Fall Foliage Tour 2013

Well.... it's time to get this blog started again. Now that I have rejoined the ranks of the unemployed, we will start traveling again. We left home this morning at 6.30am. The weather in Houston was gorgeous, so now we leave for other shores. Mike and Gill picked us up to get us to George Bush Intercontinental Airport in time for our 8.45am flight. Fortunately we missed the traffic to the airport and got there with plenty of time to spare. We checked in yesterday, so all we needed to do was drop off our luggage at the United counter. As is United's way these days, the lady behind the counter did her best to ignore us and did us a huge favor in checking in both of our under-weight suitcases. We were allocated the "Pre" security clearance. This meant that we did not need to take off our shoes or belts, take our laptops out of our bags or empty our pockets of everything. What a pleasure! Boarding the plane with group 1 is easy, with lots of overhead luggage space. We were upgraded to Business/First. The seats were comfortable with live TV. We actually took off on time; a rare event for United Airlines these days. The service on board was good. We were served a pleasing breakfast of scrambled eggs, fresh cut fruit, yoghurt and pastries. I skipped the pastries. Gotta lose some weight. This flight was a perfect opportunity to work on some video editing, while wearing my Quiet Comfort Bose 15 headphones. The headphones really improve the flight experience; cutting out the painful whooshing aircraft noise. We landed at Newark 20 minutes early, BUT guess what? Our onward flight to Providence is an hour late. Here we go again.. This messes up our next two arrangements for Providence. Then we were told that the plane is only 10 minutes late. Then we were told it is now 40 minutes late. Boy, can United mess you around! So we eventually left an hour late. We arrived in Providence, received our baggage very quickly at the carousel and walked across the sky bridge to the car rental facility. It is an absolute pleasure to use National, where we simply pick the car we want; any car on the lot, and drive out. All we need to do is show our drivers license at the exit booth. Quick and very easy! The drive to our boutique hotel in Providence was short. even though it was rush hour, it only took around 20 minutes. Our hotel was located on the very picturesque De Pasquale Plaza. The hotel Dolce Villa was interesting. No elevators, so up the stairs with our luggage. The rooms use a number combination lock. No keys or key cards. The room was large. Actually it had two bedrooms, a sitting room and a kitchen. It was clean and functional, but not quaint or pretty. We met our cruise buddies, who we hadn't seen for over four years. We walked to the Trinity Brew house, where we sampled some of their beers. Their strawberry ale was delicious, but had an alcohol content over 12%! It was a most enjoyable two hours, catching up on news and family events. We walked them back to the car. Shortly thereafter, we met up with an old high school friend and his fiancee. We enjoyed a wonderful meal at Siena. We returned to our hotel tired after a days travel and an evening of dining with old time friends.