Mary takes a quick trip to Quebec

Mary spent a November weekend visiting Quebec, where she found the Old City already looking very Christmassy.

Photos Mary posted on Facebook include this view inside the Basilique-Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Québec.

Mary also explored the wintry landscape of the Parc national de la Jacques-Cartier, about 40 miles north of the city.

For that excursion, she made sure to dress warmly - and bring along a taste of home! (Lakeside Lounging is a craft IPA brewed in Saratoga Springs.)

Cathy goes on a "mystery tour" in Ontario

Toronto from the observation deck of CN Tower

Cathy spent a late-October week in the Toronto area on a "Behind the Scenes" tour for the Canadian TV show “Murdoch Mysteries.” She writes: "It’s a great show and the trip was wonderful."

The tour focused on locations in Toronto, Kingston and Niagara on the Lake that have featured in episodes of the show, which is set in the 1890s and early 1900s. The group also had opportunities to meet cast members and visit sets used in the production at Shaftesbury Films studios in Toronto.

Cathy with Arlen Humphreys ("Margaret Brackenreid")

Group photo on set, with Yannick Bisson ("Detective William Murdoch), in vest with Cathy behind his left shoulder.

Street set on back lot

At Det. Murdoch's desk

Suspicious character in the street

Tour stops included Casa Loma, a huge and ornate Gothic Revival castle-style mansion and garden in midtown Toronto.

It was built in 1911-14 for financier Sir Henry Pellatt. Lady Mary Pellatt hosted the city's female philanthropists and political activists at teas in the castle's solarium.

In Niagara-on-the-Lake, the group stayed at the elegant, Victorian-style Prince of Wales Hotel, built in 1864.

Tea is served afternoons in the Drawing Room

Naturally, a visit to Niagara Falls was included. There was also a dinner in the barrel room at Peller Estates Winery.

The group tour wrapped up with dinner in the restaurant atop Toronto's CN Tower (see photo at the top of this post). It happened to be the night of Game 7 of the World Series, at the adjacent Rogers Centre.

 

Cathy took this photo of eager fans entering before the game. They would have looked less happy coming out, after the LA Dodgers won 5-4 in 11 innings.

Cathy has posted many more photos from the trip on her Facebook page.

Dan & Julie visit Toronto for a concert and some sight-seeing

It started with browsing concert listings. Julie noticed that Sheryl Crow was on tour and said that was an artist she'd like to see sometime. One of the dates was in Toronto, and Dan said that was a city he'd like to see sometime. Before long they'd booked concert tickets, flights, a hotel - plus baseball tickets - for a quick 60-hour visit to Canada's largest city.

Arriving on a Friday night, they checked into their hotel near the airport, navigated public transit downtown and strolled around the Harborfront area. On their way to the Rogers Centre baseball stadium, they checked out the outdoor Toronto Railway Museum and had dinner at one of the restaurants in the former Canadian Pacific roundhouse.

Despite being fans of the AL East rival Yankees and Orioles, Dan and Julie enjoyed watching the Toronto Blue Jays play the Texas Rangers - and win in exciting, come-from-behind fashion, 6-5.

 

On Saturday, the couple took a ferry across Toronto's Inner Harbor to Ward's Island, one of a group of islands that have a mix of parkland, small residential neighborhoods, an amusement park and a small airport. They strolled through the park, had lunch at a cafe alongside the main harbor, and walked through a neighborhood of quaint old houses before ferrying back downtown.

Making the most of their limited time, D&J then checked out the shops along the cobblestone, pedestrian-only streets of the Distillery District, with music in the background from a bandstand in a central plaza.

Then it was time to call a Lyft to get to the opposite side of the city for dinner and the Sheryl Crow concert at the Great Canadian casino complex. (Side note: The only highway through downtown Toronto, the Gardiner Expressway, seemed perpetually jammed.)

Photo from Great Canadian Entertainment

On Sunday, they continued their tourist-ing by returning downtown and visiting the Royal Ontario Museum. They spent the morning in the First People's gallery with its collection of native artifacts, including canoes and kayaks, and part of the afternoon in the Earth's Treasures, Dawn of Life and Dinosaur exhibits.

After a walk around nearby Queens Park, they said farewell to Toronto, and they and their tired legs headed to the airport.

See many more photos, including trains, canoes and dinosaurs

Easter time touring with family in Ireland

In an amazing feat of logistics, Kathy, Robert, Kathy's three children and their spouses and children all met up in Ireland and toured much of the country this April, around Easter.

Kathy, Robert, Genevieve, John, Bea, Jack and Liam flew from New York to Dublin. Vivien, CJ, Charlie, Austin and Oliver came up from London. Patrick and Kelsey joined the group a little later.

At Cobh Heritage Centre

At EPIC Museum

The 14 toured the countryside together at times in a chartered minibus, and at other times in smaller groups. 

Among their stops were the Epic Irish Emigration Museum in Dublin and the Cobh Heritage Centre in County Cork.

Cobh was an embarkation point for many of Ireland's immigrants to America (as well as the last port of call for the Titanic). 

While in County Cork, the group also visited Blarney Castle, and some (but not all) kissed the famous stone.

In County Claire on the west coast, the group took in the sights of the Cliffs of Moher and visited O'Brien's Tower, built in 1835 atop the cliffs.

Those were just a few of the highlights of a wonderful trip and a great gathering of the clan!

Taking in the beautiful sights of springtime in Newark, NJ (Yes!)

As they've done the past few Springs, Dan and Julie visited Newark's Branch Brook Park in early April to see its cherry blossom trees in full bloom.

The 360-acre park, designed by Frederick Law Olmstead, contains some 5,300 cherry trees in 18 varieties. 

On this visit, D&J also visited the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart, which overlooks the park. It's a spectacular building in French Gothic style, constructed in the first half of the 20th Century. 

The cathedral covers 45,000 square feet, an area equal to that of London’s Westminster Abbey, and is longer and taller than St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City, according to its website.

Although it doesn't have centuries of history like the Medieval cathedrals of Europe, it rivals them in beauty with its rose windows, statuary and woodwork. Pope John Paul II visited the cathedral in 1985 and presided over an evening prayer service. It was on that visit that he designated Sacred Heart as a basilica.

Julie greets a friendly lion across Branch Brook Lake from the cathedral.

Dan and Julie enjoy a visit to Alaska

Following in the footsteps, more or less, of both Dan's parents and Julie's, and as a 35th Anniversary celebration, the couple treated themselves to a sea-and-land trip to Alaska in late August and early September.

They booked a Holland America Lines package that included a seven-day cruise from Vancouver, B.C., up the Alaska coast to the port of Whittier, with stops in Ketchikan, Juneau and Skagway. That was followed by train travel on the McKinley Explorer to Denali National Park, and finally a bus trip to Fairbanks to fly home.

In the course of the trip, and despite some spells of clouds and rain, they saw black bears, whales, sea otters, seals, eagles, at least one grizzly bear, moose, sheep and sled dogs. They saw massive glaciers and amazing landscapes all along the coast and into the mountains. And they caught clear views of Denali, the highest mountain in North America, which is shrouded in cloud about 80% of the time.

• Click here to read Dan's writeup of the trip, illustrated with some of his photos. 
• Be sure to follow the SEE MORE PHOTOS links to albums of photos, with captions, from each leg of the journey.
• Or click here to see all those photos in one album.
• Bonus for rail fans: More train photos!

A hot time at Disney for Dan and Julie

Julie traveled to Florida to attend the Girl Scouts National Convention, held at Disney's Coronado Springs Resort on July 20-22. Although not an official delegate, she enjoyed the activities and events and took notes to report back to the Heart of New Jersey council.

Dan flew down to join her as the convention was wrapping up, and the couple spent the next three days visiting three of the Disney parks - Hollywood Studios, Animal Kindom and EPCOT.

Pacing themselves in the midsummer heat, and avoiding the thrill rides that had the longest lines, they had a great time exploring the parks. Neither had been to Disney Florida in decades. Only Dan had seen EPCOT before (on a long-ago trip with young Marie and Danny), and neither had seen the Hollywood and Animal parks. They finished up by watching the EPCOT fireworks, then flew home on the 26th.

A birthday-celebration weekend in Los Angeles

Dan and Julie visited Christine and Jamie in Los Angeles in early January to celebrate Christine's birthday. Highlights included a visit to the Getty Center museum, where Julie and Christine posed before an appropriate sculpture, "Draped Reclining Mother and Baby" by Henry Moore.

The weekend began with a stroll on and around the Santa Monica Pier, and then to a movie theater to experience the new Avatar movie in 3D.

That evening, the group toasted the birthday girl at Harvelle's Blues Club in Santa Monica, where they were entertained by a New Orleans-style jazz band called Alligator Beach.

The visit to the Getty was the following day. "We could only see a fraction of Getty Center, as it's enormous," says Dan, "and that's just one of the two Getty museums in LA. But we enjoyed both the exhibits - including a collection of drawings and sketches by Dutch artists - and the grounds themselves."

That evening, the group had a fine dinner at an Italian restaurant, La Bruschetta in the Westwood neighborhood, that has become a C&J favorite.

D&J stayed through Monday, and while Jamie worked, they and Christine visited South Dakota the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures - a new attraction in the city, which opened in late 2021. This selfie was taken in front of Mount Rushmore a painted backdrop used in Alfred Hitchcock's "North by Northwest."

Outside the museum, heavy rain arrived that afternoon, part of a series of storms that caused flooding and mudslides in various parts of California during January. Some streets in the LA area were flooded that night, but fortunately, there were no such problems in C&J's neighborhood. And the skies cleared for D&J's flight back to New Jersey the next day.