bobmacliberty

Have a great trip JC. I'm looking forward to watching from my desk.

@Keksie - I wouldn't worry too much about the Biltmore grand staircase. The rise for each step is fairly small and the staircase is very wide. Plenty of room for both those who want to take it slow and those who are in a hurry and want to go faster. The gardens are very large and require a bit of walking. The garden area has some smaller sets of stairs and a few gentle slopes. They are well worth visiting. The longest walk is probably from the parking lot to the house.

I too love seeing photos of your walks around the city. I often pull up Google Maps and follow along, trying to find the same vantage point where you took your photos. It's sort of like virtually being there. Do you track the length of your walks? Seems like they are always several miles long.

My Cousin Vinny is currently showing on AMC. Gotta go!

Have a great time in Madrid Dani. My daughter lived there for a while and we spent Christmas there one year. What a great city. We stayed by the Puerta del Sol and I was amazed at the number of people who were out walking every night, even Christmas Eve when I thought everyone would be home. There is a nice gourment eating experience with a variety of food booths on the 9th floor of the El Corte Ingles department store by the Plaza del Callao. Great views including sunsets.

So Taylor likes Kraken Alexanders?

The world would be a boring place if everyone thought like I do (although certainly better 😁). Since I'm quoting famous people... "To each his own..." - Shakespeare in Macbeth

This is what drove me crazy. My brain is much more technical than creative. Looking through all of the options and trying to figure out what looks best creatively would get me frustrated. Too many choices. We have friends that will just upload all photos and then auto generate a book from a theme. They'd do almost no customization at all. The books didn't make sense to the perfectionist in me, like having a suitcase or plane graphic on a page where none of the pictures were travel oriented. But they have several books now and invested almost zero energy in creating them, while I still have none. "Perfection is the enemy of progress" - Winston Churchill.

I don't know how young families can afford Disney. Tickets alone for 2 or 3 days for a family of 4 can be outrageous. Throw in a hotel and possibly airline tix and you're talking about an expensive proposition. I have a friend who's 30 year old daughter and husband are Disney freaks. They live in St. Augustine, about 2 hours away, and have had annual Florida resident passes for several years. Several times a year, they'll drive down for a day. They said this will be their last year because it has become so expensive.

I tried creating a photo book from a one week vacation a few years back. Almost certainly many fewer photos than your project. I drove myself crazy with all of the layout, background, text, and graphic options. The perfectionist in me wanted it to look perfect, like the professionally made sample books on the web site. I ultimately experienced overload and gave up. Maybe (maybe), your experience will make me try again. Having a book on a coffee table will make us look at pictures that otherwise will be buried on a hard drive (or in a shoe box). I'm sure all of your hard work will be worth it when you get the finished product!

We had an enjoyable day on Thursday with our daughter at Universal Studios. I'm glad we did it because we got to spend a whole day with her, but I don't think it was worth the money otherwise. The website shows that a single day, single park ticket "starts" at $109pp. By the time I entered the date that we'd be going, the actual price became $149pp. I didn't see $109 anywhere on the calendar. Remind anyone of Royal pricing? Since we wouldn't arrive until 11:00, I decided to splurge on Express Passes to minimize line waiting time. Those "start" at $90pp but became $160 after entering the specific date. Yup...express passes were more than the tickets themselves. Net, it was more than $300 per person total. That's just stupid. My hope was that an Express Pass would be like the old Disney Fast Passes were you'd join the queue with about 5 minutes of waiting left. Nope. We started with the Despicable Me Minion Mayhem ride since it's the first ride that you come to. The regular line was estimated at 55 minutes, which is shorter than more crowded days when it's well over an hour. The Express line took about 25 minutes. We worked our way through a couple of pre-show rooms and finally moved into the main theater and sat in our seats. It's a 3D simulator ride so they have a safety bar that lowers, but they couldn't get the bar lowered. They stalled for a few minutes with some trivia questions while trying to fix it, but then gave up and told everyone to leave the ride. Bad start. At least we were able to enjoy the ride later in the day. About an hour later, we had a similar experience with the Fast & Furious ride. A 30 minute wait in line with us being the next group to get loaded onto the ride "party bus". An empty bus (ride vehicle) showed up, sat there for a couple of minutes, the doors closed, and the empty bus left. This happened for 3 or 4 buses while they essentially emptied the entire ride. An announcement came on about a temporary delay but the supervisor couldn't tell us how long it would take. After about 10 minutes, we gave up and left. I'm glad we didn't wait longer. Every time we checked the app later in the day, the ride was still listed as delayed, and we never got to ride it. I think it was down for the rest of the day. We enjoyed many of the other rides. The Jimmy Fallon Race through New York was surprisingly fun. Revenge of the Mummy was a great indoor, dark roller coaster...our second favorite ride of the day. The Transformers and Simpsons rides were more of the same...3D/4D simuluator rides...but unless you're a big fan of either show/movie, the story line isn't as much fun. The Bourne Stuntacular was a live action stunt show seemlessly blended into a huge, high definition screen. Pretty cool. The best section of the park, in our opinion and it seems most other's opinions, was the Wizarding World of Harry Potter - Diagon Alley. The environment that they created is pretty spectacular. There are several places where you can wave a magic wand (that you of course have to buy) and make various things happen. All of the stores from the books/movies were there like Olivander's and Borgin and Burkes. The butterbeer was very tasty (if you like butterscotch, which I do). The highlight though was the Escape from Gringotts ride. It was a blend of motion simulation and a real roller coaster. Lots of fun. I took a few videos of the Gringotts bank lobby as we entered but we were moving through that area quickly and didn't want to bother the people behind us. Impressive animatronics. Untitled video (4).mp4 There's a second HP area in the other Universal theme park called Islands of Adventure. The 2 areas are connected with what's supposed to be a great ride called the Hogwarts Express. You need to purchase a Park to Park ticket letting you visit both parks in the same day to enjoy the ride, so we didn't get to experience it. We finished the evening with a good meal at Bigfire in the Universal Citywalk area. We had Bourbon Cheese Fondue as an appetizer and I had an 8oz. filet mignon with charred truffle mushrooms for my entree. I put some leftover fondue on a couple of bites of the filet with a mushroom and it was VERY tasty. Micheline and Andie both had Salmon, which they said was excellent. As I said in the beginning of this already too long post, I'm glad we went because we got to spend a day with our daughter. But I don't see us going back to Universal anytime soon. Maybe when we have grandkids and they're old enough to enjoy it. That's at least 10 years away and the price for a family at that point could be more than a cruise!

Spectacular, especially the sunset. I love palm trees silhouetted against a colorful sunset.

I had a business meeting in Panama City a few years ago. A group of us boarded a bus for a group dinner at the Miraflores Visitors Center. We were to eat while watching ships transit the locks. We were literally about a mile from the visitor's center when traffic came to a complete stop and didn't move...for about 45 minutes. We finally made the decision to give up, turn the bus around, and drive back to the hotel. We had bad pizza in a little place around the corner from the hotel. Never did find out what happened to cause the traffic problem. Thanks @twangster for letting me finally see the Miraflores locks. 😁

Micheline highly recommends these. She won’t travel without them. Comfortable and block out a lot of noises, like snoring for example. 😉 https://www.amazon.com/Macks-Pillow-Soft-Silicone-Earplugs/dp/B07G1MWHNR/ref=mp_s_a_1_1_sspa

Made it to Orlando. We have a few hours to kill before dinner and decided to go to the Orlando Vineland Premium Outlets for a little shopping. Went into this store and thought of you Graham @grapau27.

I'm just now finding this. Love a good @twangster review. Looks like I'm just in time for the main attractions.

We are headed down to Orlando today. Our younger daughter will turn 25 on Friday. She's the one that used to dance competitively and now coaches a couple of dance teams. They have a competition this weekend at the Hilton Orlando/Convention Center. She flies in early tomorrow morning but the competition doesn't start until Friday morning, so we'll pick her up at the airport and head to Universal Studios for the day tomorrow. She wants to see the new(ish) Harry Potter area. Since we won't get to the park until around 11:00, I figured we'd better get Express Passes so that we're not waiting in line for hours. 3 Adult tickets plus 3 Express Passes (separate from the ticket) is like taking out a mortgage on a house. Wow. Micheline will also give her this to wear at the competition on Friday...her actual birthday. Since we won't be at the competition, she's told the other coaches to make sure that she wears it. Parenting can be fun. 😁 Amazon.com: BRT Bearingshui 25th Birthday Sash and Tiara for Women, Rose Gold Birthday Sash Crown 25 & Fabulous Sash and Tiara for Women, 25th Birthday Gifts for Happy 25th Birthday Party Favor Supplies : Home & Kitchen

Joking aside, I'd love to see Apple get rid of all proprietary formats, both hardware and software. Why does the lightning port still exist instead of USB-C? There's too much money involved for that to happen.

There's an easy fix for that OB. 😜 Since John's not here yet, here's the video converted to .mp4 format for you sensitive Samsung users. Untitled video (2).mp4

Looks fantastic and the dogs do appear to love it. Your video would be a good promo video for the company that did the work.

They're moving very fast! Is this a one day job? I would have thought at least 2 days. I'm thinking about putting an artificial putting green in our back yard but it would take some leveling work and installing drains. I guessed that would take several days but maybe not.

Smart move. I took surfing lessons in Hawaii in 2008 with my daughter who was then 13. I can't remember if she needed an adult to join her or if I just didn't want her to do it alone. It wore me out completely. If I tried it today, 15 years older, I think it would kill me!

I just watched the final Carpool Karaoke for The Late Late Show with James Corden. Is there a better singer right now than Adele? I'm not talking about all time but rather singers who are in their prime right now. Maybe Lady Gaga?? Adele's voice is just incredible.

We're 2 episodes into it and liking it a lot. No spoilers! Keri Russell is great but I also like Ato Essandoh playing Keri's right hand man (first secretary??).