From Katz's to Halifax to Niagara

The garden at Etz Chaim Synagogue / Maine Jewish Museum, Portland, Maine

Years ago, when I worked at The Center for Field Assistance at Peace Corps Headquarters in Washington D.C., travel for regional assistance specialists remained suspended for months because a bickering Congress had issued a series of continuing resolutions. For over a year I'd been planning a training conference in Uzbekistan for community health volunteers and their counterparts who represented a dozen different countries in Europe, Asia and the Mediterranean. Additionally, I'd been asked to visit nearby Krygz Republic to assess whether a health project could be initiated there. In the meantime my husband had been pressuring me to retire within the year. He wanted to move to Northeast Washington State.

Pastrami at Katz's Deli, NYC, est. 1888

In total frustration, one afternoon I threw up my hands and complained to our administrative assistant, "I'll never get to Tashkent and Bishkek before we get to Chewelah."

Ted Williams, Fenway Park

He'd laughed. "Terri, in the history of the world, I don't think that sentence has ever been said before."

As I shuffle through the brochures and flyers I accumulated over my recent 35-day East Coast and Canada odyssey, I wonder if in the history of the world, anybody planned such a trip before. Though Frank and I both realized we were rolling three vacations into one, it hasn't been until now that I've begun to process everything we saw and learned. .

Here's a brief synopsis of the highlights of our trip.

The Tenement Museum in NYC's Lower East Side...and a reminder of how immigrants adjusted to cramped quarters and survived harsh winters. Plus lunch at Nate's,

Boston! I'd long complained I'd been to 63 countries and never to Boston. Now I can't say that anymore. But we didn't see enough. Our day trip bus driver stopped only at Fenway Park so we could snap photos of the famous statues. I need to spend a lot more time in Boston.

The Titanic Museum and cemetery in Halifax...where at last the unknown child has been identified as Sidney Leslie Goodwin. People still leave toys, coins and flowers at the foot of his tombstone. Nobody ever steals anything, the cemetery guide assured us.

Lunch at the Hotel Kenney in Jones Falls, a canal lock station on the Rideau Waterway.

Three amazing museums in upstate New York: The National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame in Saratoga Springs, and the Lake Placid Olympic Musuem at Lake Placid. Plus stunning Fall Foliage in the Adirondacks.

Boldt Castle, Heart Island, Alexandria Bay, NYC. Like the Taj Mahal, this grandiose Rhineland castle was intended to be a tribute

to a beloved wife. George C. Boldt, owner of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel never completed the building after his wife suddenly died, but it has been restored to what it had been designed to be...an eerie setting where actual people never lived.

Niagara Falls on Canadian Thanksgiving...with views from the Skylon.

I've still dozens of photos to edit and lots of memories to process...and I sense some travel articles soon will shape up. 

The Portland Headlight