Happy Valentine's Day

 We just got back from Alliance Coach in Wildwood Florida where we ended the year long saga of our Norcold refrigerator--a new stainless steel Samsung French Door Residential refrigerator!! Yea!!! It's 18 cu. ft. and cold and the freezer is big enough to hold all the food Mitch needs to store and cold enough to keep the Blue Bell ice cream frozen! The debut was storing 32 pounds of steak for the Indonesian Steak Kabobs he's grilling for the Valentine's Dinner here at the RV Park.


The guys at Alliance did a great job, we lost a little of the drawer below the fridge, but the woodwork is beautiful. The Samsung works with our inverter so it works just great going down the highway--all high efficency electric, no propane. I think we are going to love this new appliance!

Our February has been as busy as the rest of the winter but we still get to see the boys as often as possible. Rylan likes to come to Grampa and Gramma's house. After an afternoon at the fair, he enjoyed just sitting and coloring for awhile. (Notice the bottom of the fridge.)

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy 5th Birthday, Brayden

 After the cruise, the rest of January flew by.

Of course we had to spend time with the boys, and we had a great day visiting the alligators at Everglades National Park.

It's great fun to listen to Rylan talk and he says "alligator" so cute!

 One night Caryn and Jason collected on their Christmas present, dinner out at their choice but not Jason's restaraunt. We dined on Ft. Lauderdale beach at 3030 Ocean Drive, a divine place!

I loved the beet salad with goat cheese sorbet and a beet crisp. Gorgeous and delicious!

 Brayden loves to help Grampa cook and he does a very good job--and he has the patience to complete any project Mitch sets him up with.

Brayden had his birthday party at the park and all the day care school kids came. There was lots to do and one of the teacher aides painted faces. "Spiderman" enjoyed pizza for lunch and his "Under the Ocean with the Whales" cake. It's hard to believe he's five already--where does the time go?

Tahiti

 The view coming into Tahiti was amazing, the mountains are rugged, the water so blue, the sky full of clouds.

We decided to tour the perimeter of the large part of Tahiti--nobody lives in the interior, but I bet there are crazy cool places to visit--next time!!

 The tour lasted about four hours and we could see the ocean the whole time. The city wasn't impressive--a lot of graffiti, old run down buildings, and garbage. But we stopped at some interesting places like the fine black sand beaches,

and a very tall waterfall,

and the Paul Gauguin museum,

and a fern grotto, very cool. Inside is a great pool of water "where the mermaids swim".

And of course, you can't leave Tahiti without checking out the Tahitian pearls. Not all of them are black, however. We had a little pearl inservice at one of the jewelry stores. I liked this piece (it didn't have a price tag), but the opening didn't fit my omega so I had to leave it in the store. One of our traveling companions did buy a single pearl necklace for the bargain price of $500.00.

We had a wonderful time! Princess Cruises did a great job (we didn't crash). We enjoyed the sights, the food, and the people!

Moorea, French Polynesia

 We ported in Moorea the next day.  Again the interior was lush tropical forest and the perimeter was beautiful beaches and blue water and we decided to take a land trip.

 We took a four wheel drive vehicle and did some good climbing on some not so good roads, stopping to visit a pineapple field.

 At the overlook point (not the top of the mountain) was a spectacular picture of the bay where the ship was moored.

On the way down the mountain we stopped at a vanilla bean garden. It takes about a year to get a mature vanilla bean, and they are grown in a mesh enclosed area to soften the rainfall and keep the bugs out.


Most of the people we talked to thought Moorea was a lot cleaner and more tropical than Bora Bora.

Bora Bora, French Polynesia

 After five days at sea we ported at Bora Bora and saw what the real South Pacific is all about.

We decided to do a water day and found a boat to take only ten of us out for a "day" at sea.

 Our first stop was to swim with the black tip sharks...

 and the sting rays.

 We got right in the water and the sting rays thought their best friends had come out to play. They were all over--a little daunting at first. But they turned out to be very friendly and incredibly smooth when you petted them.

The sharks didn't like us nearly as much, they stayed just far enough away that we didn't worry about them.

After spending some time snorkeling and enjoying the beautiful colored fish and some interesting coral, our tour guide said he had a special place to take us and I had to admit the water was a gorgeous blue. Found out the sand was pure white and the texture of corn starch. So it made for a "spa treatment" and we all covered ourselves with white sand. We even brushed our teeth with it!

 A tour around the island gave us a wonderful view of the mountainous interior and all the resorts along the coast. These little huts over the water (many with a glass floor area) range in price from $500 to $3000 per night.

 This is truly my idea of an island paradise!

We stopped at our guide's personal island where he had a snack ready for us, fresh pummelo (a very large, sweet, juicy grapefruit type fruit), fresh coconut, coconut bread, and pineapple juice. He also had a bathroom (I wish I had a picture) where the toilet sat right in the sand. Wild! (It was plumbed, however!!)
He also had a special area where we could snorkel and saw a very large moray eel and a sea turtle.

A great day on Bora Bora!!

Table 45

We had dinner each evening at Table 45--the eight of us not running out of anything to talk about for the twelve nights. In the back are Cheryl and her niece, Megan, from California, Dennis and Pam from Ohio, in the front Diane and Ari from Canada who we ended up doing a lot of our touring with, and us. For spending hours running around or hanging out in the sun, we all "cleaned up pretty well" for formal night.

Dining at the Chef's Table--Ocean Princess

 We decided that we needed to do the "special" Chef's Table dinner along with five other couples. Besides having to wear coats and closed toed shoes to visit the working galley for appetizers, we spent three hours talking and eating some amazing food prepared especially for the table.

 Our Maitre D' started us off with some champange along with the four appetizers--my favorite being the Sesame Marinated Big Eye Tuna Carpaccio with Yuzu Dressing.

We continued to drink some very nice wines with each course of the meal.

Here's the menu--click on it if you want to duplicate any of these delectable dishes at home!!

 I knew I couldn't (shouldn't) eat all of anything if I were going to make it through this marathon, but it was very hard not to eat every morsel of the Asparagus Risotto Topped with Tiger Prawns.

The "palette cleanser, Strawberry and Cracked Pepper Sorbet, could have (should have) been dessert--wonderful--and topped with a shot of cold vodka!

 The Executive Chef finished the Roast Beef Tenderloin before our eyes and served it along with the Lobster Tail Thermidor and all the sauces and fixings, and more wine.

 This Brie de Meaux Feuillete, Riesling Soaked Green Raisin Drippings, and Walnut Bread was one of my favorite courses. Of course I knew that the green raisins were French for green grapes thanks to Gilles and Francine, who made these for us once and were every bit as good!!

Finally the end is in sight and what a sight it is! Everything on the white plate is edible--the green plate and red ramekin hold the Iced Amaretto Parfait and the Vanilla Plums and Brandy Snap Tuile. The pink coil is also sugar and really was bouncy.


The food was wonderful and now we have to work it off!!