This is my last evening in New York. I fly back to MO tomorrow. It has been a really awesome trip! I’m a couple of days behind in posting, but I’ll do a quick one now.

Sunday morning, I helped Brandon and Heather can green beans and pickles. It was a good morning activity, and they should be stocked up for winter now.

Sunday afternoon, we went to a lake house owned by one of Brandon’s coworkers on Lake Ontario. The property was really nice, and the lake was amazing! It was only 80 degrees outside, so I expected the water to be really cold, but the water temperature was actually very pleasant and the lake is really clear and clean. I wish I had brought my snorkel gear because the water is definitely clear enough for snorkeling. It was a great opportunity to swim even without my snorkel gear.

Brandon and Heather had to work on Monday, but Monday afternoon, we went for a boat ride on the St. Lawrence River. One of Brandon’s friends just bought a very nice, new fishing boat so we got a private boat ride on the river. It was raining when we left Watertown to go to the river so we stopped at a nice restaurant and had dinner. It poured while we were there, and we thought that was going to cancel our trip, but the rain stopped and the clouds cleared around 7pm. It turned into a beautiful evening with a rainbow. The St. Lawrence is also really clean and beautiful. We were in Canadian waters for a while and the coast of Canada was a short boat ride away.

Heather worked today, so Brandon and I visited some cemeteries. Some of the stones here are 1700s, so much earlier than we have in Iowa. I like cemeteries, so I really enjoyed getting to visit some with such old stones. Brandon bought some delicious perch from his friend with the boat, and he fried that for supper, then he made a fire and roasted marshmallows. It was a beautiful, cool evening!

I could write more, but I have to leave at 4:45am to catch my flight in Syracuse and I need to go pack. It has been a very fun trip and it was nice to get to spend time with family.

Brandon and Heather joined me yesterday in Montreal, and we had a really fun day! Unfortunately, the Biodome was not that great. It’s really small and it was packed with people. It was hard to see anything and it smelled like sweat. The aquarium in St. Louis is much better. The Botanical Gardens were worth going to see. The gardens are huge, but there are 4 main areas. The Chinese Gardens were the best. Some of the ponds had lily pads with the biggest flowers I have ever seen!

We got back to the hotel a little after 3pm, rested for a while, then got an Uber down to the old part of town. I wanted to buy a cup and Heather wanted to walk around the shops. We had planned to eat dinner there, but it was Friday night and all of the restaurants were packed. So, we got an Uber back to the hotel and found a really good Italian restaurant near our hotel. The pasta was some of the best I’ve eaten. Brandon is really good at organizing transportation and finding restaurants. He does it quite a bit for work. I need to learn to use the Uber app and some of the other restaurant apps. They really make travel easier!

Today, we left Montreal for New York. On the way to Brandon’s house, we stopped at a look out point in the Adirondack Mountains. It was cool, the air was fresh and breathable, and it was beautiful. The water here is really clear too. There is no clear water in Iowa that I’m aware of. We stopped at a town on Lake Placid for lunch, then drove to Brandon and Heather’s house. I slept for an hour in the back seat of the car while Brandon drove. It’s the best car trip I’ve ever taken! I need a permanent chauffeur to drive me places. That would make things so much easier.

Brandon made bacon sandwiches for supper and we swapped music recommendations until I ran out of energy. It’s been a really fun couple of days. We may can vegetables from their lovely garden tomorrow. I’ll also post pictures of Brandon and Heather’s house and property. It’s lovely!

I had a very pleasant day exploring the historic part of Montreal today. As you can see above, Montreal is really a mix of new and historic. I believe this is the Church of St. George with a skyscraper behind it. Microsoft Copilot told me that I was about 15 minutes away from the old part of the city, but it has consistently given me bad information about how long it takes to get places. It takes about half an hour to walk from my hotel down to the river. There is a lot of construction work going on in Montreal right now, but fortunately, the maps app in my phone gave me good walking directions.

I walked down to the St. Lawrence River first and got a few pictures. The science center and some other attractions aimed at families are down there. There were bus loads of small children going to something. Then, I walked up a few blocks to an area filled with small shops and restaurants. The architecture is very pretty and very European in style, and it was fun to wander around. There are a bunch of interesting art galleries and lots of other shops mostly aimed at tourists. I found one that sold art designed by First Nation people that I liked. I bought a hard cover notebook that I can use to take notes in meetings at school. I might go back to get a cup if I have time and I don’t find one at the Biodome tomorrow. I ate lunch at a crepe shop before I headed back to my hotel around 2pm.

There are lots of parks here and people seem to take advantage of them. All along the river there is a park and bike path. Lots of people were out walking dogs and bike riding is a significant mode of transportation here. I found this giant bird statue in front of a very modern building. I have no idea what it is or why it’s there.

I took a break in my hotel room after lunch and looked for a chocolate shop near my hotel. Copilot found one that seemed promising and told me I could get there in 2 or 3 minutes. When I put it into Maps, it said the shop was 1.6 miles away but I could get there in 11 minutes. I don’t know how many of you track how fast you can do a mile, but it takes me about 15 minutes to do a mile walking at a fairly quick pace on the treadmill. You would have to be a good jogger in a place with no crosswalks/traffic to make it 1.6 miles in 11 minutes. 2-3 minutes is completely unrealistic! It took me 30 minutes to walk to/find the shop. They had fairly limited and expensive options, and everything had to be refrigerated. Fortunately, there was a taxi stand nearby, so I had a taxi take me back to the hotel. It’s downhill on the way there but uphill on the way back and I was getting tired. The deserts I got were delicious! So, overall, it was worth the effort to go get them.

I ate supper at an Irish Pub. The food was fine but nothing special. It’s a place where people seem to go regularly and everyone knows each other. It was mostly English speakers. It’s close to my hotel and I wasn’t up for another trek across Montreal to find something more exciting. My deserts after supper were delicious! I also found a water boiler and bags of tea in my room so I could happily stay here indefinitely. I tried to swim after supper, but the pool is always filled with children. I was hoping that since I’m here so late in the season families would have finished their vacations, but apparently not. The hot tub on the roof is nice though and the kids aren’t usually in it.

Brandon and Heather are coming tomorrow and we will go to the Biodome. I found a bagel shop down the street, so I’m planning to go there for breakfast while I wait for them to come. It should be a fun day!

Hello All: I arrived in Montreal this afternoon for just a few days before I go visit my brother in New York. Bill is doing a multi-country trip to Europe! He has set up his own blog, and he’s trying to get into the travel agency business. His blog is great and has a lot of pictures! Here is the link: https://lighthouseoutboundtravel.wordpress.com/2026/08/12/solar-eclipse/

My vacation fell at a weird time this year for a lot of complicated reasons, so I’m not doing a two week trip somewhere like usual. As many of you know, my brother moved to up state New York a few years ago, met a super nice woman, and got married. He has been wanting me to visit for a while. He’s only 3 hours from Montreal, so I decided to fly up here for a couple of days. Brandon and Heather are going to join me on Friday for a trip to the Montreal Biodome and Botanical Center, then I’m riding back to their house in NY for a few days before I go back to MO, then back to IA.

So far my trip has been pretty smooth. Customs agents in Montreal were very concerned about why I am vacationing alone. I got grilled by two different agents at the airport about why I’m here alone when I don’t have friends in the city. I tried to explain that people vacation alone all the time, but they didn’t believe me. They weren’t happy until I told them that my brother was joining me. If I come again, I’m going to tell them that I’m a history professor here to visit some historic sites or something like that. It was weird.

My hotel is lovely and right downtown. It’s a little noisy because I’m in the middle of the city, but it’s easy to walk to things. I found a very nice Thai restaurant right around the corner for supper. I had a green curry chicken dish, a lychee martini and crème brûlée with tea. They curry and the martini were both recommended by the server. I don’t drink a lot of alcohol, but I love lychees, and this was really good. I had planned to swim tonight in the lovely salt water pool at my hotel, but at this point, I’ve had too much food and too little energy, so I’m going to bed early instead.

I haven’t been to a French speaking place since 2008, so it’s been fun to be in a place where I’m surrounded by French again. People in the city speak English and French equally well, but it’s given me a good opportunity to practice. My spoken French is really rusty, I speak Spanish a lot more often now, but I still understand what people are saying pretty well. I watch a decent number of French-language documentaries so I don’t lose my skills completely. The picture I posted above shows the really modern part of the city, but as the taxi was driving me in, I saw a lot of older European-style architecture too. It feels kind of like Paris but friendlier. I’ll have more pictures tomorrow.

I don’t really have a good plan for tomorrow. I probably need to develop one. I want to try to find some outdoor markets, but there are also lots of shops and restaurants around the hotel, so I’m on the fence about how much of a plan I need. Brandon, Heather and I have a pretty good plan for Friday, so I could probably use tomorrow to wander around and see what I find. I think I’m walking distance from the old part of the city.

Montreal is incredibly diverse! There are restaurants from all over the world in the block around my hotel, and the population is a mix of people from all kinds of ethnic backgrounds who all speak French now. It’s super interesting! The city feels very safe so far.

I’m out of energy! Maybe I’ll have more good pictures tomorrow. Montreal is supposed to have good bagels so I’ll try to find a shop with those.

Well, we are at the airport in Dallas waiting for our flight to St. Louis. Somehow, our flight left early from Belize, got into Dallas early and now we are probably slightly delayed because our plane got stuck in Cedar Rapids. It probably had to be de-iced. We have about 5 hours here in Dallas. We got some very expensive, but pretty good, hamburgers here at the airport, then I went to a French cafe to get a cup of tea. The only tea they had was Lipton and I paid $5 for it. Worst French cafe ever! They didn’t have any good dessert either.

On our way to the airport, our taxi driver stopped in front of some fake Mayan ruins at an adventure park and offered to take our picture (see above), saying that it would bring us good luck. I hope that’s true because Bill and I are not going to end up in any fashion magazines with this picture.

Our last couple of days in Belize were pretty quiet. We went into town on a quest for brownies but failed to find any. Someone could make a fortune selling brownies and chocolate cake on the street. We did find some banana bread at a Chinese grocery store that was pretty good. I’m sure someone local makes it. I met an American couple on the beach yesterday who live in Belize, and they confirmed that there are no brownie shops. We weren’t even looking for “special” brownies, just some chocolate ones. I did learn from the American couple that you can buy boxes of Ghirardelli brownie mix at one of the grocery stores, so if we go back, we will look for that. Bill and I had been debating whether we would get searched by Customs if we packed a box of Ghirardelli mix to bring with us if we came again, but now we don’t have to try that out. Based on the picture above, it looks like I need to cut back on brownies anyway. I have to sign up for strength class again when I get home.

Yesterday, we went to a restaurant down the street and had some good pan fried shrimp po-boys in fry jacks. They were surprisingly good. I went for a beautiful walk on the beach that morning. There is a long stretch of beaches with hotels and houses, but the beaches were mostly empty and no one seems to care if you are walking on their beach, which was great. The American couple I met had a house right off the beach and they were out with their 4 rescue dogs.

We tried to snorkel yesterday afternoon, but the water quality was terrible. We really had no good water on this vacation. I did see a spotted jellyfish. I have only seen moon jellies previously. This one also has a mild sting but it’s not harmful to humans.

Overall, this was a very pleasant vacation. It wasn’t one of our more exciting vacations, but the location was beautiful, the weather was really nice, and I had some good seafood! This morning, before we left, there was a dolphin in the lagoon that we could see from the balcony of our apartment. We are headed back to weather in the negatives.

It is currently 7:30pm. Our flight is supposed to leave at 9:15pm. We’ll see what happens!

This trip is already winding down, we didn’t do as many adventures on this trip as we have on other trips. The water is rough and can be cool at times. There aren’t big enough waves for boogie boards, the water is just choppy. Choppy water also makes for cloudy water so visibility is lower.

The other day we did a hour boat ride out to an island/caye (key) and snorkeled around it. We had a young gal in our group that was not a very good swimmer and initially she tried going without a life jacket, I think since Emily and I had not wanted one. She ended up needing one, shortly after starting out she fell behind and it took a little bit to get going again. To be fair the water was pretty rough. I debated if it was worth going myself after I had swum back to check on her. It probably wasn’t in the end but it was good to be in the water for a while.

There were a few lobsters and a barracuda, the lobsters were not very easy to see even with some picture enhancement. Mostly I got pictures of Emily swimming. She said that our readers have seen plenty of those already. But here’s a few more.

The tour usually goes to a second location after lunch but because the water was so rough they opted to stay in the same place and about half of the people didn’t snorkel including us. It was nice to just hang out and enjoy the sun and fresh air. After we went to see sharks, rays and turtles. It was horrible. I stayed in the water only for a short time. I had gotten in and seen a fairly large eagle ray and a few nurse sharks and I only seen shadows where the turtles were at and most of that was probably the mob of people swimming around trying to see them, so I went back to the boat.

There hasn’t been a lot to write about as it’s been pretty laid back. We went into Placencia village a few time, swam in the ocean from the resort beach and in the pool. We have seen a few things off the beach here but not a lot.

I don’t think the trip has been too fast or too long. It’s been good to have time to relax. It would be nice to find a location that always has good water for snorkeling and diving, but also have a good area to walk around and restaurants to try. Supposedly the water is better in the summer, though last time we came to Belize in May/June I only got one day that the dive company went out. We will have to see. The sargassum does also come here then as well.

Here’s some more random pictures from our trip to the village yesterday.

Sounds like I will be coming home to subzero windchills. That’s going to be a big change from what I’ve been used to. At least I have a few days before I have to go back to work.

Be safe.

Like many of our vacation destinations, Placencia has been a mixed experience and we are on the fence about whether coming back at a different time of the year would be better. It’s very quiet and laid back. The location is beautiful. Sunday, Bill had a pretty big gash in his foot because he has bad sandals, so we didn’t schedule any activities. I went for a walk in the morning, took a shuttle to town for lunch and booked a snorkel trip, then late in the afternoon, I went for a lovely walk on the beach. I got rained on while I was out for the walk, so I decided to swim in my clothes since I was already wet. I floated in the ocean while the sun was setting and there was a partial rainbow. It was lovely, and overall, it was a very pleasant day. I ate at Omars again and got more blackened fish. They really have delicious seafood. I would like to try their blackened shrimp before I leave.

Yesterday, we did a snorkel trip. It was okay. The weather has not been great for water activities. It’s windy all the time and the water is choppy and not super clear. We had an hour boat ride out on really choppy water, then some rough swimming during our snorkel trip. I also don’t love guided snorkel trips. We were in a pretty big group and a lot of people were not good swimmers. It’s hard to see much that way and it’s a good way to get smacked in the face with someone’s fin. The tour gave us a pretty good lunch on the tiny island where we snorkeled, then we docked beside a fishing boat where sharks, rays, and turtles come because they get fed the remains of fish. One the one hand, it’s a great way to see sea creatures up close. There were three big spotted eagle rays, which I love to watch! They are beautiful! Two of the biggest sea turtles I’ve ever seen, several small sharks, and a variety of other stingrays. That said, it’s not exactly natural to have those animals clustered together eating fishing leftovers. The rays are also really accustomed to humans so they swim close. They aren’t aggressive, but there were a lot of people in the group clumped in a small area. Many of them swim badly with a life vest and don’t pay attention to what’s under them. The rays don’t have a reason to sting anyone on purpose, but if you accidentally swiped one with your leg, that would be a painful accident and it’s an hour boat ride back to town.

Last night, after our snorkel adventure, I was craving dessert but our hotel does not have good dessert. So, I left Bill to make our spaghetti while I went to a neighboring resort to get some of their dessert. I seemed like a good plan, but the other hotel only had chocolate soufflé and crème brûlée, both of which I like, but the soufflé takes 20 minutes to make and comes with ice cream. It took forever to get everything and I had a 10 minute walk back with potentially melting ice cream. Half way back to the apartment, the restaurant called to tell me that I left the crime brûlée. I thought they had put everything in the same bag, so I had taken the bag they gave me and left but the crème brûlée was separate so I had to go back to get it. It was a very complicated excursion to get fairly simple dessert. I really just wanted a brownie or piece of chocolate cake. There is a chocolate shop in town that I want to visit, probably tomorrow when I go in for lunch. There’s a bakery down the street a little ways. Overall, I’m not impressed with their food, but they do have decent chocolate cup cakes so I may walk there in a few minutes to see if I can get some.

This is not our most exciting vacation, but it’s a very pleasant location. It’s a great place to read books and enjoy being outside. I understand why people retire here.

Hello All: We are having a very low key vacation, so I haven’t had much to write about, but we are in a lovely place! Our apartment has 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a kitchen and a living room with a big sofa. I’m currently on the balcony overlooking the lagoon. There is a nice breeze so it’s perfect weather for being on the balcony and the view of the lagoon is beautiful. This is the off season, so there are very few people at the hotel or in town, so it’s easy to book things and we don’t have to wait for anything.

It is cooler here than we expected. Apparently, December and January here are the “cool” months. That means it’s high 70s and low 80s all of the time. That’s great for being outside, but a little cool for water activities. It’s also windy here, so the ocean near the beach stays a little churned up and the water isn’t super clear.

We had planned to do snorkeling/diving today, but the dive shop didn’t get back to us. We probably could have taken a taxi into town to see if the shop was doing a dive today, but we decided to go down for lunch instead and try to book something for tomorrow. We still have several days to book some diving/snorkeling.

Yesterday, we did a cave hike and “blue hole”swim. I really enjoyed the hiking. After we did the first cave, I went on an additional hike by myself to find a second cave. I never found the second cave. It must have been further along on the trail, but I didn’t want to make Bill and the driver wait for me too long. It took me an extra 45 minutes as it was. It was a great hike though. The trail is fairly well-maintained and it’s covered in a canopy of vegetation. Part of the trail was rough steps cut into the side of a “mountain” so it was pretty steep. I was soaked in sweat and humidity by the time I got back, but it was fun. It also made the blue hole feel really good even though it was a little cold. I should have taken more pictures, but I have one of an easy part of the trail.

The blue hole was interesting. Mexico has better ones. This one was really more of a spring fed pond that flowed into a river that went down into a cave. The water was cold but clear and clean. I took my snorkel gear so I could dive to the bottom. It wasn’t very deep. There weren’t many other people there, which was nice. I came home exhausted and went to bed at 8pm. We had intense rain here last night that came in waves. It woke me up several times through the night. Like everywhere else, Belize’s weather is changing dramatically.

I have had some really good food here! We went to a restaurant called Omars a few days ago and I had some of the best blackened fish that I’ve ever had. I had really good grilled fish at a restaurant called Wendy’s too. I also found an ice cream place with delicious coconut milk ice cream. Dairy ice cream does not hold up well in hot climates. It melts and re-freezes so it has little ice crystals in it and it melts really fast. Coconut milk ice cream is super creamy, it doesn’t melt nearly as fast and it’s delicious! I got a scoop of chocolate and a scoop of mango. If we go back to town for lunch, I’ll may get some more.

Bill and I have been to several of the local grocery stores. We eat out for lunch and cook breakfast and dinner. Pizza at the hotel is really expensive, so Bill made us a really good pizza a few days ago. The fruit is good here so I’ve had delicious yogurt, fruit, granola bowls for breakfast, and we found some homemade sour dough bread and tortillas. It’s really nice to be able to cook some food. The hotel restaurant is fine, but the food is a little bland.

I have not had any migraines since I’ve been here. I didn’t have any in Roatan either which is not too far away. I’m not sure what is different here, but even with the wind blowing almost every day, I feel so much better than I do at home. It’s worth being here just to feel better for a while.

Hopefully, I’ll have some good snorkel stories in a few days.