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In New York, Travel

50 hours offline

Author Fanny SuraPosted on Leave a comment

We had a fantastic weekend away! After I had uploaded my post here on Saturday morning, I put my phone on airplane mode. We loaded the car with all our stuff and off we went. We spent the weekend in Hobart, New York, on a secluded location with beautiful view. Camping, eating hot dogs and s’mores, moments of meditation, goofing around on the grass and most of all, doing nothing. We just sat there, doing nothing. Talked to each other sometimes. And then some more nothing. 

We came back home around 1pm yesterday, but I decided that I wanted to keep my phone off/on airplane mode. We went out to eat, watched tv at night and I didn’t turn my phone or computer on until 9am this morning. 50 hours offline. I used my phone for pictures, but nothing else.
Fifty hours isn’t very long, but I think it’s important to turn the phone off from time to time. When J and I go on vacation, like Kauai, St Lucia, Cayman Island or even when I go home to Sweden sometimes, I don’t use my phone for other than take photos. Sometimes there’s no service anyway. We don’t have to check instagram every 10 minutes or message with people on facebook every day. The world doesn’t end if you skip a day or two, or even ten. I would highly recommend to go offline from time to time.

It was very nice to go away for a weekend, and very good to bring Thor to experience this for the first time too. I will write more detailed about our trip later this week. Now I’m going to shut off my phone again for the night:) 

In New York, Travel

Bear with me

Author Fanny SuraPosted on Leave a comment

Good Evening! I’m getting really excited about our camping trip coming up this weekend. It will be nice to go away and be right in nature. But I’m also slightly terrified! Today I feel a bit calmer, but yesterday I was freaking out a little. I started to read what to do if you would meet a bear, because there are plenty of bears around here so it’s good to at least have a clue of what to do and not to do. 

Black bears will not typically not do anything. Grizzly bears, maybe…? But I read that it’s bigger chance of being in a car accident or get struck by lightning than getting attacked by a bear. 

BUT, we have a barking fluff monster. Jim and I can read and figure out how to stay safe in a situation of meeting a bear. But Thor, he would just bark – which can at best scare the bears away…or – and trigger the bear to think we are a threat. Aaah! 

I’m overreacting of course. There is a village somewhat nearby and unless the bears have learned there is food around, they won’t come. But, I’m still a little freaked out. We don’t have bears in our forests in southern Sweden, so I have never really thought about anything around bears. I basically only knew that you can play dead, but there are a few other steps before that. I’m glad I have read a bit more about it now. Still not sure how to handle the situation if Thor starts to bark. Time will tell (hopefully it will never tell!!)

Tomorrow I’m going to pack everything. I have a list of things to bring and most of it is actually just sitting on the kitchen counter waiting to be packed up. Flashlight, mosquito spray, mosquito spray for Thor, repellent candles, blankets, snacks and food, coffee, camping fire blanket, garbage bags etc. and water is already in the car. This will be an awesome trip! 

In Connecticut

Rain, anniversary and walk along the water

Author Fanny SuraPosted on Leave a comment

Good Morning Everyone! I hope you had a wonderful weekend and are ready for a new week!
For some reason, the weather Gods think it’s fun to give us rain every weekend this summer. We have a few outdoor things on our summer list, but we can’t plan for them because we keep getting thunderstorms. We are postponing a few things and soon the summer is over. But, oh well. We have had an awesome summer so far anyway:)

So, on Friday we basically did nothing after J came home from work.
On Saturday it was, as you can see in the last post, our 5 year anniversary. It feels way longer than that, but at the same time it feels like recently. Still waking up next to Jim with a big smile on my face. He makes me so happy ♥
We had no plans for the day, so we decided to drive and check out White Plains. Jim’s office was on the way there so we stopped there first and he showed me around (I haven’t been there before). It kinda reminded me of my University in Stockholm. Surrounded by nature and a little bit of art inside. 
Went for lunch at Blockheads and then to check out the mall in White Plains. Very disappointing, but I guess most malls are becoming boring these days because everyone is shopping online. 

We really didn’t do much interesting stuff on Saturday. It rained on and off all day. But as always on August 18, we went to eat Italian for dinner. Went to Remos in downtown Stamford and ordered prosecco and pizza. It was ok, not the best pizza, but we were’t really hungry anyway. 

Sunday started late which was actually nice. After coffee, we drove to Cove Island and walked there with Thor for a bit. Back home, we had lunch and then went to the Athletic Club for an hour. I spent my time in the dance studio. So nice! It started to rain on our way home, of course, so, we just watched baseball and relaxed when we came home.

And that’s about it for the weekend. I wish I had something more fun to share but when the weather is like this, when you don’t know if it’s going to rain or not and internet has no clue, then you can’t really make any plans. Next weekend we are going camping, so it better be sunny then:)

In Nashville, Travel, USA

Nashville, day 2

Author Fanny SuraPosted on Leave a comment

July 28th, we woke up around 7 or so and decide to get out to find coffee. When we had picked up a cup each, we started to walk around the downtown area of Nashville. Noone out now so I could really get a look at it. Broadway seems to be a crazy street no matter what time you show up, except at 7:30 in the morning:) I had searched online what things we should see in Nashville and found the Printer’s Alley, so that’s what we went to check out first. Euhm,..there is nothing there except for the sign. Ok. We walked back. We thought about visiting the Johnny Cash museum but it was small and kinda expensive for what it was and since Jim doesn’t really care we decided to skip it. By this time it was getting closer to 10 am when the hotel pool would open. We changed clothes and took the elevator to the top. We went in, spent maybe 4 minutes there and then parents and like 10 kids showed up and splashed all around us, so we got up. We sat down in the lounge and ordered champagne instead.

When we had showered and were dressed, we walked to a different area of Nashville. First mission was to find lunch. Jim wanted to go eat at a chicken place but there were like an hour long line to get in so we ended up at a random bar. My food came and when I had finished it, J had still not got his food. The bartender gave some lame and fake excuse to why it was late. Eventually it came and we had wasted about an hour of our tourist time. Oh well.

Out on adventures. We came to RCA Studio B. I was excited to check it out, but apparently you can only visit it by visiting the Country Music Hall of Fame first and they will drive you in a bus there and have a guided tour. That sucked! I was so disappointed! We walked on the music row for a bit and there is really nothing in that area. So we walked back to downtown Nashville to see our friends who were at Tootsies. Crowded and loud, but fun to experience.
In the afternoon, we all went to our hotel. J had brought a poster for his friend so we thought it could be nice to stop by the hotel bar before they head back to their hotel to change before the concert.

Jim and I got to the concert a bit before the others. I didn’t even realize it was the Pixies playing on stage, cause we were just standing there trying to figure out where they were. We had good spots right in front of the stage, but when the others finally came, they didn’t want to stay there for whatever reason, so we walked to the very back of the crowd. Weezer was great! We had fun. The guys were singing out loud of course, like always when they get together:) 

After the concert, around 11:30pm, they wanted to go find a less crowded bar off Broadway. I honky tonked by myself for maybe an hour while the others sat in the bar. I was pretty tired after midnight and I tried to tell Jim that he seemed done. Well.. we didn’t get back to the hotel until 3am, and nothing, absolute nothing, had happened in those three hours. But oh well, these guys don’t see each other very often so I didn’t want to drag J and his friend away from each other.