Journey to Upstate New York

On Sunday we woke up around 10AM for a leisurely breakfast at the hotel by 11AM, and a departure 30 minutes later for upstate New York. While checking out, I made a case to receive 50,000 Hilton points back to compensate for 1 award night I used for the hotel stay due to the leaking…

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World Trade Center NYC

Our final part of rediscovering NYC was a trip to the World Trade Center – the new building as well as the footprints of the old buildings destroyed on 9/11. We decided to save this for before the wedding on Saturday morning since it was so conveniently located near our hotel in FiDi. Prior to…

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Brooklyn wedding

After our Times Square adventure (before our Broadway adventure), we met up with the family for Part 1 of the Brooklyn wedding at Ethiopian restaurant Gheneb. Cousin Kassa, on Aunt Leslie’s (my mom’s sister) side of the family, married Justine González – which was the whole purpose for us coming to NYC to the first…

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Rediscovering NYC

We decided to slip away for the July 4th weekend to New York, combining a family wedding with rediscovering NYC and a trip to the Adirondacks in upstate. We used United miles and Hilton points to make the most of our time in NYC and give us maximum flexibility for spending money along the way…

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Departing Costa Rica

Our final day started with a breakfast at the hotel, a farewell to Dirk, settling of our accounts (hot sauce, dinner, 3 nights) over poor WiFi that took 20 minutes to transact a Paypal transfer, and then finally leaving Nuevo Arenal and departing Costa Rica. Dirk had to kick all other guests off the network…

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Howler monkeys and hot springs

We again decided to opt-out of the simply hotel breakfast and instead made for Nuevo Arenal once more before our day of howler monkeys and hot springs. It had rained profusely the previous night causing a few power outages, so when we got to town our hopes of eating at Casa Paniaguas, the highest rated…

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