That's What Jenni Said

Last week, I was invited, along with my husband, to join a group of board gamers from our local Iowa City area on their annual gaming retreat. For this event, they gather at the Gamers Ranch, for day after day of board games and fellowship. If you’re not familiar with the Gamers Ranch , it’s a short term rental/vacation property in the countryside, nestled among farms and open pastures, just outside of Bland, Missouri.  The site can accommodate groups of up to 20 people at a time and offers activities for indoors (frequently updated board game library with thousands of games including the BGG Top 100, arcade, LAN gaming pc area, Lego library, MTG library, miniature painting workshop area, reading nooks, and several large screen tvs for streaming) and outdoors (disc golf course, miles of hiking trails, a lake with boating, geocaching, fire pits, etc). The sleeping areas inside are well appointed with linens, toiletries, and wifi. Bonus for foodies: the kitchen is fantastic, offeri...

There was a time – before I sank my teeth into the board game hobby and before I took on the demands of being a stepmom to three children - that I planned frequent trips for my friends circle. Each month would see us jet setting off to a different part of the United States (or a different part of the world) in search of adventure and great cuisine. I would pour myself into the research project that proper trip planning requires and create a custom itinerary for our group, working to ensure we caught all the highlights of our destination. This post is about the one I worked up for our last trip to some of the great Western National Parks in the United States.  I share it here with the hope that you might find the itinerary useful in planning your trip out west.   --> Full Photo Gallery – Come and Explore   DAY ONE MORNING Depart for Butte, Montana Pick up rental car AFTERNOON Lunch (& ice cream) at Matt’s Place (Butte) Transfer to Grand Teton Nationa...

Continuing my project to journal all of my travel adventures, we come to an entertaining entry: The Big Island of Hawaii and the Great Luggage Chase of 2013. The trip was well planned but poorly executed due to weather mishaps. I was supposed to fly DCA-JFK-LAX-KOA but snow dropped visibility to near zero at JFK so my plane was rerouted to Providence, RI after we took off from DCA. After several hours Delta put everyone back on a plane to JFK and rescheduled the connecting flights outbound from there. There was no way I was going to make it out to LAX in time to catch the Delta flight to Hawaii,  but as I was still a shiny Diamond Medallion back then and mattered to the airline, Delta put me on an AA flights to ensure I would get to Hawaii one way or another. The AA flight routed through PDX (Portland) and because of more weather problems our flight into Portland was delayed and I missed my Hawaii flight after all. Now I was stranded in Portland overnight, while my luggage (includ...

For our upcoming Azamara Baltic cruise in June, we will be docking in St. Petersburg. I am so excited about this because I fell in love with this grand city when I visited it once before, in the autumn of 2013. There was a discounted fare available to Russia at the time, so I took the opportunity to fly to St. Petersburg for a self-indulgent weekend. The city stands in sharp contrast to Moscow with regard to its culture, cuisine, and tourism (see the travel post on my Moscow trip here ). Whereas it was difficult to find English speakers in Moscow, I had no trouble with language barriers in St. Petersburg as many people spoke English. The city has a European vibe and reminds me of Vienna. With just two days to explore the city that weekend, I tried to include the most interesting experiences into my itinerary. I had a scrumptious breakfast each day at Coffeeshop (a Parisian style cafe), wandered the streets people watching, toured the Winter Palace and felt like a princess (alas no time...

A few years ago I had the pleasure of touring Butchart Gardens in Victoria, B.C. (Canada) during the autumn season. These are some of my favorite pictures taken on the trip.

A handful of years ago (before the good relations our country with Russia began to dissolve) a fortunate wave of discounted fares to Russian destinations from Washington D.C. caught my attention. Straightaway, I booked three weekend trips to this country of which I knew very little other than it was previously a member of the USSR, an entity once considered our greatest national enemy. The first trip was a sightseeing getaway in Moscow, scheduled to begin on my birthday in March and my friend Penny agreed to join me on the adventure. It will be lovely to see Moscow in the spring , I thought, and that will give me enough time to line up the visas required . Luckily, as I lived in the D.C. area at the time I was able to complete the rather tedious process of applying for and picking up my Russian visa at their embassy. It's definitely the most extensive visa application process I have done to date. They wanted to know every country I'd visited in the past 10 years (that's ...

A few years ago, thanks to a great mistake rate on airfare, I was able to hop over to Vietnam for a long weekend to explore the culinary wonders of Saigon. My first night in the city, I reserved a table at La Villa (14 NGO Quang Huy St, Thao Dien Ward, District 2). Because the French occupied Saigon from the late 1800s until the 1950s, there is a distinct French stamp on the local cuisine and La Villa is a fantastic example of it. Course after course of French food was paraded before me and I delighted in it. I spent the morning and afternoon of the next day taking Vietnamese cooking classes at the Saigon Culinary Arts Center (make reservations at http://vietnamsaigoncookingclass.com). For a very affordable rate (less than $50USD) I was treated to an educational tour of the local markets, an in-depth overview of typical Vietnamese cooking ingredients, lunch (that I made), and a recipe book. The class even includes escort from one's hotel. The te...

In 2014, I made a return trip to Turkey. My third visit to the country, I set out to explore more of the southwest area of Turkey. As always, I flew into Instanbul from the US and got in a lovely visit to the Turkish baths at Cemberlitas Hamam and made time for a quick visit to the spice market before making my way to the Anatolian peninsula. I started my adventure in Aphrodisias. It was once the capital of the Roman province of Caria and renowned for its sculptures. While the city was devastated by a 7th century earthquake, the quality of its marble buildings was so great that ruins remain today.  Once I'd had my fill of the ancient city, I departed for Pamukkale (ie the Cotton Castle). This is a phenomenal natural landscape, with limestone terraces hosting cascading pools.