K’s Birthday Trip- Day 1- Lisbon, Portugal

My sister, Kristina, turns 50 this year. For her 50th birthday, she decided she wanted to have a girl’s trip to an international location. She chose Portugal for the first part of the trip with family members and friends. Then to Italy for just a family members portion of the trip. 

Kristina let us all know about a year in advance so we could plan accordingly. There were 13 people on the Portugal portion of the trip. There were six family members and seven of Kristina’s friends.

Since there were so many people coming on the trip, Kristina hired a travel agent to plan the Portugal portion of the trip. 

I arrived a day later than everyone because I couldn’t take off so much work. But the first day they didn’t have any official activities planned so by the time I got there on the second day I had only missed one activity (tuk tuk rides through Lisbon). 

I got picked up from the airport and had them take me straight to the Pastel de Nata cooking class. I arrived a little late but still got to help in the process and also eat some of the finished product. 😋

Pastel de Natas are Portuguese egg custard tarts and are popular in Portugal. 

Ricardo was our main teacher. 

The dough before we put them in the mini pie tins. 

Alicia filling the pie tins with the custard. The lady in the far left of the picture was the assistant teacher, Veronica. 

The finished product! I thought they tasted delicious!

At that point I hadn’t had any other pastel de natas but even after trying other ones, I still think ours were pretty good!

Our group waiting for the pastel de natas to come out of the oven. 

It was a fun (and delicious 😋) class and I am glad that I was to join them.

After the cooking class, we had some free time. So we were shuttled back to our Airbnb in vans. 

I hadn’t been to the Airbnb yet but it was a nice place. It was clean, in a good location, and it was big enough for all of us. I don’t think I took any pictures of the inside of the Airbnb. Oh well. 

The picture above was the view when you walked out the front door of the building and turned left.

Heather, Mom and I walked to a nearby pharmacy because Heather needed to pick up something there. 

The picture above and the next six pictures were from our walk to and from the pharmacy. 

I liked these doors and the colors of the shutters above the doors. 

I thought this was a cool looking car!

The church near where we were staying. 

Another cool looking car!

This evening we went to a dinner in another part of Lisbon. This picture and the next were near where we ate dinner that night. 

We had a multiple course dinner with musical numbers in between the courses. This particular type of music played at restaurants is called Fado music. 

It’s common in Portugal to have these types of shows. 

We had three courses and we had multiple choices for each course. (I did not get a picture of each course).

For my three courses I had: 

-Croquetes de Alheira 

-Free range chicken with poached egg (I’m not entirely sure if this is what I got for my second course but I think so). 

-Velvety Hazelnut Caramel and Vanilla

All of the people at our table at the Fado music dinner. 

One of the singers of the night. There were three singers, two ladies and one man. There were also two people playing musical instruments. All of the musicians were excellent!

My dessert! Delicious! 😋 

Another of the singers that night. 

We started dinner at 8 PM and did not leave until 11 PM. But it was a fun night with delicious food, good company and beautiful music. 

Overall this was a good day to start off my trip. :)

Washing Machine

One day at the end of August someone knocked on the door and said hey we have water coming down the ceiling of our apartment from your apartment. 

We soon found it was the washing machine causing the flooding. I had started a load about 5 minutes before and didn’t realize that the water was overflowing from the washing machine. I immediately turned it off. The carpet in front and around the washing machine was already soaking wet as well as some of the hallway carpet.

My brother and the downstairs neighbor immediately went to the front office and let them know. While they were at the office, I had been using towels to soak up the water. I think I got at least 6 bath towels soaking wet with water from the floor and could have been more if the maintenance people hadn’t come with the industrial size fans to put under the carpet. 

The picture above is what the hallway and my brother’s bedroom looked like for a few days.

I must admit this situation stressed me out. One reason was because the fans were so loud. Even if I went into my bedroom with the door closed, they were still loud. Also one of the fans had to be plugged in in the bathroom which meant we couldn’t close the door all of the way. So anytime my brother or I had to use the bathroom we had to let the other person know not to come near there until we were done. 

The first night after this incident, I asked one of my friends if I could stay in her spare bedroom for the night. Thankfully, she let me. I needed some calm amidst the chaos of my apartment. 

Since the load I had in the washing machine did not finish its cycle and I had no idea how long it would take the maintenance people to fix the washing machine, I decided I needed to go to a laundromat. I did the load that had been in the washing machine as well as a load of the soaking wet towels I had used to clean up the water. 

It was quite the adventure going to the laundromat. The machines only took quarters. So I had to get at least $20 worth of quarters, that was fun. ;) The laundromat was quite busy. Although I had brought a book to read, the place was a little too chaotic for me to concentrate on reading. I just listened to music and looked at my phone.

Here were some of the quarters I had to use the machines. A few days later the maintenance man came and fixed the washing machine in the apartment. (He found it was the sensor that told the washing machine that it was full enough). 

I will say this experience has made me appreciate having a washer and dryer in my apartment so I don’t have to go to the laundromat on a regular basis. In the past, I have lived without a washer and dryer in my apartment but the laundry room was still in the building. I have also lived in a place where I had to do my laundry by hand because there was no washer available anywhere nearby. These places were years ago though. 

I say all of this to say that I am grateful for having a washing machine and dryer in my apartment that doesn’t require quarters nor does it require me leaving my apartment. 
 

Visitor in Town

Back at the beginning of August, my brother who lives in Tennessee came to town for a day or two. 

On that Saturday morning he was here, I met Nate in downtown Washington D.C. and we walked to the Washington Monument, WWII Memorial, and Lincoln Memorial. I didn’t take a ton of pictures while I was downtown but here’s a couple from that day. 

The Washington Monument

Reflecting pool and Lincoln Memorial. We did walk all the way to the Lincoln Memorial too, but I did not get a picture of that. 

We were kind of in a hurry downtown because we needed to meet our other siblings (who live in the area) for lunch. 

I took the picture above at L’Enfant Plaza metro station. I don’t think I had ever been at that station before and I thought it looked kind of cool. 

  

All of my brothers (Matt, Pete, Nate, Tim) and I!

We met up at a BBQ place to eat lunch and hang out with Nate before his flight later in the evening. 

Part of the group that was there for lunch that day. A few people had already left and one person was taking the picture. 

I like this picture of my brother and niece and I from that day! 

It was fun to have Nate in town even if only for a short amount of time! Thanks for coming to visit. 

Shenandoah Caverns, Green Valley Book Fair, etc

Last month, my brother, Tim and I went on a little day trip one Saturday. The main point of the trip was to go to the Green Valley Book Fair and then to eat at Jack Brown’s Beer and Burger Joint in Harrisonburg, VA. 

We stopped at Buc-ee’s on the way to get gas and use the restroom (it also happened to be close to the book fair). This is the first Buc-ee’s in Virginia and it had just opened a few weeks before this so it was super busy. (Although I think a lot of Buc-ee’s are super busy). It was quite overwhelming.

I didn’t get any pictures at the Green Valley Book Fair. But it’s a large old barn that was converted into a book fair. It’s fun to look around because there are so many books! Even though in the past I’ve often found multiple books to buy, this time I only bought one book. 

After the book fair, I wanted to go to Jack Brown’s Beer and Burger Joint to try their burgers again. In case you didn’t know this is where me becoming a little bit of a burger snob started. 🤣

You can read, my initial post about visiting Jack Brown’s here. Then I wrote a follow up post a few years later with notes about burger places I’d visited. You can read about that here. 

I was really excited to try Jack Brown’s Beer and Burger Joint again to see if it was the same as I remember.

I must admit, I was quite disappointed by my burger this time. Jack Brown’s has definitely changed the way they make the burgers and it was not as juicy or as flavorful as the burger I had in 2014.

I know a lot can change for a restaurant in 11 years so it’s understandable. It was a little disappointing to me, though. Oh well, I still can dream about that one burger I had 11 years ago. 😋😂

I will say, though, their sweet potato fries were delicious!

After lunch, we got ice cream at a nearby ice cream shop, Kline’s Dairy Bar. This shop only has one to two flavors a week.

This week it was Honey Vanilla Crunch and I think Banana. I got Honey Vanilla Crunch and it was delicious! 

On our way to the book fair we kept on seeing signs for different caverns in the area. After lunch we had nothing else planned, so we decided to go to one of the caverns. 

We found this statue kind of creepy but still went ahead and visited the caverns. 😂

It cost a little bit to go in but it was a fun tour! This is a picture of cave bacon. 

These two structures are really close to touching, but are not yet touching. The tour guide said it will probably be another 10-15 years before they become one (even though they look so close now). 

A big boulder inside the cave. Pictures don’t really do the cave justice. It looks a lot cooler in real life. 

In front of the boulder from the picture above. 

The cave visitor's center had a mini post office. I bought some postcards from the gift shop and stamps from the post office and sent some postcards to a few family members from here. 

There was a little museum inside of the visitor's center and honestly it was a little creepy. These bears were the best part though. They actually moved and talked. 

The rest of the museum I could have done without. Oh well. I wanted to see everything since we were there and I probably won't go back again. 🤷😂

Some interesting statues close to the cave visitor's center. 

Tim had looked up things to do near the cave and found this cool covered bridge to visit, Meem's Bottom Covered Bridge. 

We parked near the bridge and this was the scenery around the bridge. 

So pretty!

Meem's Bottom Covered Bridge. 

I really enjoyed this day trip. It was a fun day and nice to have a change of scenery!

Photo Books

When I was a teenager I liked to scrapbook. I have multiple scrapbooks I made in my teens and early twenties. Honestly when I look at them now, I realize I was a very basic scrapbooker. All I did was tape or glue stick multiple pictures onto the front and back of cardstock and label who was in the picture, where it was located and the year. I didn’t have many pretty embellishments in my scrapbooks. 

An example of my basic scrapbooking from my early twenties. 

I stopped making scrapbooks in my twenties sometime, though, probably when digital photos became more of a thing and we didn’t have to take our rolls of film to be developed. The pictures were just on our camera or on a computer. 

Even though I have this blog (which I could consider an online scrapbook), during Covid I wanted to make physical photo books again. I didn’t want to buy all of the materials for actual scrapbooking, but I had heard about a couple of websites where you could upload your pictures, organize them in an online book and then they print it off and send it to you.

During Covid, I made a few photo books of previous trips I’d been on using mixbook.com. I sent copies of those photo books to the people I went on those trips with too. 

But then I stopped making photo books for a couple of years. But just a few weeks ago I had the urge to make another photo book, a book of my Europe trip last year that I went on with my brother, Tim. 

I love the way it turned out and wanted to share a few pages of the book!

The front cover

The back cover

Some Copenhagen pictures

More Copenhagen pictures

Kinderdijk pictures

Luxembourg pictures

The photo book has over 130 pages. But since it’s a printed book, the book is definitely slimmer than a scrapbook would have been with the same amount of pictures.

I like the photo books I have made online (especially my most recent one)! I find making the photo books online easier (once I got used to the website) and a little less time consuming than regular scrapbooking. I’m glad for these online services that are user friendly and will print the photo books for me. 

 

Food

This blogpost will be dedicated to delicious food I’ve eaten in the past month or so (that I actually remembered to take pictures of).  

I went to a couple of restaurants that I hadn’t been to before in the last month and I wanted to share about them. 

I met my sister-in-law, Karey, near Dupont Circle one Saturday a few weeks ago. We visited a cool used book store and then ate at Chiko, a Chinese Korean restaurant. I really enjoyed the food! 

Karey ordered Orange-ish Chicken (in the picture above). (Delicious!)

I ordered the Spicy Bulgogi Stir Fry. (So good!)

We also both ordered dumplings. (Yummy!)

We got our food and shared it so that we could both have a taste of the multiple items. I think both Karey and I enjoyed everything that we ate there! 

My friends, Cat and Rachel, invited me over for dinner on the 4th of July. I was in charge of bringing the dessert. I decided to make Oreo truffles. I really wanted to make the truffles a little festive so I set out to find some 4th of July sprinkles. Finding those sprinkles was a lot harder than I thought it would be. 

I had to visit five stores before finding 4th of July sprinkles. A lot of places had 4th of July decorations and sparklers and cupcakes and cookies, but not candy or sprinkles. I finally found them at Hobby Lobby. 

I really like the way my truffles turned out (both how they looked and tasted)!

A couple of Saturdays ago, I ate at Torchy’s Tacos for the first time. I got the Hogfather and the Chicken Fajita taco. I enjoyed both of them although I think I liked the Chicken Fajita taco slightly better. I would happily eat there again!

On the same day I got Torchy’s Tacos, I went to Mimi’s Handmade Ice Cream. I loved this ice cream! 

I got Butterscotch which is butterscotch flavored ice cream with candied pecans (I think pecans) in it. It was so good! The waffle cone was also fresh and delicious!

I just really wanted to share about some food I’ve eaten recently and I hope you’ve been able to eat some delicious food recently.