughout the day. I still miss my favorite app of all time, Gowalla so let's hope Swarm can take some of those old Gowalla ideas, like the geocaching aspect and make the game more fun. 

Foodspotting

Foodspotting is a great app that should get more attention. It has a bit of overlap with Foursquare in its purpose, but it's strengths lie in its reliance on photos. Instead of just reading about what is good at a restaurant, instead see what other people have taken pictures of and read how they liked it. It is a sort of app that if you are really into food, then it is a must have. 

Evernote

Not much I can say about this one, that I haven't already said. I store a lot of info in here and for vacation planning it is ideal for throwing all of your receipts, digital tickets, event lists, to dos and other stuff for your vacation in here. I even throw in .PDf files of maps or brochures which I can easily bring up on a moment's notice.  

This past week I had an opportunity to goto New Orleans. Megan was having her annual art educator's conference there and I tagged along like I usually do. I never really had a desire to go to New Orleans before. I always sort of imagined it as a  sort of drunken college town (and it is that)  but I was pleasantly surprised after my weekend there. I was able to genuinely find some great music, great food and some great history. 

Day 1 - Thursday

We flew in to the city Thursday afternoon. We checked into our hotel which was located in the rehabilitated Warehouse district and then went out and got our bearings of the city. Our hotel was the Renaissance Arts Hotel which Megan thought was cool because it had a Chihuly sculpture in the lobby. Food was foremost on our minds though and we got some fantastic Happy Hour drinks and food at the Swizzle Stick Bar and had some gumbo and turtle soup. We then made our way to the downtown area and had some beignets a Cafe du Monde and checked out our first glimpse at the French Quarter. 

The night wrapped up with us taking a stroll through Bourbon Street late that night to see what it was. It was pretty much exactly what I thought it was. Expensive bars with crappy cover bands. We saw strip clubs and twenty or so drunken people standing in the street laughing at people who walked through horse manure. We decided pretty quickly that we had our fill. 

Day 2 - Friday

Day 2 had me heading out to a bayou kayaking tour. It is amazing how much of the area around New Orleans is really just swamp and bayou. There are almost no suburbs in the way that we think of them and everything is basically just under water. The kayak tour was a lot of fun. 

I was able to get some good tips for checking out some places in the area from our guides. I ended up going to Mother's Restaurant for lunch and had a huge po' boy sandwich and mustard greens. I had a chance to head back down to the square to to get some photos and found a bunch of street performers out and about.  I then attempted to see some of the old cemeteries, but the main one in the city just outside of the French Quarter unfortunately required you to go with a tour and it closed at 3:00 PM, so I was out of luck on that. Megan and I met back up and we had dinner at a place called Cochon. It was good, but honestly it reminded me a lot of a Chicago restaurant like Carriage House or something. 

We then decided to spend an hour over at the Harrah's casino which seemed to dominate the downtown area. I put in $2 in the slot machine and ended up with $8, which Megan then quickly made disappear. 

Day 3 - Saturday

Saturday was a really fun day. I started out at the World War II Museum, which was quite impressive. If anyone has a chance to go see it do so. There is a really great interactive movie there that features Tom Hanks that is very immersive. The museum is really well made and features a really heartbreaking but also partially romantic look back at the war. I thought they did a particularly good job at covering the Pacific front of the war which all too often seems to be overlooked. 

I then left the museum and headed out on the trolly to finally get to see the cemeteries. This time I went to the Greenwood Cemetery to the north. It was an interesting place and it was neat to see the gravestones dating back to the 1800's. From there I met back up with Megan and we grabbed a bite to eat and killed some time in the afternoon before making our way over to Frenchman's street for the evening. Now if you want to see some local music that isn't cover bands it seems that Frenchman's Street is the place to be. We got luck and found a seat at the bar of a place called 3 Muses. They had an amazing jazz ensemble with a clarinetist, accordion player, guitarist and upright bass player. We spent our evening there and had a wonderful time. It really was the perfect way to close out New Orleans. 

Day five was our last day in the park and had us transferring up to the Tuolumne Meadows. I really wish I had spent some more time in this part of the park and to be honest it really was the feature of the High Sierra Mountains. I will plan a trip again in a few years to hit up this section of the park. 

Much of the meadows are still covered in snow through early July so this time of the year is the prime time to hit up the meadows. Their altitude is right around 8,600 feet. The high temperature was in the low sixties with a low in the low thirties at night. 

Since we only had half a day to spend in this part of the park we basically focused on tow areas. We hiked up the Lembert Dome to view the entire area and then went to check out the meadows themselves and hiked over to the Soda Springs and the Parsons Lodge, which was a lodge built by the Sierra Club for their meetings. 

Overall a satisfying hike, but I can see that there are some amazing day hikes in this area that I want to do in the future. 

Overall Yosemite was wonderful. A bit more crowded then I had hoped, but I did sort of go during the peak of tourist season though. 

You can see all of my photos over at Flickr

Day four had Megan and I splitting up. Her feet had given up on her so she did a photo walk with the Ansel Adams Gallery. I decided to do my big hike for day which included the Four Mile Trail (which isn't four biles), the Panorama Trail and then back down the John Muir Trail. I think my total distance was around 16 miles. 

The Four Mile Trail was surprisingly brutal on the way up. I was unprepared for the steep switchbacks on this trail and being that it was late in the week, but legs just didn't have a lot in them. On the trail though I met a lot of interesting people and ended up chatting with a group from South Carolina, Philadelphia and Wisconsin. Ironically the group from South Carolina had an extra permit for their Half Dome hike the next day and they offered it to me. Unfortunately, I was leaving the valley the next day and even if I wasn't I think my legs were too far gone to do the Half Dome. 

We actually finished off the evening by grabbing a nice chair and table at the lodge in Curry Village and playing some Hive while eating some huge ice cream sundaes. 

You can see all of my photos over at Flickr

Our third day in the park was our first full day in the Valley. This would have been my day to do the Half Dome, but I unfortunately was unable to obtain a permit to do the hike. What we did instead was hike up the Mist Trail to the Vernal Falls and then ultimately the Nevada Falls. These were both pretty rigorous hikes, but the first portion of the Mist Trail was paved for the first mile or so. I was actually pretty amazed at how many people I saw who seemed unprepared for the hike, wearing sandals and tank tops. 

We ultimately made it up to the Nevada Falls and there was a really nice pool at the top of the water fall to cool our feet off. On our hike down we decided to take the less steep John Muir Trail. This was brutal for Megan and the trip  took quite a while down since it really bothered her knees. 

We also visited the Awahanee Hotel, which is the beautiful hotel in the valley that everyone who has money stays at. 

That evening we went on the stargazing tour, which put us on a bus from the valley back up to Glacier Point. Yes, I did go there a lot. The star gazing tour featured a great tour of  the night sky. We were only able to stay until about 11:00, but you could just barely begin to see the Milky Way coming out. I wish we could have stayed until 2-3 AM though when the Milky Way really comes out. 

You can see all of my photos over at Flickr

Day two in the park had us transferring down to Yosemite Valley. My initial intention on this day was to drive down to the valley and then hike up to Glacier Point. After looking at some maps and seeing some recommendations I noted that it would be quicker for us to just drive up to Glacier Point since it was on our way. This ended up being the ideal solution, especially since Megan's blisters were bad. We were able to get to Glacier Point fairly early in the morning and avoided most of the crowd. We were not disappointed by the view. 

Next, on our way back down the mountain we stopped by Taft Point and Sentinel  Dome. Both of these hikes were very light, approximately 1.1 miles each and both again rewarded us with some great views. They were well worth the hikes and probably my favorite parts of the trip. 

That evening we may our way into the Valley and then checked into Curry Village, with three nights to be spent in the Valley.  

You can see all of my photos over at Flickr

Finally I have had the opportunity to get all of my photos uploaded online from my trip. 

The first two nights in the park we spent at the Wawona Hotel. This was a gorgeous hotel that was built around the turn of the last century. It had a really nice quaint  feel to it and it was one of these places that it is surprising that there was even electricity. It all made for a really quiet experience though. Everyone had the windows open to their rooms and all of the guests were out and about in Adirondack chairs. 

Our first full day at the park was at the Mariposa Grove. This is the most famous grove of Redwoods in the park. We decided to hike the ~6 mile trail from the hotel to the grove. In retrospect I would not have done this again and I would not recommend people to do this in the future. It was not a particularly scenic hike and unfortunately Megan got some major blisters on day one. In the future I would just recommend people to take the shuttle and spend their energy instead hiking up to the vista point in the Mariposa Grove. 

The Wowona Hotel also had an excellent dining room and we had two very nice dinners while were staying there. I had pot roast and trout on each of the nights and the second night I had pine nut pie for dessert.

You can see all of my photos over at Flickr

This past week I spent a wonderful time in Yosemite National Park. I have hundreds of photos to sort through so I will hopefully get those up as daily posts later this week. We brought along an old Olympus OM-1 on on this trip so I am waiting for 10 rolls of film to be developed. I hope they turn out because it was a ton of fun shooting with that camera. 

Overall I had a really enjoyable time on this trip, but I was not in love with the volume of people in the park. I guess it isn't that surprising really, but there were people everywhere, especially in the valley. Megan had a tough time of it hiking, too. She had blisters on her feet after day one. She suffered through it the best she could and we ultimately got to see some great areas of the park. I think I definitely want to go back in the near future and hit up the Tuolumne Meadows. We unfortunately only were there for half a day and that honestly looked like it was one of the more interesting sections of the park in the High Sierra.