After four weeks away, we’re finally home back in Portugal. Although holidays are AWESOME, coming home is always wonderful. To walk back in to your own home, sleep in your own bed and be able to cook and relax in peace.
Coming home this time though, that didn’t exactly happen… While we were away, we had some work done to our open plan downstairs – all the walls were showing cracks so they had to be rubbed down and fixed before painting. This took time. Longer than I anticipated, so when we arrived home on Wednesday (after a long couple of days of travelling), we were greeted with a house covered in fine dust. When you’ve been on holiday, that’s not what you want to come home to, I can tell you! Even though we had been pre-warned, I just wanted to cry.
But no time for that. We quickly put our luggage into the spare room (which was jam packed full of furniture) and started hoovering, wiping down everything and mopping the floor. And when there’s so much dust, this doesn’t actually do very much! And we still had to go out and re-stock the kitchen with food. By seven in the evening, we were pretty knackered but at least the house was a bit cleaner. We’d managed to move the telly back in and brought in one sofa. We lit the fire just to take the edge off, and had some freshly cooked dinner before zonking out for the night. Sigh… coming home wasn’t quite the way I’d hoped.
They’re still working on the house, but slowly and surely, we’re bringing in bits of furniture to make it more like home again. I can’t wait until it’s all done!
I still can’t quite believe that a few days ago, we were living it up in New York. It’s weird, isn’t it? That feeling of knowing you were on holiday but it starts to feel like ages ago? I’ve been looking through some of our photos and they really put a smile on my face. We had such a blast but OMG was it freezing cold! Up until now, we’ve always enjoyed taking ‘cold’ holidays but I think I’ve finally come to the realisation that I’m not into that as much as I used to be lol. I don’t ever want to feel that cold again brrrrrrrr. Honestly, you Americans that live in the north, you’re a hardy folk, you are! I take my hat off to you. I couldn’t live in it.
But apart from the cold, it was amazing. We started our travels in Boston which was mostly a beautiful city. And we did see quite a lot of it because we walked miles. On the third day though, when my eyelashes (not to mention my nostrils) were frozen solid and my mascara gave me panda eyes every time we thawed out, I couldn’t do it any more. I just couldn’t take that frigid cold. It hurt! On the last day, we went to the Boston Tea Party Museum which was amazing. Have you been? It’s so well done with actors, I’d highly recommend it.
We then headed northwest near Burlington, Vermont, where we had to change hire cars because our windscreen liquid was frozen solid! This was a bit of a palaver, because it took five cars until we eventually got one that wasn’t frozen. We ended up with a nice standard SUV although the radio didn’t work. But we just couldn’t be bothered to go back. Our best meal of the holiday was there, right next door to our hotel is a fabulous restaurant called The Lighthouse. I had the most yummy steak and hubby had some delicious salmon which was beautifully presented. Pictures to come in a future post.
After a few days, we headed south to Saratoga Springs which was stunning. Just a shame that it was too damn cold to get out and see the town properly. We did try but only managed 20 minutes! Plus, whilst there, hubby got sick so we spent one full day holed up in our (amazing) hotel room. We think he might have eaten a bit of a dodgy seafood, poor thing. But at least we were super comfy. The Grand Pavilion Hotel was stunning and has a fully equipped kitchen so if you’re ever there, I can’t recommend it enough. Ithaca was next. Sadly, our hotel room was a bit of a disaster. There was just no soundproofing whatsoever so we left a day early.
Isn’t this a fab skull rug?
I’m actually glad we did because we were supposed to drive all the way to Rhode Island and that would’ve been a bit too much of a drive. So we stopped in a place called Nyack and overnighted at a fabulous hotel called The Time Hotel (see pics, above), before arriving at our gorgeous little East Island Reserve ‘cottage‘ near Midtown. What a super place. I’d definitely go back there. Whilst in Rhode Island, we admired the most beautiful houses (pretty much everywhere) especially on Cape Cod. Now that is one place I’d LOVE to return to, but perhaps in the Summer / Autumn? We also did a spot of shopping whilst there…
Little did I know after we took this photo that hubby would buy me a gorgeous Citizen watch in the shop behind us!
And then to our final destination: New York. We’d been once before back in January of 2009 and loved it then. And this time we loved it even more. It really is the greatest city in the world, isn’t it? Even though we bought metro passes, we still managed to do the most ridiculous amount of walking. I think we did about 17kms each day! Our legs were killing us by the end. But it was so worth it.
A particular highlight was meeting Jackie (above), a social networking friend of mine who I ‘met’ (online) last year via Instagram! We went out for pizza together, then popped into Desigual for a spot of shopping before she showed us around the beautiful New York public library (which I wanted to see since watching The Day After Tomorrow lol). New York really is a million miles away from our everyday lives in Portugal with all the high rise buildings and super shops which is perhaps why we love it so much. It’s one of those places that you could never tire of visiting. To be honest, at this stage, I wasn’t really that keen on coming home lol.
Now though, it’s back to home life in the Algarve – which is much quieter and considerably warmer lol!! And back to work… I know I neglected the blog while I was away but I’ve got tonnes of wonderful stuff to share with you. Like the most stunning leather boots, an amazing travel handbag, some very pretty tights, jewellery, not to mention some lingerie too! I’ve got some great plans this year too which I’m excited about. Coming home really is wonderful so please do stay tuned 😀
LINK-UPS
FOLLOW SUZY TURNER...
