A Week in the Life: Paris

Just like my SF Bay Area trips, these trips are often much less exciting than people think.

First of all, even though I’m calling this “a week in the life”, our average duration is around 5 days. We usually come to Paris during major holidays – Chinese New Year, July 4th, Thanksgiving, Christmas…

However, unlike our SF trips, even though Paris is technically also about a 6-hour flight away from Boston, these trips are much more tiring.

We almost never actually fly direct so our flights are more like 10 hours once you count the extra flying and the layover. There are two main reasons why we do this. One, it’s more expensive to fly direct. Two, the direct flights are on Air France and as long as it’s not too inconvenient, we prefer to fly Star Alliance airlines for accumulating elite miles.
Although we leave Boston around the same time in the evening, because of the time difference, we end up arriving in the morning/early afternoon the next day instead of early enough the same evening in order to get decent sleep. So the day we arrive is always the most tiring because we didn’t get good quality sleep and then we normally have to start work shortly after we arrive. We generally arrive on Fridays as we leave Thursday evening, but for our current trip, we actually left later because we were in SF right before.
The flight home is super annoying because it’s generally on a workday unless we decide to extend our stay and fly out Sunday the following weekend. Plane wifi is unreliable so I usually take the day off.

Typical Weekday:

between 9am-12pm: wake up
morning/early afternoon: errands
around 3:00pm: lunch
afternoon/evening: work, work, work
around 10:00pm: dinner
between 12am-3am: finish work
early morning: sleep

Typical Weekend:

Honestly? More of the same, except with a bit less work. Usually consists of shopping in Paris, trying out a nice restaurant somewhere, meeting my husband’s best friend for tea or dinner…

Okay, I do have to admit, the good food here is a huge pro so I guess it helps balance out the crappy flight situation. The rest is just normal family time like anyone else’s.

For this visit in particular, we focused on two main things: buying a new car (the old one is like 20 years old or something) and the next family trip to Croatia. Normally, we would have a large family dinner for Chinese New Year, but A’s uncle is currently in China and the cousins are older and busier nowadays so it didn’t happen this year.

After very little time at home for the last 3 weeks, I’m looking forward to spending a couple days relaxing before heading out on the next adventure.

A Week in the Life: SF Bay Area

“Oh wow, you’re going to [insert hometown here] for a week? I’m so jealous!”

Don’t be. I personally love spending quality time with family, but it’s just everyday stuff that other people are most likely not interested in hearing about. However, since some people have a glamorized idea of what these trips are like, here’s the truth (trust me, it’s pretty mundane).

Let me just begin by saying that, during the week, I didn’t even leave the house AT ALL. This is roughly what each work day (as a software engineer) looked like while working remotely in CA:

Typical Weekday:

6:55am – wake up just in time for standup
7:00am – hide in bathroom/closet for standup b/c no one is awake yet
7:30am – eat breakfast
8:00am – meetings, meetings, meetings
2:00pm – track down root cause for broken tests
5:00pm – take a quick nap before people start coming home
7:00pm – everyone is home
8:00pm – dinner
9:00pm – edit family video while running tests (in the living room so that I can listen in on conversations)
12:00am – chat with Taiwan and Galway
1:00am – sleep

Technically, with the naps, I did end up getting roughly 8 hours of sleep per day, but didn’t feel like it at all.

Honestly, when we work remotely while hanging out with family, it’s much more tiring than when we’re home in Boston on a regular work day. This is because normally, once we’re home, we can just relax and do nothing. With family, there is always more to do. Of course, family trips typically last no longer than a week so it’s mostly fine short term. You can bet that when we get home, we end up taking a couple of days to relax (outside of work). For this particular trip, this is unfortunately not the case because we go from my family to my husband’s family immediately, but this is also out of the ordinary.

As for the weekend…

Saturday:

10:00am – drive to San Leandro to pick up Grandpa
11:00am – dim sum in Emeryville
1:00pm – back to my Grandpa’s to help with stuff (mostly tech related)
3:00pm – visit my granduncle at the nursing home
4:00pm – relatives headed to a friend’s place while we drove home
7:00pm – dinner
8:00pm – grocery shopping at Whole Foods
9:00pm – hang out with family

Note: This schedule is typical of any Bay Area trip regardless of whether or not we have visiting relatives from China.

Sunday:

Family decided to take a trip to Muir Woods. I’ve been there a couple of times already, but hey, who can ever get sick of taking a walk in nature? We only did the main loop that was mostly flat so that my grandpa can join us. Some considered doing an actual hike, but opted to just spend time with Grandpa instead.

I’ve actually never done an actual hike in Muir Woods… the first time we went, we meant to hike to the beach, but one of my friends did not handle the uphill very well so we abandoned that plan pretty quickly. The other times were all with family.

Anyway, when I mentioned this story, my uncle was like “there’s a beach?!” so we drove over to check it out briefly. For some reason, my mom thought it was a nude beach (I’ve heard of them in France, but definitely not the norm in the US) so when we arrived and most people were fully dressed (let’s be honest – the beaches there are too cold for bikinis), we laughed at the idea for awhile.

Afterwards, we stopped in Sausalito for some ice cream before heading home. Dinner at Sundance, a steak house in Palo Alto, known for their prime ribs.

Note: When we do not have visiting relatives, we typically hang out with friends instead. Since we visit the Bay Area fairly often, it’s fine to skip meeting up with friends once in awhile.

And that wraps up what a week in the life in the Bay Area looks like. For future visits, I will focus on specific aspects that are different from the usual.

Edit//

I imported a few old entries from my last blogging attempt. Pretty cool to look back and see what I wrote down the last time my aunt & family visited roughly a year ago. I didn’t mention this above but we ended up in the exact same airbnb! https://aliu.travel.blog/2018/02/03/a-sense-of-accomplishment/

Christmas Day in Lisbon

img_20181225_141010 (1)

We, as a family, tend to do things last minute. By the time we decided to go to Portugal for the holidays, plane tickets were a little expensive. So… we thought that if we go on Christmas Day, then it might be a bit cheaper… who flies on Christmas Day anyway instead of chilling at home with family? (This was my strategy throughout my college years. Heh.) Plus, the French usually celebrate with family on Christmas Eve anyway.

That was a great strategy and all until a couple days before we left, when I finally started planning what we would do in Portugal. (Yup, more last minuteness.) Basically, everything is closed Christmas Day. Luckily, Lisbon is a beautiful city with many hills, therefore it has many miradouros (or viewpoints) to visit. I made a list of all the best ones and we visited half of them.

img_20181224_180439

But… let’s rewind back to Christmas Eve. We had a delicious 8-course meal that took 8 hours. Everyone left by 11pm (much earlier than usual) so that we could get some sleep before our early flight the next day. When I went to the bathroom at 1am, there were two empty suitcases lying out in the hallway and literally no one was in their own bed yet. (See what I mean about the last minuteness?) At that point, I was nervous. What if we oversleep the flight? Are we even going to do anything the first day? We’re just going to crash in our hotel rooms the minute we arrive, right? We had planned to be all awake by 4am to get to the airport.

Well, that ended up not being an issue as we got to the airport with more than enough time to spare. But then, this is when everything started going wrong. First, we show up at the wrong terminal because our ticket was purchased through one airline and operated by another and it was unclear which one we should check in with. Luckily, we showed up early so we hustled over to the other terminal to make baggage cutoff. When we got there, it was clear that something’s not right because no one was checking in any bags even though it was almost cut off time. Instead, there’s this huge hoard of people waiting. Turns out our flight was cancelled. It was a huge mess while TAP Portugal employees tried to figure out what to do. No one understood the concept of a line (but it was Christmas Day and they probably really wanted to get home to their families so fine, I’ll give them that). In the end, they cancelled the flight to Porto instead and used that plane for our flight. So now we’re finally taking off, one hour behind schedule.

img_20181225_105250

Everyone was super tired upon arrival in Lisbon, but no one wanted to waste the day by sleeping, so we went forward with the stuff I planned.

Elevador da Gloria

img_20181225_132837

Luckily, public transit is open on Christmas Day. There are a few elevadors around the city to help people get up steep streets. They are, however, very expensive if you’re a tourist and you show up thinking that you can just buy a ticket as you board. Instead, I found the best thing to do is to go to any metro station and buy a day pass (technically, 24 hours from first use) for around 6 euros.

If you do not have a day pass or if the line is too long, then this funicular is not worth it. It’s only two minutes long and a bit crowded. It’s nice to skip the steep walk, but it’s not that interesting otherwise. The street itself has lots of graffiti, which some people think is art, but there are others who think differently, so it really depends on your preference.

Miradouro Sao Pedro de Alcantara

img_20181225_134135

The first viewpoint we visited is right next to the exit of the funicular. There was a small Christmas market there, but we didn’t spend much time exploring it. We admired the view for a couple minutes and then kept walking, as we were on our way to lunch and didn’t have too much time to spare.

Carmo Convent Ruins

img_20181225_141134

On November 1, 1755, a major earthquake hit Lisbon and destroyed almost the entire city. The Carmo Convent is one of very few buildings that mostly survived. The ceiling collapsed and stuff inside were destroyed. Over time, the city was rebuilt in a more neoclassical style.

Elevador de Santa Justa

img_20181225_142702 mvimg_20181225_141721

The ruins are on the top of this lift and they are worth seeing. However, I don’t recommend taking the lift up. Luckily, we were coming from the other direction so we only went down, but when we got to the bottom, we saw a huge line of people. It was at least an hour wait, if not more. On the other hand, I do recommend paying the 3 euros to walk up the spiral stairs at the top of the lift to the viewpoint. Absolutely beautiful. I was scared the whole way up because I’m scared of heights, but totally worth it. You can’t see the same view from the level where you get out from the elevator.

mvimg_20181225_142711

Lunch

At this point, we are running late for lunch and there’s still quite a bit of walking to do, so we called an Uber instead. Uber is SO cheap in Portugal. It was only a couple dollars to get anywhere for the four of us.

img_20181225_154542

Now, again, because it’s Christmas Day, a lot of Portuguese restaurants are closed. But I did some research beforehand and there are a bunch of hotels that offer Christmas lunches. A took my initial research and compared some restaurants until he settled with Audrey’s. This restaurant is highly rated for some reason, but their Christmas lunch was NOT good. As we found out afterwards, it was also super overpriced.

Miradouro da Graca

img_20181225_170923

To be honest, I had taken this viewpoint out of my list. Lunch took super long and we only had enough time to visit one more for sunset. However, this was right outside the restaurant so we stopped by very briefly. The unique thing about this viewpoint is that it’s right next to a church with beautiful blue tiles.

img_20181225_171255

Miradouro da Nossa Senhora do Monte

img_20181225_173857-pano

This is the viewpoint I landed on for sunset and it did not disappoint. A picture is worth a thousand words so here are a few more to prove it:

img_20181225_172855

img_20181225_173313

img_20181225_173620

Somehow, we made it to the end of the day before retiring back to the hotel where we all proceeded to sleep for over 12 hours. Overall, I was shocked that we managed to survive the first day on so little sleep, but I’m really glad that all of us pushed ourselves to get out and do something, because it would have been easier to just rest. If we had more time, I would have opted for that, but we only had 2 days in Lisbon so we had to make the most of it.

Even more surprisingly, we already edited the video for this day! Watch it here.

Looking Back: Travels 2018

New year, new blog.

I’ve tried this many times before and failed, but this year, I really do want to be better about recording my travel memories.

I do already have a post queued up about discrimination while traveling in Europe, but I want to start the year on a positive note, so let’s start with a recap of our travels in the past year:

OUR USUALS

Paris

img_20180705_221250

I don’t always know when or where I’m going most of the time because we are so last minute in planning trips, but trips to Paris are like clockwork. They often occur on holidays:

Christmas to New Year
Chinese New Year (usually February)
MIL’s birthday (April)
July 4th
Thanksgiving

Last year, we skipped Chinese New Year, but otherwise, we followed the schedule, although we did not spend much time actually in Paris for Thanksgiving or Christmas to New Year. More on this later.

Bay Area

img_20180903_163856

These happen quarterly for A’s business trips. I always tag along because I grew up there and I’m always looking for an excuse to visit family and friends. Sometimes I stay for a full week (if there’s family visiting from China), but usually, I fly there Thursday evening and leave Sunday evening.

FAMILY TRIPS

China: Zhangjiajie, Fenghuang, Changsha

pano_20180515_115653

Since they retired, the in-laws have decided to go to China once a year. They will always visit their family and friends in Beijing and Chongqing, so we usually join them for a shorter time. The views in Zhangjiajie were beautiful, but that was the only positive thing about this trip. It was crazy hot, terrible food, and we had a tour guide who was so bad that she hired another tour guide for us out of her own pocket!

USA: Yellowstone, Grand Teton, NYC

img_20180923_111204

The in-laws also visit us in Boston once a year. They spend a few days with us to see how we live, but then we usually travel elsewhere.

Lately, it’s been mostly national parks. This year, we went to Yellowstone & Grand Teton. Super fun. They “camped” for the first time ever (more like glamping, but they are really too old for real camping).

The following weekend, we went to NYC for them to meet some people and visit some interesting museums. We tried our first Michelin-starred restaurant, Momofuku Ko.

Spain: Madrid, Salamanca, Barcelona &
Portugal: Lisbon, Sintra, Porto

img_20181122_164753

For the end of year holidays, my husband and I decided to work remotely for a couple of days so that we can spend one week each with the in-laws visiting Spain and Portugal. The great thing about the timezone difference is that we can go out with them in the morning and go back to the hotel to work after lunch. They go off on their own in the afternoon so we are usually not distracted.

On both trips, at least one person ended up sick and a few of our plans have gotten derailed. Besides this, we’ve had a few other negative experiences, but I will talk about those in more detail in a later post.

In general, these end of year trips will always be to somewhere relatively warm because in 2017, we went to Strasbourg for Christmas and we decided it was too cold for us to enjoy spending much time outdoors.

BUSINESS TRIPS

LA & NYC

Maker:S,Date:2017-10-26,Ver:6,Lens:Kan03,Act:Lar02,E-Y

Besides Mountain View, A usually has a few other business trips. Believe it or not, before 2018, I had never been to NYC together with A. Then somehow, we ended up going several times this past year. In LA, I only joined him for the weekend and we went to Universal together to visit The Good Place set!

Raleigh & Austin, Houston

img_20181021_131145

As for me, I went to Raleigh for my new job orientation and then Austin for a conference. A joined me for a weekend in Houston and we checked out the Space Center there. It was perfect timing as we had just watched First Man the weekend before.

SKI TRIPS

img_20181209_121146

After one season of not buying a ski pass, we learned our lesson. Tickets are so much more expensive last minute (usually around $150/person). We also try to book ski-in-ski-out so that we can be home for more meals because eating out on the slopes is usually more expensive than the extra cost of living closer AND it’s usually just really unhealthy and meh-tasting food. This is our second year with Epic Pass, but the Ikon Pass intrigues us, so who knows if we will stay Epic long term?

In this past year, we have skied at…

Stowe (Vermont)
Northstar (Tahoe, CA)
Keystone, Vail, Breckenridge, Beaver Creek (Colorado)
Park City (Utah)
Killington (Vermont)
Banff Sunshine, Lake Louise (Canadian Rockies)

We ended up skiing 12 days last season (if I counted correctly) and 4 days so far this season.

OTHER

img_20180919_091249

We tend to do a lot of hiking trips over the summer, but in 2018, we dedicated most of our weekends to cleaning and organizing our new condo so we didn’t really get to hike at all. This year, I really want to make an effort to hike again.

For other random adventures, our strategy is to go on Google Flights, put in Boston as our departure city and leave the destination blank. Then we simply pick wherever is cheap! I don’t think we did any of that this year either. So sad.

So where did we go?

More NYC

img_20180929_183331

Like I said, we ended up in NYC multiple times this year. A more so than me because he had work, getting his Chinese visa, etc. One of the times was with our friend to attend a Miku concert. We had agreed several years ago and backed out last minute so finally, we made it happen! After this experience, we decided that we’re not really concert people so we probably wouldn’t ever do something like this again. We spent the rest of the weekend eating lots of ramen and that was a lot of fun.

Virginia

img_20181112_101544

Over the long Veterans Day Weekend, we took my god-brother, who is currently a senior in high school, to Virginia to visit colleges. We also had some spare time to visit some presidential homes. This road trip has been on my to-do list for a long time, and my god-brother wants to major in poli sci and loves museums, so it was perfect.

Whew, we made it to the end! In 2018, we spent roughly 50% of our weekends flying over 100,000 miles to over 25 cities in 6 countries.

An EPIC Ski Season 2018

Last winter was the first time that I skied a full season:

Dec: Steven’s Pass, PNW (2 or 3 days)
Jan: Killington, New England (1 day)
Jan: Wachusett, New England (1 day)
Jan: Les Arcs, France (5 days)
Feb: Northstar, CA (3 days)
Mar: Sugarloaf, New England (2 days)
Apr: Mammoth, CA (2-3 days)

Total: ~17 days

After buying individual lift tickets at each resort, often last minute, we decided last spring that it would be more economical to buy a season pass. Epic Local Pass made the most sense to us at the time because it would allow us to travel to many different resorts across the country and the holiday restrictions didn’t bother us too much. We would have gotten the full Epic Pass if they would allow 5 days at one French resort, but they only gave 2 days at each this year, which is completely useless, because unlike the US, the housing is meant to be rented one week at a time. In the end, we didn’t go ski in France this year so it’s a moot point.

So far this season, we have visited:

Jan: Stowe, New England (3 days)
Jan: Northstar, CA (2 days)
Feb: Keystone, CO (1 evening)*
Feb: Vail, CO (1 day)*
Feb: Breckenridge, CO (2 days)*
Feb: Beaver Creek, CO (1 day)*

* On the same Presidents’ Day Weekend trip. We didn’t plan it this way, but we ended up visiting all the Vail properties in Colorado! (While Arapahoe Basin is on the pass this year, it is actually just a partnership, not Vail-owned.)

Total: 10 days + 3 planned

We are planning one more trip to Park City and then we’ll see if we end up skiing any more this season. Unfortunately, the snow has not been great in many areas of the US. Stupid climate change. On the bright side, I have only skied on packed powder so far. Last year, I had to deal with frozen granular at Sugarloaf.

A Sense of Accomplishment

My aunt and cousin flew over from China to spend some time in the SF Bay Area with my grandpa and also to get some stuff taken care of. Of course, I also flew over so that we could all spend time together. We all stayed in an airbnb together and we even invited my godmom’s son to stay with us since his school was nearby. I quite enjoyed being together as a strange family unit for those two weeks (not quite).

Honestly, most of what we did together is not very interesting to write about, but for me, travel is more about who I’m spending time with than what we do. We mostly drove all around the bay, running errands, visiting my granduncle, meeting people for dinner, etc. I managed to work in two museum visits into the schedule – both of which were well received, I hope. In the first week, we explored the California Academy of Sciences (Cal Academy for short). Then, in our last evening all together, we toured the Winchester Mystery House. In the one weekend we had in-between, we drove up to Tahoe (sans grandpa) and introduced skiing to everyone.

So where does my sense of accomplishment come from?

First, I must preface with this: even though I’ve had my driver’s license for about 10 years now, I have rarely driven in the past. But starting with the last visit, my aunt has been making me practice every time she comes over from China. So, in the beginning, I only drove in what I consider ideal situations: daylight, good weather, no traffic, mostly straight, wide roads with few traffic signals (aka highways). Somehow, this time around, I managed to survive driving at night, in the rain, in traffic all at once! Furthermore, I was brave enough to drive inside SF and what I found was that the steep hills were not as scary as I believed them to be. Finally, I drove 50% of the way to Tahoe and only briefly on the way back, but it was all on a windy, narrow strip of mountain road. I still haven’t driven on snow, but at this point, I feel like I’ve tackled everything else.
This time last year, I was still skiing beginner runs, even though I had technically started skiing in 2015. Technique-wise, I was good enough to move up to intermediate runs long ago, but I was too scared of heights to try. On this Tahoe trip, I was so confident on the intermediates that I was able to record video at the same time! Also, after much coaxing, I attempted my first top-to-bottom advanced run (groomed) and it wasn’t bad at all! Granted, we went to Northstar, which is known as “Flatstar”, so it was an easier black compared to other resorts, but still!!
Okay, this has little to do with the trip itself and it was more of a timing thing, but I finally have an in-person interview somewhere! Hope everything will go swimmingly and I can go back to having a more “normal” life.

Being a Tourist in My Own Hometown

Because I have close friends and family members living in the bay area, I try to go back as often as I can. A goes at least once a quarter for work so that works out really well for me!

It turns out that I could have gone a day earlier because the meeting that was scheduled for Friday was actually cancelled (although I didn’t know that until last minute). I ended up staying an extra day though because of yet another snowstorm in Boston.

Saturday morning I had a dentist appointment (bleh) so we couldn’t meet A’s friend until lunchtime. Unfortunately for me, the right side of my mouth was numb all throughout the meal, even though the numbness was supposed to go away within one hour (yeah right). We went to this Hong Kong restaurant in Sunnyvale, a place that my mom used to frequent. I haven’t been there for years so I was worried that quality may have gone down, but it was still as good as I remembered.

Afterwards, we took A’s friend to the Caltrain station and headed over to explore the Winchester Mystery House. I’ve known about it since I was a little kid, but for some reason or another, I’ve never been. It was an interesting tour – goofy staircases, doors that lead to nowhere, etc. Mrs. Winchester was definitely a strange woman, but the house itself wasn’t spooky in any way.

We drove to SF for dinner with another one of A’s friends. A started to fall asleep while we were stuck in traffic so I took control of the steering wheel – in SF! So scary… The steakhouse we went to was unimpressive, especially in comparison to House of Prime Rib. We ordered “Italian dumplings” as an appetizer, but they were neither dumplings or Italian.

The next day, we drove back to San Francisco for lunch with my best friends. We went to the Exploratorium after because it was free that day (Groundhog’s Day). It was really crowded, of course. It’s normally around $30 so we can imagine that normally people wouldn’t have to wait to see the individual exhibits. I thought the museum was more meant for kids, but it was interesting enough for grown-ups as well.

Ate dinner with my family and then I drove home. My mom was leading the way and she is normally a fast driver, but that night, she drove so slow (too slow) for me. We were going an average of 50 mph. A had driven 100 mph going to SF earlier…

Monday was still a work day, even though I was thousands of miles away from Boston, but we still managed to cram in a little fun. I went over to Google for lunch and then A took me to their new visitor center (not open to the public though, so you would still need an employee to take you in). It was not very interesting – mostly bare. I think they made the move recently, so maybe they’ll add more to it at some point in the future? There was a ball pit in the center of the room that we went into briefly. I don’t think I’ve ever gone into a ball pit before so that was fun, at least.

At this point, I have hit up most of the tourist places in the bay area. I wonder what we could do the next time we go back (beyond visiting friends and family). If I had moved back to CA after graduating college, what would my weekends be like there?

Seeing Mayan Ruins on a Weekend

Apparently, Cancun can be really cheap during the off season (although we were like walking ATMS once we got there). I was looking on Google Flights for somewhere cheap to go over a weekend and found that I could do Cancun for about $300 RT. Upon further research, I realized that Cancun is not just for chilling on the beach, and there are some really cool Mayan ruins just a few hours drive away. Hotel and car rental were also ridiculously cheap, so it was definitely a go.

A’s friend decided to join us, which turned out to be really useful because he speaks Spanish 🙂

I got really nervous the day before leaving b/c there was a storm heading into the Northeast on the morning of our flight. If we were delayed enough, we would lose an entire day. Luckily, it was just an hour for deicing and the next connecting plane at IAD turned out to be the same plane that we were already on from Boston!

We still ended up losing most of the day b/c Hertz took a really long time giving us a car and then we thought that there was something wrong with the car so we stopped for a bit to check it out (there was something dripping out, but turns out to be water from the a/c). We just missed entry into the ruins at Tulum by a few minutes, but we made the most out of it by walking a little further to a public beach.

Afterwards, we stopped by the pizza place that generously allowed us to park for free and had the most amazing pina coladas. Their seats were all swings! We did, however, get scammed by one of the guys working there who said that he could give us a coupon for entry into Chichen Itza, guide, and lunch. Oh well… lesson learned.

After dinner, we headed to Chichen Itza for the night (we booked a hotel nearby). There was a highway that could have gotten us there in 2 hours, which we did find and pay the toll for, but then we accidentally got off and ended up taking another road through small villages along the way. Every time we hit a village, we also hit speed bumps which were not very visible at night. I apparently screamed every time (I was otherwise asleep).

We got a guide at Chichen Itza who gave us a really thorough tour of the ruins. I definitely appreciated having one versus walking around ourselves. Of course, thorough also means that it took a lot longer and we were left with very little time left to check out a cenote. We went to one nearby (although we spent quite a bit of time just finding the entrance – thanks to Google Maps) that was unfortunately very touristy. A’s friend still really liked it though, as he was able to jump in and swim around. A and I would have preferred something that wasn’t located within hotel grounds, but we didn’t have the time to drive anywhere further.

Thank goodness the guys listened to my advice and we left a little early to go to the airport, because we ended up running out of gas without a gas station nearby. Luckily, someone else was in the same situation and we were able to get help. We made back to Cancun early, so we went to dinner before heading to the airport.

Unfortunately for us, the adventure doesn’t end here. Our flight from Cancun to Toronto was quite pleasant, as A & I had a row to ourselves and his friend had a row to himself. We arrived in Toronto around 1am and looked around for the quiet lounge, where there are seats without anti-homeless arm rests. Considering how we slept at the airport, you would think that we would have no trouble making our morning flight back to Boston, but unfortunately, we had a few hiccups at customs and security that resulted in us missing our flight.

It’s really too bad we didn’t get stuck back in Mexico. We could have spent a few more days there, considering how all of MA was under house arrest during winter storm Juno, which started shortly after we arrived back in Boston.

My First Skiing Experience

It was my first time skiing.

I went snowboarding once last year with my siblings and spent the entire time falling and getting back up again. Otherwise, I had no experience with winter sports whatsoever.

This past weekend, my boyfriend and I joined Boston Ski and Sports Club (BSSC) on a trip to Sugarloaf in Maine. He’s a high intermediate skier who has made dedicated ski trips to various locations in the US and abroad, so it is in my best interest to learn as quickly as possible.

It was extremely cold the night we arrived at Sugarloaf (-6 degrees F!), but our room was way too hot (something wrong with the heater). The next day was slightly better (0 degrees F) but my face still stung from the cold. Later, I find out that 0 degrees is actually pretty good for skiing.

I took a 90-minute “Learn to Ski” lesson Saturday morning. It was supposed to be a group lesson, but with two instructors and only two students, it became two separate one-on-one lessons. By the end of the lesson, I had ridden on a ski lift for the first time in my life (not as scary as I thought) and I could navigate through the easiest trail, the Birches, without falling or crashing into something/someone. To me, that is a huge accomplishment, considering the number of hours I spent trying to learn how to stay on a snowboard for more than two seconds. I definitely see the value of lessons now.

The next morning, my bf took me to a different beginner trail, the Landing, which is only slightly more elevated than the one I had practiced on the day before. It didn’t look so bad from the bottom or even from the lift going up, but as I was skiing down, I got scared. I was going way too fast and I didn’t really know how to slow down or stop without falling. After that first run, I was hesitant to try again and went back to the Birches. My bf decided that he wanted to pay for a private lesson for each of us, which was really the best idea because he wasn’t doing so well helping me advance and he was probably bored skiing bunny slopes. By the end of my second lesson, I could ski down the Landing using wide turns.

After this lesson was when everything started going downhill. The second day was warmer, (around 32 degrees F) and unfortunately, it started raining near the end of my lesson. By 5pm, everything was icy. I couldn’t see myself safely walking back to our condo, so we went to guest services and found the number for the shuttle service. The shuttle dropped us off about 100 yards away from our condo because it couldn’t drive up one of the roads without slipping backwards. Unfortunate for us, where he dropped us off wasn’t the closest location to our condo and we had no idea which direction to head towards because it was dark. It took us between 30-60 minutes to figure out the way back, walking extremely slow to avoid slipping on ice.

The next morning, only 9 trails of the 160 available were groomed, but they were all beginner trails, including the Landing, so I decided to try skiing some more. I didn’t realize until I got up to the top of the trail that it was mostly icy with extremely thin layers of snow on top. As someone who had only been skiing for two days, I was not comfortable with skiing on ice (heck, I can barely walk on ice) but I was already up there and there were only really two ways down – ski or walk. I took the method that would get me down the fastest. Using the techniques that I learned from my second lesson, I managed to slowly ski my way down to the bottom without falling (although I did fall on my butt as I was getting off the lift). I was terrified, but I did it! That said, I wasn’t about to repeat that experience, so I quickly went back to the lodge to get vouchers for my equipment rental and ski pass. Bf was scared for me as I was skiing on the ice patches so he was fine with calling it a day at that point too.

Despite my two scary encounters with ice, the weekend was quite fun. As long as I survive, bad experiences make good stories, right? More importantly, I really enjoyed learning to ski and am looking forward to more skiing adventures this winter!