McKinney Gypsy Caravan

Exploring Los Angeles after Christmas

January 2, 2025 / Erin McKinney

Hey everyone! We took a quick 5 day trip to Los Angeles between Christmas and New Year’s this year to fit a little stateside travel into the plans.

Day 1

We booked ourselves on a 6:25am flight out of New Orleans, luckily direct to LAX, so only about a 3.5 hour flight. It was the first time Kegan got to use his Clear Plus membership and his TSA Pre-check, so that made 5:30am security a bit more tolerable.

We landed on time and headed out to grab an Uber, only to learn that you can’t grab an Uber at LAX, you have to ride a shuttle out to a rideshare lot. Which, actually, first annoyed me…but then after seeing it, I get it… it was much smoother and easy to find the Uber when it arrived because everything was labeled with a letter and number.

Our Uber dropped us at our hotel first to leave our bags, but unexpectedly, they had our room available at 10am. I booked Burton House, Beverly Hills- which sounds fancier than it is- its just a Residence Inn they rebranded. ha

Our first destination was supposed to be brunch at Bottega Louie in West Hollywood…which I had read was amazing, but they just brought us a lunch menu, no brunch today….but that’s ok. Food was still stellar. They are known for their pastries and macaroons. We didn’t sample any of those.

These were Portabello mushrooom “fries” and they were fantastic

Norah didn’t want the pizza we were getting, so I told her to just order her own entire pizza. ha

This is what I was here for… the Truffle, fontina, creme fraiche pizza with a runny egg yolk. This pizza was heavenly.

With full bellies, we headed across town to the La Brea Tar Pits to begin our tourist track for the day.

Overall, the geologist on the trip voted this a “skip”… and he’s right… there’s nothing really to see. You are seeing some sectioned and fenced off pits that may have a little 2-3 foot section of wet black tar visible. It is all preserved, which is great… but there’s not much to actually SEE. The Page museum on site was a nice 30 minute walk through with a few skeletons… and the atrium was pretty, but I think I’d save my money.

They had an Observation Pit that would have been cool to actually see the tar and maybe see how sticky it was….but it was closed. No tours were given that day either. Kegan was only able to get this photo sticking his phone up over a gate and hoping he didn’t drop it! ha

They have found the skulls of over 400 dire wolves in the pits.

A sloth with fur getting eaten by a big cat

I think this is the mammoth they found in 2009 when they excavated more of the LA Museum of Art underground parking garage.

My bestie- the ground sloth. Not as big as others we’ve found- but I love it when I find them 🙂

We finished at Le Brea way quicker than I anticipated, so we decided to add on the LA Museum of Art which sits right beside La Brea in the same park and on our way to our next 3:30pm tickets we had to wait for.

It was a modern art museum… and I’m just not an appreciator of a lot of modern art… but they did have an exhibit highlighting the cosmos through various cultures in art. That was pretty neat.

There were lots of displays of old hand-drawn books on display about discoveries in space and science

This was a moving 3 layer hand-drawn and colored star chart in a book from the 1600s

Our first glimpse of the Hollywood sign from the 3rd floor of the Museum of Art

A statue of a chicken by Picasso. They had an entire room of Picasso works, including a couple that weren’t cubist. That was interesting.

A portrait of Frida Kahlo by Diego Rivera

Modern art I found interesting- a headless man trying to drink from a fountain

This was probably my favorite of the modern art… a mixed media work by Sanford Biggers called “Witness” from 2016. Various materials used to create African folk statues, creating shadows of a more modern strong Black culture. I couldn’t find much from the artist discussing the meaning other than it shows the ties to history and culture.

After meandering through all of the galleries, it was time for our pre-booked tickets at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.

This museum just opened in late 2021, so still seemed very new and fresh.

Norah was thrilled there was a VR experience

One of the coolest exhibits was a zoetrope of the Toy Story characters to show the art of animation.

They had a big room/display of old cameras and equipment used to film in color. I liked this one because it was very similar to the color wheel we have for our 1950’s aluminum Christmas tree where the colors rotate in front of the light and create different color effects.

Storyboard design for the racers in Tron

Storyboard design for the Terminator before filming

A concept design idea for the movie Blade Runner

The very first character sheet for Mickey Mouse. I love how just by looking at these still images on a sheet of paper, you can tell how the animation is suppose to move and act,

Gizmo from The Gremlins. Fun fact- by the time we got to this museum, my feet had a couple blisters because I wore new shoes like an amateur…and very thin socks. Kegan advised I get a pair of real socks… so I went to the gift shop of the movie museum here and bought a pair of Gremlins socks. ha

Overall, a very cool museum. There was a permanent exhibit about the roots of the movie studios and the Jewish founders. I didn’t realize that ALL the movie studios were founded by Jewish founders. Literally, every single one. That was interesting.

After the museum, we decided to just visit a couple other spots in the area before heading out. We got dropped off in our Uber at the parking lot of Du-Par’s, a well-known diner in the area. Famous to us because of the Amazon show Bosch, where the *sort of spoiler alert* – one of the main characters dies in the parking lot.

Attached to Du-Par’s is The Grove, which is a big vendor stall sort of food establishment. We were there for the Kaylin and Kaylin Pickles Kegan had seen on Instagram.

They had 12 types of pickles and offered pickle flights. We tried all 12.

In the end, we liked the Kosher Dill and the Honey Mustard slices the best. Kegan got 2 jars to eat this week before our flight back home.

We grabbed coffee at the “best coffee in LA”. Newsflash, it was not the best coffee in LA. lol

After walking around for a bit trying to find good food we wanted, we just decided to Uber Eats something from the hotel or eat nearby. Once we got back to our hotel, we decided to try Factor’s Famous Deli, a kosher deli across the street from our hotel.

Norah ordered cheesesticks…and man, there were a lot of them. ha she ended up eating them the next night for a late dinner snack too.

Matzah ball soup… a staple. Their’s was good… but I’ll actually venture to say that mine is better!

Norah’s chili dog she ordered… apparently the girl is growing. She’s thinner than she’s been in years, back in jeans she outgrew almost two years ago…and eating full meals this week, which is very unlike her. Must be a growth spurt. ha

Kegan got the Pastrami on Rye. I got the beef tongue half sandwich on rye with a side of chopper liver but I guess I forgot to photo mine. Chopped liver wasn’t my style..I’m still chasing Toojay’s liver schmear from south Florida….man, nothing like it.

We got Black and White Cookies to go since we were so full… and headed back to the hotel room for 30 minutes or so until our escape room time.

We had booked at Hatch Games for The Lab Rat which I had read was one of the best rooms in LA.

We (obviously) escaped! 🙂 It was a very cute room and concept. The humans were the lab rats and the rats were the scientists and you had to figure out how to escape your cage in 60 minutes. Our game master was super impressed with Norah, of course… and so impressed, he recommended she check out the behind the scenes set up of the room, so she could see the wiring and the sensors and the Arduino board and breadboard that was controlling the whole thing (she just got an Arduino board for Christmas…and I was hoping she would enjoy learning to program C++ on it via this 30 Days Lost in Space game where you have to get your stranded space ship back online over the course of 30 days via coding lessons to help you do it… so this backstage glimpse couldn’t have been more timely! Yay game guy for helping a mom get her kid interested in programming!)

After that, he even took us up an old elevator to a new room they are working on with a giant submarine they are theming for a room.

Funny little turn of events. I found this place because I was looking for Escape My Room LA- which is the only other location of the Escape My Room in New Orleans where we did all 4 rooms, they were the best rooms ever, we made friends with the game master there who even recommended we look into Haynes Academy for Norah and who told us about sound color synesthesia – which Norah definitely has! So… because we had such ties to Escape My Room, I wanted to find it out here but couldn’t. It looked like maybe they were affiliated with the Hatch Games in some way… But when he took us up to the top floor to the new super secret game under construction, I saw a giant Escape My Room logo painted on the wall. Turns out, during the pandemic they went under it sounds like and sold to the guys who created Hatch Games. The submarine is from New Orleans! and was acquired from the Audubon aquarium at some point by the Escape My Room guys, but never finished… but now its going to finally see the light of day next year. All in all, we felt very “in” there and it was a cool experience. He said Lady Gaga was just there last week. I bet she didn’t get to go see the secret submarine room! ha

Day 2

We started Day 2 with breakfast and a coffee from the chain Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf connected to our hotel…and then grabbed an Uber up to Warner Brothers Studios for a studio tour.

The tour was fairly neat. We go to see the backlot and the sound stages where tons of famous movies and shows have been filmed since the 1930s.

After a film and a golf cart ride around the backlot, we were allowed to self-explore a museum type area and the Stars Hollow town set from Gilmore Girls.

None of us were fans of Gilmore Girls or had ever really watched much…so this experience of walking the town didn’t really do much for us. Friends was the other big show with tons of photo ops, like the orange couch in Central Park with the fountain…or the Central Perk couch…we don’t really like Friends either… so we weren’t as absorbed into the opportunities as some other folks.

They let Norah turn off the Bat Signal and Kegan got to be the good guy to turn it back on to call Batman.

Original Christopher Reeves Superman costume

They had a Harry Potter section that Norah was pretty into

The sorting hat experience sorted her into House Gryffindor- which she wasn’t thrilled about because she’s definitely a Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw. A HuffleClaw or RavenPuff, if you will. 🙂

After Warner Brothers, we hitched an Uber ride out to Glendale to eat at Porto’s bakery- a cuban bakery and lunch spot.

We were unfortunately a bit underwhelmed. It was sooo busy… and the pastries or coffee wasn’t anything like what we would get in south Florida… but overall, it was a quick lunch to hold us over and was fine.

Guava and cheese pastry and a churro croissant. We also tried the Ham Croquette, the Potato Ball and the Cafe Con Leche. The coffee was the most disappointing. Kegan says its because it needs to be made with hate and a little bit of red lipstick. These folks just weren’t angry enough like his cuban girls at the cafe he used to go pick up from in Boca. haha

Next stop was the Griffith Observatory. Man, were there a lot of people who had the same idea on the Friday after Christmas! ha The traffic up the road to the observatory was so backed up, I felt bad for the poor Uber driver and we got out and walked the last mile up the hill to the entrance so he could turn around and go back down.

The viewpoint here I would have missed from the car, so that’s a positive. Also, I was not chilly anymore after that hike up…so another positive!

From the top, you have a great view of the Hollywood sign. I had to stand too close to Norah to get a good photo showing the sign closer and bigger behind her due to all of the people… but you get the idea.

The building is gorgeous… the views are spectacular.

They have expanded the observatory underground from just a telescope, exhibits and planetarium to add the Leonard Nimoy Event Theater, the Cafe At The End of the Universe (a play on words and homage to Douglas Adam’s Restaurant At the End of the Universe book-the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy books being my favorites)- and tons of other science exhibits. There were just a few hundred too many people everywhere to be able to do anything. Kegan was frustrated, Norah was visibly annoyed with all the kids jumping in front of her and messing with the exhibits she was using… so we quickly decided that was enough and made our way for the exit.

Next stop was the cross streets of Hollywood and Vine to explore downtown Hollywood and see the famous Walk of Fame.

I made sure we stopped where we could see the Capitol Records building for Norah. One of her fun facts is that the Capitol Records building sends out a morse code signal from its tower. She sat and decoded it to ensure that her facts were accurate 🙂

Hollywood has a scramble light like Tokyo and it was fun to see everyone rush everywhere in all directions later in the evening when it was swarming with people.

We had time to kill until our dinner reservations, so we headed to Grauman’s Chinese Theater.

Opened in 1927, its been a theatre house and movie theater ever since. Changing names to Mann’s Chinese Theater in the 1970s and now the TLC Chinese Theater.

It was the first theater to have air conditioning…and many movies have premiered at this theater over the years including Star Wars in 1977. The Academy Awards were hosted here in the 1940s, but now in the Dolby Theater next door.

We were able to find tons of hand and foot prints in the front courtyard.

I was on the lookout for Mel Brook’s handprints because I knew his was funny. He wore a prosthetic 6th finger on his left hand when he did his prints, forever “cementing” him as a funny man.

Norah said “I know the name Michael Keaton”…. uhhh yeah, its Beetlejuice! I love Michael Keaton as an actor. We watched The Birdman recently and that was such a cool weird artsy film…. he’s great in the show Dopesick, too.

Kegan decided to give Billy Crystal’s star a little Mike Wizowski treatment. “Can you believe it… I’m on the Walk of Fame!!! ” (while being completely obscured)

I had made 5:30pm reservations at Musso & Frank’s on Hollywood Blvd. It’s an Italian restaurant that’s been serving Hollywood elite for 105 years!

We were sat in one of the half round leather booths in the “new room” which was added on in the 1930s and the original exclusive “back room” bar and tables for the elites was moved to this area. This restaurant held Hollywood’s first pay phone where I’m sure many movie deals were made.

The history from their website is better than I could write it up:

“From the beginning, Musso’s has been a favorite among Hollywood’s A-list. Charlie Chaplin was an early regular. Often seen lunching with Mary Pickford, Rudolph Valentino and Douglas Fairbanks, Chaplin — legend has it — would challenge Douglas to a horse race down Hollywood Boulevard, and the winner had to pick up the tab at Musso’s. Charlie would win and gloat over a plate of Roast Lamb Kidneys, his favorite Musso’s meal.

In the ‘20s and ‘30s, it wasn’t uncommon to see Greta Garbo and Gary Cooper having breakfast together — flannel cakes and fresh coffee, of course. Or to bump into Humphrey Bogart having drinks at the bar with Dashielle Hammett or Lauren Bacall.

In the ‘50s, Hollywood legends like Marilyn Monroe (flanked by Joe DiMaggio), Elizabeth Taylor and Steve McQueen could be found enjoying drinks and appetizers in Musso’s famous Back Room. Jimmy Stewart, Rita Hayworth, Groucho Marx and John Barrymore also had starring roles at Musso’s.“

Most of their original classics are still being served. We started with the meatballs with polenta

I couldnt resist the steak tartare with quail egg. It was amazing.

I went with the classic Prime Rib- it was fantastic…..but 18oz was wayyy too much meat. ha I had to leave half of it.

Kegan tried the Lyonnaise potatoes. Basically skillet fried with onions… tasted like midwest skillet potatoes to me… but he loved them.

and the very authentic fried shrimp and fries for my kid who can’t ever get enough shrimp and fries, even living in New Orleans. lol

Stumbled on Leonard Nimoy’s star as we left Musso and Franks.

Norah really wanted to go to Ripley’s Believe It or Not museum… so since we had almost 2 hours to kill before our escape room reservation, we gave in and humored her.

To round out the evening, we booked an escape room at The Escape Hotel right on Hollywood Blvd.

It was a very cool themed joint. They had sideshow acts performing on the stage, tables and a bar…. and then 8 escape rooms all with circus or horror themes.

They gave us Escape passports to track for all of their rooms. They stamp you once in green when you enter, and in red if you escape.

We earned our red stamp and escaped with time left! It was a neat themed room, but overall an easy one since we’re at like 70-80 rooms now ha We really need to add up all of the rooms we’ve done and see.

Day 3

We started this Saturday morning with an Uber downtown to the Grand Central Market, a famous market that’s been open since the 1920s.

We found a guava and cheese croissant and coffee – neither were worth finishing.

So, we went to the only other venue open other than Eggslut (a new chain that had a huge line) – a Mexican taco stand serving chilaquilles, pancakes and breakfast burritos.

After breakfast we walked next door to the Bradbury building to see if we could get a peek inside to the famous atrium where scenes from BladeRunner were filmed.

The building didn’t open for another 45 minutes, but we could see most of the atrium through the door!

Across the street was the Million Dollar Theatre, one of the first movie theaters in the US. Opened in 1917. Built by Sid Grauman, just like the Chinese theater, this one was over 10 years earlier, before the big move from downtown to Hollywood.

After checking out that area, it was time for the trek up the big hill over towards the Central Library where we were scheduled for a monthly tour by the LA Conservancy on Art Deco Architecture.

But.. because of this amazing funicular railway called the Angel’s Flight, it was a quick and easy trip to the top of the hill!

Angel’s Flight was a railway open since 1901 for transporting people up and down Bunker Hill. With a 33 degree incline, its a steep slope.

The original Angel’s Flight was demolished in the 1960s when this whole downtown block was demolished to revamp it into mixed use commercial space. But, they stored the original cars, planning to reinstall it within 2 years. It took 27 years to actually get it accomplished!

It reopened in 1996 and other than a couple accidents that closed it down (biggest from 2001-2010) it remains open for travel and costs $1 each way, or .50 with TAP, LA’s public transport app. I had TAP for mine, but it wouldn’t let me pay for Kegan and Norah with my own TAP… so Kegan had to use a credit card for the $2 because they also only took exact change and the lowest he had was a $10.

This was another famous Michael Connelly novel/Bosch episode where they investigate the murder of a lawyer on the Angel’s Flight railway.

We headed to Maguire Gardens at the Central Library to meet our tour guide for our Art Deco tour.

Our guide was very nice friendly older lady, but man…she was a talker. ha I had to zone out and read on my phone hiding behind Norahs back a few times to keep from making annoying faces. ha but overall, great info- and great access into a couple private businesses we couldn’t otherwise see downtown.

We started out at the Con Edison building

After the tour, we walked to another street nearby and Norah spotted a robot delivery service.

The side of it said it was being driven remotely by a real human. How cool!

I wanted to stop by St Vincent Court that was nearby, it is a European street tucked into downtown LA. Since the 1950s when a big department store started letting out space to restaurants and cafes, now it is a deli, Italian, French coffee, middle eastern restaurants… it was a cute little street.

The next item up for us was lunch… and it was a couple miles away and across some freeway areas, so we thought it might be best to Uber…but I had seen these robot cars driving around earlier called Waymo’s. I was determined to ride in one during this trip. ha Kegan was not on board… but like most things, he loves me and wants me happy, so he was willing to die like a man. haha

I downloaded the app and signed up during one of those droning tour guide sessions I mentioned above while hiding behind Norah….so I called up Waymo and it was there in 3 minutes! It pulled up to the curb, I unlocked it with the app and we were in! Once you buckle up, you click Start Ride on the screen and you are off!

It was so weird to be riding in a car with no one in the driver seat…but honestly, after this ride, we took about 7 more in the trip and were disappointed when the destination was out of Waymo’s designated travel area and we had to go back to Uber. No weird driver, no crazy air freshener smells or terrible jerky driving (my goodness the bar is low for Uber drivers anymore)… the car was clean, the temperature was great, the music is set from your phone based on what you want to hear. It was honestly a great experience and the robot driver was fantastic. Kegan became a bigger fan than me! and having Norah alone in the front passenger seat with no driver had tons of people looking and doing double-takes, laughing, asking her how she liked it… it was great. 10/10 recommend if you go to LA.

Lunch was an all you can eat sushi restaurant that had fantastic reviews online called Tokyo Haus.

After eating the entire ocean, we needed to call up our robot friend Waymo once more to visit Olvera Street, the birthplace of Los Angeles back in the 1800s when it was just El Pueblo de Los Angeles.

They were having some sort of festival in the square.

After exploring downtown, we decided to make one more stop our way back towards our hotel at the Velaslavasay Panomara – which is something we saw a couple places in Europe- these 360 degree paintings- mostly in Poland and the Czech Republic… so Waymo dropped us off, only for us to discover it is open by appointment only… and there was a homeless guy sleeping behind that bush in the entry. So… back into a new Waymo. lol

Last minute, I found an escape room to book at Maze escapes which was Sherlock Holmes themed… we tied for the record in the room at 22 minutes…..so it was sort of disappointing to be in and out so fast lol

We were still so full from sushi lunch that we didn’t eat dinner, just grabbed a couple small snacks at the convenience store next to the hotel and called it an early night.

Day 4

Today was museum day. We started out with breakfast at our hotel which ended up being a bad choice- it took an hour to get Salmon toast and a coffee. ha Kegan was banned from making any more decisions on this vacation after this third choice that was an annoying one ha (Griffith Observatory and La Brea Tar Pits are the others) After breakfast we Waymo’d to the Natural History Museum

We were almost the only people upstairs when we first started. Much more manageable crowds than we have been experiencing.

The largest known ammonoid fossil in the world.

Norah still enjoys the little kid science museum exhibits. So I always let her play around. You never know when it will be the last time.

A very extensive gem and mineral collection.

After the Natural History Museum, we had to get an Uber to The Getty- a large private art museum thats way out in the Hollywood Hills

A Da Vinci painting that I was surprised to see here.

The line out the door queueing up to view Van Gogh’s Irises. We accidentally skipped the line by coming through the building from upstairs first and then down… whoops lol It is a very cool blue/purple bright pigment painting. I see why it was so remarkable.

Im sure this view from the top overlooking the city is amazing when its not 50 degrees and foggy 🙂

Overall, a few cool paintings…but I feel like it was more of an attraction for the amazing buildings and gardens and views… At the risk of sounding super snobby, it just didn’t have the impact after going to European art museums. It was free entry though…. and technically you were supposed to make a reservation ahead of time…and we didn’t so we were lucky to even get in. The security guy just took pity on us and let us pass through! So, for that…I am thankful and happy with the experience.

We grabbed an Uber back down off the mountain into town to a taco truck I had been following on Instagram for months….only to learn they are only there on SATURDAYS and not SUNDAYS…. dang it. So I pivoted and found another high rated Mexican restaurant in the area called Loqui.

After that, we decided to walk around and explore Culver City. We walked past Sony Pictures Entertainment (I think where they film Jeopardy!)

We walked a mile or so to the Museum of Jurassic Technology.

It was a weird art installation that was set up to look like a real museum. It was all weird useless stuff lol I’m not artsy enough… We were all confused ha. I think maybe pass. Unless you just like weird stuff lol

We hit up Milla Chocolates across the street but it a was right before they closed and the girl was less than helpful even explaining how they bundle their chocolates… so I just got a drinking black sesame chocolate drink and called it a day. $6 per chocolate for tiny little chocolates anyway lol

Next we walked by an Erewhon grocery store- the celebrity grocers…. I had to go be a grocery store tourist and see what sort of stuff I could find.

I left with a $14 bottle of super green juice because I LOVE green pressed juice and didn’t have any the whole trip… and it was some of the worst green juice! haha It was just like pressed swiss chard with cayenne pepper.

Lastly, we had to let Norah experience the California exclusive of In-N-Out burger.

Kegan and I lived in California for a couple years… so we didn’t feel the need to eat a Hamburger and fries, but Norah was all about it.

To round out the evening, we booked one last escape room at Escape Room 66 in a room called The Mush Room.

It was a fantasy room almost like Candyland where we had to find our way out. There were like 75 locks in the room. It was comical. Not our fave. Very homegrown…but they did have a tank of a cat named Beans that we got to pet, so a win overall.

Day 5

Day 5 was alllll Universal Studios Hollywood!

We went all out and booked the VIP experience with the private lounge, guided private tour guide, lunch and and VIP lanyard that granted us unlimited Express Lane rides for the entire day.

The breakfast was a small buffet with pastries and sandwiches and coffee while we waited and met our guide for the day.

Our studio tour was on a trolley of about 20 people and we got to walk around the sets and take photos instead of just the normal tram studio tour

We got to walk through the currently filming show St Denis on Stage 26 which looked SUPER realistic to a real ER that it was spooky.

Our guide Angela and the Back to the Future courthouse set, which is also the courthouse from To Kill A Mockingbird with Gregory Peck.

Monster murals by a famous LA street artist done with spraypaint.

Walking down New York Street where all the major superheroes have fought.

The plane crash from War of the Worlds scenes

Fast and the Furious the Ride was broken when we went through, so no idea if the car chase was cool or not lol

The Waterworld show was a bit kitchy but there a surprise plane that flew it on fire at the end and made it pretty cool.

Our first glimpse of Super Mario World from the escalators

Someone was very happy with their Toad hat lol

We shared a meal back at Harry Potter World of fish and chips and sticky toffee pudding and I had warm butterbeer.

To close out the night we ended in the kiddy land and rode Secret Life of Pets and Minion Madness and Kung Fu Panda Express.

Overall, I felt like the value was there for the VIP passes since the normal tickets were higher for Christmas and once you added Express Passes and paid for food and water in the parks… it was maybe $100 more per person… and everything felt very relaxed and handled… and we rode every ride in the park at least once. For one day, worth it.

Tuesday we headed to the airport first thing to head back home. It was a fun trip to the west coast, but I won’t be searching Zillow for any houses anytime soon. 🙂

Next trip is to Italy at the beginning of March, see you then!

5 days in Boston, Massachusetts

July 3, 2024 / Erin McKinney / 1 Comment

Recently we were able to make a quick family getaway to Boston and explore the city for a long weekend in the middle of my two-week Epic computer system goLive for my hospital client in Boston. I had to put in some 12-14 hours days on both sides of the days off, so it gave me a nice little window to fly Norah and Kegan up for a few days. I always love the flight from New Orleans to Boston, which I’m having to make monthly at the moment, because the route goes directly over New York City and I love catching the island and dreaming about how I wish I lived there 🙂

One of the great perks of doing a Boston trip in the middle of my trip was that I already had a reserved and paid for hotel room! Well, a closet. The hotel was the MOXY Downtown Boston, so the location was great…but its a weird hipster hotel that is “euro style” meaning a single full bed in every bed, no two bed rooms, no seating, no closets, no iron… literally a bed, a TV and a bathroom.

The lobby did have a tabletop Pacman

Me showing off my 2 weeks worth of clothes in my “closet” – pegs along the TV wall.

Poor Norah was a great sport. When I checked in and found out they had no two bed rooms, they said they had air mattresses they’d send up. The only floor space in the room was the entryway so you had to walk overtop of Norah’s mattress to go to the bathroom. lol It was ridiculous ha but she took it in stride.

The first night they were there I had to leave at 5am for work and the poor kid’s mattress had a leak and she was sleeping on the hard floor. We got the air mattress swapped out for another for the rest of the nights.

My daily ride to work at the hospital was fun, going past sites like Fenway and Harvard Medical School.

Walking back from the subway station one day prior to Kegan and Norah arriving, I found this Edgar Allen Poe statue at the corner of Boylston and Charles St dubbed “Edgar Allen Poe Square”. The bricks have books trailing out behind him, there is a heart on a stack of books behind him and a raven perched on his briefcase.

Interesting fact I read- apparently Poe was born in Boston, although he wasn’t raised there and only ever returned to Boston twice- one time being to attempt suicide by overdose… but was unsuccessful. I’m not sure he was a big fan of Boston.

The afternoon before Norah and Kegan arrived, I got us our Charlie cards, which granted us unlimited rides on their public transportation system.

Its no London or New York subway…in many ways they seem to still be working out the kinks of moving into the 21st century. Like, currently, you cant even board buses or subway train cars through the rear doors because they don’t have the card readers working to be able to accept your pass/fares. They still get you a paper receipt with a barcode to scan for a single ride. There is no tap/scan pay system… and on my first attempt to use my CharlieCard, it wouldn’t scan at their kiosks…and the solution I was given by the attendant at the station was that I could take my card to this one office downtown (not even in a subway station, mind you) and they could transfer the pass to a new card. haha it was comical.

Kegan and Norah’s flight arrived to Boston after the poor guys sat on the tarmac in NOLA for over two hours waiting for a repair. So they got in to the hotel just an hour before I got there from work.

We explored Chinatown a bit because we are always down for the best Chinese or Asian food and the hotel sat right on the edge of the Chinatown area of Boston.

We walked by the China Trade Gate, donated to the city by the Taiwan government in the 1980s

We ended up at a Dim Sum restaurant called Windsor Dim Sum Cafe and it really hit the spot with a spicy marinated tripe, taro cakes, sesame balls, egg custard tarts….all of the staples.

We had to try to fit in as many escape rooms as possible for Norah, that’s always her first question when we tell her we’re going someplace new: “are there any escape rooms?” lol …so, that was our only evening event after dinner. I put what seemed to be the lowest quality room on the first night so that it went in increasing order of fun and quality throughout the week. Night one was what I expected. A run-down single college student run place….but overall-a good time. The only photo I have is this weird wide angle one with our faces looking weird-its not doing Norah or I any favors…ha…but oh well. It lives forever on the blog! ha

The Paramount Theater was on our way back to the hotel. Originally owned by Paramount Pictures and opened in 1932 as 1,700 seat single screen theater- one of the first theaters in Boston to show moving pictures with sound.

We walked by French Quarter, a bar and restaurant which legit looked like a New Orleans bar in the French Quarter. Not enough time to test it out and see if the food was legit.. plenty of New Orleans cuisine available any other week 🙂

This book shop had a parking lot beside it and the utility closets on the side were painted to look like bookshelves. It was super cool.

Wednesday, I had to work again, but Kegan booked tickets at Fenway park for Norah to catch her first baseball game. They beat the Atlanta Braves 9-0 and Norah got to see rookie Jamie Westbrook get his first MLB hit. They got to see 2 “ova the Monsta” home runs, too.

After work, we ate at PF Changs where we met up with a couple friends in Boston and then went to another escape room together- this time at a place called Trapology- in a room called The Hot Dog Heist. It was super fun. We were attempting to steal the Golden Weenie from Frankfurter National Bank.

All in all- it was a difficult room! With lots of crawling through between rooms… without all of us, we never would have escaped. But… with just a few minutes to go, we made it out! Highly recommend it, but only if you have 4 or more people.

Thursday was our first day of full-on mini vacation. But… it was supposed to rain, so we swapped our planned Freedom trail plans for something with more indoor time.

We started the day over in Chinatown at a bakery and with Vietnamese coffees.

We next headed over to the Wharf to check out the Boston Tea Party Ship and Museum because Norah saw this ad and REALLY wanted to throw tea in the ocean. ha

Their 6th grade history was all centered around early American History, so between Hamilton and her entire history year, she’s been living the American Revolution.

One of the highlights is that you could sample all 5 of the teas that were tossed into the Harbor during the Boston Tea Party. So we got our unlimited tea cups and began our tastings.

We tasted Singlo -a Chinese green tea picked late in the season that was just coming to Boston at a lower price point due to the Tea Act. However, none of that lower priced Singlo ever made it to the Bostonian’s who were awaiting it.

Next was Young Hyson green tea- a green tea picked early in the Spring on new growth leaves. It was a favorite of Thomas Jefferson and George Washington.

Next we moved to the black teas- with Bohea (boo-hee) which was a botched English version of the original Chinese Wuyi. This was bottom of the barrel late season affordable tea and was the most common tea. John Adams, always appealing to be a man of the people, loved a “good cup of bohea”.

Following Bohea, we sampled Congou, a high end Chinese black tea that had a bit of apple pie flavor, very sweet, very good.

Lastly, we tried Souchong – a very smoky tea, dried over a charcoal fire. It was like drinking a Scotch, in my opinion, although not a favorite. Kegan liked this one the best. Norah didn’t like any of them lol

After drowning in 5 cups of tea, we headed out to Cambridge to visit the Harvard campus.

We started out at the Harvard Book Store to get Norah a Harvard sweatshirt. Planting seeds lol

Getting her picture in front of something Harvard in case its needed for a time lapse later 🙂

We made our way across campus to the Harvard Museum of Natural History

Norah’s favorite animal is the capybara so she was thrilled to find one.

We also took a couple fun pictures imitating the animals. I’m sure they’ll be thrilled to find these made the blog! lol

They had a super interesting special exhibit of glass plant specimens. I mean, once I learned about this, it makes total sense. This Czech master glass blower would construct plant specimens for study made entirely of glass… and even this close, you couldn’t tell! Glass never rots or changes… and can be created to demonstrate whatever features you want to show at any given time. It was an entire room of these… I was surprised how cool it was after I was like, “I’m not sure I really care about a bunch of glass sculptures of plants”. Well, I do. and you should too if you ever end up at a place with this exhibit.

They also had huge collections of rocks and minerals, so of course Kegan and Norah just walked around nerding out at every case and picking their favorites.

We passed by Memorial Hall a couple times while on campus.

Lunch was a quick stop at an Indian food truck in a plaza on campus. I had a spicy paneer wrap. Norah had the non-spicy version.

I think she liked walking around a college campus.

Next we went to the Scientific Instrument museum. The coolest item they had, in my opinion, was this Grand Orrery. A mechanical model of the solar system

Around the dome are bronze figures of Isaac Newton, Benjamin Franklin and James Bowdoin (the governor of Massachusetts) and the figures were cast by Paul Revere himself, somewhere between 1776-1786.

They had tons of other cool instruments and even an old floppy disk computer and an old control panel of a 1960s lab. I guess I was so involved I forget to take photos of anything else. ha

On our way off campus, we passed the music building, so I captured the girly in front of the concert hall. She may play something here one day.

We wrapped up our time on campus by heading back towards the hospital I’m working with to quickly meet my team at Wahlburgers for a drink. They had planned an outing to relax for an hour or so at the request of our VP and he was disappointed I wouldn’t be joining, so he asked me to bring the family by. So, like a weirdo, I strolled into a work function with Kegan and Norah. ha but it was all good, just a few people chilling on a patio, and it was nice to be able to connect work friends to family faces and the other way around. We hung out there until it was time for our dinner reservations back downtown at Union Oyster House.

Union Oyster House is the oldest restaurant in Boston and the oldest restaurant in continuous service in the US. Open to diners since 1826. It has tons of ties to history. The Massachusetts Spy newspaper by Isaiah Thomas was printed in the upstairs, the first paymaster general of the Continental Army set up the first pay station here. Wives of famous revolutionaries like Adams, Hancock and Quincy mended clothes for colonists here. A future king of France lived on the second floor at one time. Daniel Webster used to eat oysters religiously at the famous half-circle oyster bar. Toothpicks were first used in the US at the Oyster House.

Overall the food was fresh, but average. But I expected that for the history and how busy it was. It wasn’t for the culinary depth, it was for the history. And oysters!

We made our way past some historic sites that we would revisit the next day including Faneuil Hall (pronounced Daniel with an F) and the Old State House.

We had my favorite escape room of the trip next- Storyteller’s Secret at Boxaroo. It was widely listed as the best escape room in Boston…and I agree. The technology in the room was fantastic and the story was unique. We escaped in plenty of time, but it wasn’t overly easy.

For Friday morning we were up and at it for a long walk along what’s known as the Freedom Trail. A 2.5 mile walking path through Boston along 16 historic sites relevant to early American history.

We started with a walk through Boston Common, the oldest city park in the United States. From around 1660 to the 1800s, the park area was pastureland for the local family cows to graze. Revolutionary troops headed out to Lexington and Concord from this park.

On the edge of the park starts the trail at the Massachusetts State House.

Following to the Park Street church, a church founded in 1809 and still open today. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s brother preached here, My Country Tis of Thee was first sung on the front steps. However, the most interesting thing to me was the Granary Burial Grounds next door.

This cemetery is full of so many cool old tombstones and some notable names.

James Otis – a Harvard graduate lawyer that was one of the first outspoken voices of the revolution. Heavily influenced John Adams speaking style and stances but was plagued by alcoholism and mental illness…so we don’t really put him up on the pedestal we do some of the other Founding Fathers.

John Hancock himself, the first signer of the Declaration of Independence.

Peter Faneuil – who built Faneuil Hall in 1742, but died shortly after. Faneuil Hall became a public hall and many public speeches for the revolution were delivered there.

The famous Paul Revere. Famous for silversmithing, copper plate engraving, carving picture frames, drawing political cartoons…even dentistry when times got tough…and many other artistic and business ventures…but none as famous as his Ride.

The parents of Ben Franklin. Benjamin Franklin only lived in Boston until he was 16 when he left town for Philly after he got fed up of working for his brother as an apprentice in his printing shop.

Samuel Adams, of beer fame- although the beer didn’t come around until 1987 in Cincinnati… cousin to John Adams, a politician, Declaration signer and patriot of the revolution. He did inherit his father’s brewery in his life and worked as a brewer… but not really the link to the brand today.

The Boston Massacre victims. What really kicked off the actual revolution. 9 British officers fired into a crowd of 200-300 protesters. Although only a few people were killed, the colonists were successful in branding it a “Massacre” and engravings by Paul Revere and speeches by people like James Otis and Samuel Adams inflamed the already angry colonists and mobilized them to finally take action against Britain.

Next up was King’s Chapel. The first anglican church in Boston pre-dating the revolution. Notable members and visitors including George Washington, Paul Revere, Abigail Adams, John Quincy Adams, Charles Sumner and more. It was the first church in New England to have a pipe organ and it has the oldest in-use pulpit in the country dating back to 1717.

They had marked where each notable person sat. Back then, people paid for a pew for their family and it was their own personal property and they furnished it as they saw fit. U shaped benches, singles benches. Some even had hidden compartments. This was a status symbol. A “see and be seen” sort of thing.

They have a crypt underneath…but they were charging a lot for a tour. I found that with a lot of these sites. If you toured everything on the trail with 3-4 people, I think we figured up you would spend $400-500. I know things require upkeep and maintenance…but can’t we have our tax dollars subsidize something like these sites?? Why should your financial status determine whether you or your children can visit and learn from these important historical sites? My Democrat is showing.

Next was the Old City Hall, which also used to house The Boston Latin School from 1704-1748

Randomly, in regards to my Democrat comment above- there is a bronze donkey in this courtyard with two bronze footprint in front of it labeled “stand in opposition” and a plaque that explains that this statue is the origin of the party symbol.

Our next stop was the Old South Meeting House. Most famous historically for being the site where 5,000 people gathered on December 16th, 1773 to protest and debate the tea tax and when the final attempt at compromise failed, Samuel Adams gave the signal that started the Boston Tea Party, with the Sons of Liberty leading the way to Griffin’s Wharf to dump 342 chests of tea into the sea.

The clock tower’s bronze bell was made by Paul Revere in 1801.

Following the trail, we passed the Irish Famine Memorial

I think they got “the Irish guy” right. ha

Up next was the Old State House, the oldest surviving public building in Boston, built in 1713.

The Declaration of Independence was first read out from this balcony to Bostonians below.

This was also the site of the Boston Massacre with a brick circle out front marking the site. The actual massacre location was a few feet away- but was moved up to the sidewalk because people were getting hit by cars looking at the original- which was in the street.

We probably should have paid to tour the interior of this building… but I was honestly just kind of angry they were charging like $25/person to walk through….so in a huff, I was like forget it.

The Gold Lion and the Unicorn are from the days of Colonial Boston, symbolizing British rule- the same used on the Coat of Arms in the UK. These are replacements because the colonists burned the originals in the heat of the revolution in a bonfire on King Street.

Next up was Faneuil Hall, built in 1742, that has been a marketplace and meeting hall ever since- still a space filled with over 200 vendors

Earlier in the morning, back at Boston Common we saw two college age boys walking through the park both wearing these bright red crab hats. Norah thought it was hilarious and asked if she could have one. I said, if we come across one…sure. Well…. we did. ha Silly girl wore it the rest of the day. ha

We ended up with lobster rolls from Quincy Market, part of the Faneuil Hall complex. Kegan got the cold lobster roll with mayo. I got the hot buttered lobster.

Norah wanted the lobster grilled cheese and she said it was amazing. Bussin’ , I believe, was the term used. ha

We sat down on a bench and as we are sitting there, looked up to see a sign for Co-Operatives. It ended up being a pop up mini escape puzzle event. So, you KNOW we had to check for openings. Everything was open lol so… we did one of their rooms. It was just a puzzle set up in a little cubby area, but it was interesting and different. Norah seemed to enjoy it.

After lunch and puzzles we headed out towards the North End

We stopped at Paul Revere’s house. It was built around 1680 making it one of the oldest remaining buildings in the city. Revere did live here during the revolution years… and likely where he set out from on his famous ride.

Walking further we came upon Mike’s Pastry and I had read they had the best cannoli in the city… so we stood in line to test that theory out.

I had the chocolate cannoli

Kegan had a lemon cannoli

and Norah had…a doughnut lol

We found a kneewall in the park in front of the Old North Church to sit and eat our cannolis

The Old North Church was the famous signal station for “one if by land, two if by sea” for the lanterns hanging in the tower. This alerted Paul Revere about the British troops movement as he set out to warn John Hancock and Samuel Adams that the British were coming.

Caught a glimpse of the “skinny house” – skinniest house in Boston- last sold for 1.25 million, by the way… its only 10 feet wide. Legend has it, it was built as a spite house by a brother returning from war to find his other brother had built a house on their shared inherited land. So, what else do you do but build your own house and block out all their windows and light? ha

The trail continued across the Charles River over a bridge towards the USS Constitution. Literally, there is a brick or painted trail to follow along the entire path:

The USS Constitution or “Old Ironsides” is a Navy warship- the oldest still in existence- that was launched in 1797, served in the War of 1812 where it helped defeat 5 British battleships… completed a world tour in 1840 and still sailed under her own power until 1997. it has been a museum since 1907.

Finally we were down to the last stop on the Freedom trail- the Bunker Hill monument. I work right next to this monthly… so I REALLY wanted to call it a day and NOT complete the last push UP Bunker Hill to see it…but Kegan called me a weenie and made me. He said you cant stop at site 15 of 16… so, onwards Norah and I pushed… completely annoyed and tired.

The monument was erected where the Battle of Bunker Hill was fought-one of the first major battles of the American Revolution, across the Charles River from Boston. Bunker Hill was a bloodbath- of the 2400 British soldiers who fought, over 1000 were wounded. Compared to about 400 wounded and killed on the colonist side. The British said “A few more such victories would have shortly put an end to British dominion in America”. The famous saying “don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes” supposedly comes from the Battle of Bunker Hill, although scholars seem to dispute if anyone actually said it. We at least like to think they did. Basically, the ammunitions were limited, so they were told to save it for where it would have the greatest impact. Seems to have worked.

The Marquis De Lafayette set the cornerstone 50 years later on this monument. Its actually sitting on top of Breed’s Hill, not Bunker Hill… but…details. 🙂

We took an Uber back to the hotel after messing with Norah and telling her she had a two mile walk back. haha Norah and Kegan played Mortal Kombat in the lobby, but it was short lived because none of the buttons seemed to work on Kegan’s controls.

We hung out for a while, then headed to the WNDR (Wonder) Museum. An interactive art exhibit type place.

They had this cool thing where they would take a photo of your eye and display it in hi res on the wall

Norah’s Eye

My eye. You can actually see my astigmatism haha how un-circular my eye is and how yellow and light brown my eyes are.

Kegan’s piercing brown McKinney eye

The final stop was at another Chinatown resturant- Liuyishou Hotpot

This was the best hot pot I have ever had (excluding the Las Vegas Lobster broth $400 dinner- but thats not authentic hotpot or ever something I would splurge on again ha) The tray of 9 dishes are the “traditional” hotpot dishes including things like spicy tripe, beef aorta and duck blood…. and a discovery we all thought was awesome- a green peppercorn beef. The peppercorns are not spicy at all… but instead have this strange herbal taste and leave your tongue numb! like one peppercorn can do this! ha I had to ask the waiter what it was…and then Kegan got me a jar at the asian grocery before they flew out ha

Saturday morning, we headed out of the city, but first- a stop at The Dubliner- a fairly authentic Boston Irish Pub serving Full Irish Breakfast, scotch eggs, seafood chowder, brown bread and Irish tea. And we had all of those. We were both hardcore missing Irish breakfast… and I must have been focused, because no photos were taken of the meal.

We walked to North Station to pick up the commuter rail line out to Salem, Massachusetts. Not knowing that THAT line wasn’t part of our 7 day passes. Luckily, it was easy to get a ticket for that and it was all of about $7 a piece roundtrip.

Salem was a bit underwhelming. It felt like it maybe used to be super quaint and a lovely historic seaside town…but now it was just touristy, gimmicky, busy and focused on one thing- the witch trials, of course.

Since we didn’t have a car and limited time, we did a trolley ride around town seeing some sites.

The highlight for me was the Peabody Essex Museum downtown. It was massive and seems really new.

I don’t know if this is the ACTUAL Massachusetts Bay Colony Charter, or if its a copy… but it said this is “one of two copies created” – not sure if that means in 1629 or later. But this document is King Charles I granting the Massachusetts Bay Company permission to establish a colony between the Merrimack and Charles Rivers. It was delivered by English envoys to the governor in Salem, MA.

I thought this was a cool Inuit carving

An actual ships log from the Friendship that sailed between Salem and India, a merchant ship that made at least 15 trips to Asia. There is now a replica of this ship in Salem.

Overall, glad we went.. likely never make the effort to go back 🙂

We hopped back on our train and headed back towards the city.

We hit up a Nepalese restaurant/pizza place with jhol momo to see if it could hold a candle to my place in New York. It didn’t. but it was good.

Our evening was spent at Boda Borg- a big puzzle room concept in Medford where you pay by the hour and go through multiple puzzle rooms trying to make it through 3 phases to the end to collect the stamp to show you beat it. The catch is, they give you no info, no clues. So you literally enter the room, and have to figure out the point, the puzzle and the solution. and the second you do something wrong you get a red light and you have to exit the room and start over.

I think we went through a couple rooms 20 times- one we were SO CLOSE to… but the other group ahead of us had such bad body odor, we had to abort mission and go find another room to tackle ha. It was interesting… but not sure it was really my thing. But, it was a new experience.

Sunday, we slept in and headed out for museums because it was raining all day, so I traded the South Shore for museums.

We started at the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum. If you aren’t familiar with this one, I recommend the Netflix documentary about a famous heist they had in 1990 where 13 works of art worth 200 million were stolen. To this day, no arrests have been made, no works have been recovered…and that’s with the museum offering a 10 million dollar reward for info…

The building itself is modeled after a Venetian Palazzo

It is just FILLED with the most amazing collection of art. Its hard to believe that one woman collected all of these things.

John Singer Sargent painting

They have left the frames and empty spaces on the walls for items that were stolen.

After the Isabella Stewart Gardner, we headed to the Museum of Fine Arts since it was still raining pretty heavily. We spent a few hours there but I only captured a few photos. It was a very decent museum, but wouldn’t make my top 10.

This dresser was a hilarious find as we have this SAME dresser in our spare bedroom, a long term loan from Kegan’s family’s farmhouse because I commented that I loved it and if they ever decided to get rid of it, to please let me know. I had to text a photo to Kegan’s dad. I know I have an expensive eye…but who knew I had a museum eye lol

This one was my fave. An actual tea kettle shaped like an ostrich, made with a real ostrich egg.

Norah posing with her likeness from ancient Greece lol

We ended the day at Lobsta on a Roll on Newbury St to end the trip by gorging ourselves on lobster rolls and clam strips.

The evening was just hanging out watching TV and me catching up on work. Shipped Kegan and Norah home and finished another week of work in town. We squeezed a LOT into 4-5 days and at some point we’ll spend a few more days to explore the south shore and some other areas outside of town. Until next time!

Spring Break 2024 – Houston, TX Days 3-5

April 4, 2024 / Erin McKinney / 1 Comment

Day 3 started off with the Three Uncles Toast from the night before because I had saved it from a TikTok video or Facebook reel months ago about how it was this amazing milk bread toast that I had to have. I grabbed the coconut raisin…Maybe amazing toasted or heated up… but to me it was just square bread…

Never fear, I had 2nd breakfast planned! ha We drove to the southeast side of Houston to some sites and near there is The Original Kolache Shoppe that has been open since 1956. Its a local Czech bakery that has been family-owned for 3 generations

My pastry was basically a pig in a blanket- a soft bread surrounding a sausage. They were a bit heavy if I am being a food critic. Definitely not something I’d be swinging by for on my way to work every day. ha But I respect the Czech heritage recipes and the tradition of the family bakery 🙂

I had scheduled a visit to Smither Park next, a public art space full of mosaic glass sculptures. It was REALLY a cool public park… so many art exhibits including a giant fish amphitheater…

Norah big brain spotted tiny mosaic Spongebob characters out of nowhere in a random section of the sidewalk. Once she pointed them out, of course I could see them- but I never would have spotted them among everything else there. The way her brain works really is something else.

Kilroy was here.

The all white section was pretty cool too among all of the vibrant color.

Randomly, I saw online they were planning an Easter Egg hunt at the exact same time I planned to be here anyway…and Norah said she wanted to hunt some eggs, so I RSVPed for us to attend.

Before the hunt, they had the kids color their own egg ( as a way to drag out the event per one of the volunteers, “because last year they hid the eggs, hunted them and it was over in 10 minutes” ha)

Norah created a sunset on her egg

After she colored her egg she decided she didn’t really want to hang around and hunt them.. ha so we headed on out for the rest of our day.

Our next destination- the 1940 Air Terminal for Houston which has been preserved as a museum.

As you can tell, it was a hopping place at 11am on a Saturday 🙂 That Model A is being auctioned off, selling 2500 tickets for $50 each if you want to throw your hat in the ring 🙂 I also did… but what the heck do I do what a Model A?? I asked the guy- he told me that I could drive it in a parade… or some of the old guys drive them in their retirement communities like a golf cart. haha

This amazing art deco building was built in 1940 as the main airport terminal for the city of Houston.

The lobby may look a little small, but in 1940, there were only 2 airlines operating out of Houston… and the planes only held about 20 passengers… so if it looks like an old bus station, it basically was.

We got to take a chaperoned visit out into the locked Houston Hobby airport air field to see an old 1942 Lockheed Lodestar that would have flown passengers at the time of this terminal being operational.

They had a lot of flight memorabilia including this rare clear plastic bubble helmet rain dome that was part of the “Braniff Airlines Strip” campaign. It was meant to evoke a “blasting off to space” theme in 1965 and was iconic…but quickly was discontinued because they cracked easily and there was nowhere to store them once on board the aircraft.

Our lunch was just a snack- a strip mall spot called Señora Churros.

Norah ordered this monstrosity haha Strawberry ice cream in a churro bowl. She didn’t even eat 1/3 of it. ha

Kegan and I were a little more realistic and just got a single churro with Cajeta (a caramel sauce)

After a sugar buzz, we headed back towards downtown to the Rothko Chapel.

I just dont “get” modern art. ha The Rothko Chapel was constructed by the De Menil family in Houston as a spiritual space for the public. The commissioned artist Mark Rothko to design 9 giant murals for the inside walls.

I wasn’t allowed any photos… but the inside was just white walls, some church pews in an octagon and a bunch of black/purple plain panels on the inside.

I’m sure someone more art-brained than me could explain it and make it make sense, but all 3 of us walked out like… what is the purpose of that?? ha

Next we toured the Menil Collection- a building full of over 19,000 pieces of art from prehistoric to modern. They also didn’t allow any photos because the lady told me “the Menil’s still hold the copyrights for these works of art, so no photos are allowed of their private collection”. oh. ok…. weirdos. ha

My big takeaway from the Menil collection was that Max Earnst was a German artist that I need to know more about his surrealist art. I was seeing Dali in all of his works… and the collection had 20 or more of his paintings.

After the museum we went back to the hotel to rest up for our evening out with friends.

We scheduled a meet up with my friend Tim and his wife Jennifer that live just outside of Houston. I met Tim in South Florida when I was in X-ray school. I legit cant remember exactly… but I believe we may have met on MySpace… and I ended up at his apartment for a hurricane lock in party in my Papa John’s work uniform… I will have to have him remind me if that is really how it went… I think I have a mental block for that period of my life. I barely remember any of that era of Erin. ha Except Tim. He has always been an awesome friend to have. So happy to see him married and happy and excelling in life. Good things to good folks.

We met up at Caracol- a new restaurant by Hugo Ortega – a well-decorated Houston landmark chef. When I say the food was outstanding, I don’t think that does it justice. I will be booking this again on this next trip.

Norah started with a blackberry mojito mocktail.

Norah had the Empanadas de Camaron to start. ( I forgot we’re in Texas- portions are HUGE)

Tim with the Ceviche de Chile Canario- a lime cured raw red snapper with chile’s cilantro, radish and more.

I got the Ceviche de Coco – lime cured red snapper is a roasted pineapple and coconut based sauce.

Kegan’s Ensalada de Pulpo- Spanish octopus salad with sausage, roasted potatoes, carrot, celery leaves and a pumpkin-seed dressing

Jennifer’s Callo de Hacha – pan-seared scallops with roasted cauliflower

My Pulpo Ahumado – smoked octopus with chorizo and potato hash

Tim’s Costillas de Res – Braised Short ribs -was spectacular…

Dessert, there were churros with chocolate, espresso and a tableside whipped traditional mexican hot chocolate service.

The after- dinner attraction planned was really the event of the trip. Also the reason there were no cocktails at dinner. We had reserved a spot at Strangebird- the #1 Escape Room experience in the USA.

This was a combination of live actors and an escape scenario… the setting- we were invited to a seance to try to summon the spirit of Harry Houdini. Our medium, Madame Daphne, invited us in and presented us with books all with our name on them, with personalized fortunes- performed some Tarot card readings… and then we proceeded into the seance room to attempt to summon the spirit.

But here is where it all went terribly wrong, Madam Daphne had purchased Houdini’s wife’s wedding ring to try to draw his spirit closer… and …the rest of the story you’ll have to find out for yourself.

That’s the best detail I can give without giving away anything about the actual event. It was sooooo well done. Good acting, fantastic flow of the game, great props and room objects. It definitely earned its ranking. I warned Tim and Jennifer it was all downhill from here for their escape rooms. ha

Day 4, Sunday, was a chill day. We started with getting Norah’s easter basket out and assembled in the hotel room while she was still asleep along with a Strawberry milk tea from a local Asian bakery.

Kegan also found her a cute little bunny cake for breakfast, too.

Kegan found us a couple pastries- one sweet and one savory- while I stayed back in the hotel and wrote a couple blogs posts to catch up 🙂

Around 11am we headed out to Crosby, TX an hour or so away to see my extended family. My aunt Laura and uncle Billy live out there along with my cousins Michael and Travis and their families. Growing up, Michael and I were two weeks apart in age, and Bryan and Travis were less than 6 months apart… so even though we never lived close or spent much time together, still fun to have cousins your age 🙂

Laura went into “grandma overdrive” for Easter. ha She had a basket for Norah and the other kids, organized a sack race and even painstakingly counted an entire jar of jellybeans for everyone to take guesses. (My guess was the closest at 1125 jellybeans… when there were 1178!) The prize was $20…and even though I did my best to forget the $20 on the counter, Laura caught me on my way out the door! lol

Billy and Laura (and Travis) had all kinds of goodies cooking- fajitas with steak and chicken, two types of sausages, hot dogs, burgers, smoked hot wings, potato salad, two types of beans, pico, guac, rice, fresh tortillas and I’m sure more that I don’t remember. It was a spread…and it was good eats.

They had a croquet course set up in the backyard and had some healthy family competition trying to dominate the game.

There were some drive-by eggings- mostly from Travis being mischievous- smashing confetti eggs in everyone’s hair. ha Everyone spared Norah until the end, afraid I would be mad about having to get that out of her hair. haha but then I gave permission and it was a free for all- all the girls running around smashing the remaining eggs on each other’s heads. ha

Billy hid easter eggs for hunting… but one special green egg had $20 inside. They all missed it multiple times hiding in a green magnolia tree until Mikey found it with some hints. That boy is so fast…and smart… he’s gonna do some things in life.

I think Norah had a blast with her cousins and actually spending the day outside. Granted, she had to take a phone break inside and recharge those social batteries for a bit… but I understand that. ha

Billy took us on a ride through the neighborhood to see the lake and pool and the peacocks!

Turns out, their neighborhood is overrun with hundred of peacocks.. and its that time of year… males are showing off for all the females everywhere you look. ha

We hung out for hours just chatting and hanging out… headed out around 6:30 or so to head back to Houston for our escape room. We arrived about 45 minutes ahead of our booking, so we hit the Super H Mart next to the place since it was on my list. H Mart is an Asian grocery store chain that I wasn’t aware had any locations outside of New York…until I started planning our Houston trip- I’ve always told Kegan when we move to NYC (when…not if haha) that it has to be near an HMart. Its my dream to have a ground floor apartment with a tiny back patio- walkable to HMart and the subway! (I think that will live in my dreams though…. likely not a reality ha)

H Mart has a food court inside with a few varieties of food. Norah got a Korean corn dog. I got a spicy Vietnamese seafood soup with veggies.

We checked out the aisles… an entire aisle just dedicated to ramen.

We made our way to Escape IT Houston… don’t recommend. Half the room was broken, the puzzles were silly, and you could tell they just wanted us to hurry up and be done so they could close up and go home. Luckily, we exited the first 60 minute room based on The Alamo in like 30 minutes… and then we did a 30 minute Apollo 13 escape room that took us about 5 ha, so they got their wish.

As I was looking over the Day 5 itinerary I realized I didn’t book another escape room I thought I booked… which is fine because …bro… its a lot 4 days in a row. haha but Norah was disappointed of course ha So we discussed and said, really after we go to NASA tomorrow, we can just head home and only miss 1 Indian/Pakistani restaurant I wanted to try… and we all agreed to just do that and get a “staycation” day back home. So, we packed up the hotel room when we got back, went to sleep, and headed out Monday morning

Our first stop Monday (Day 5) was at Paris Baguette- a South Korean chain that is just expanding worldwide. The family that owns this was worth 3.6 billion dollars and they invested over 2 billion in expanding it worldwide… for their sake, I hope its a success! But, I think it will be if they choose their locations wisely.

This was my first mochi doughnut. I can see why people like these- chewy…not overly sweet…. It wasn’t swoon worthy to me… but it was good.

Next was the hour drive to NASA with high hopes for seeing the historic mission control room that they have restored to its look from the Apollo 11 mission that put a man on the moon.

I was starting to get concerned when we had to line up down the entire sidewalk to even get in the building…

Once we got inside, there was a sign to download their app to register for tram tours. (The Historic Mission control tour was a tram tour) – so I get the app and try to reserve a spot only to find out that THAT specific tram tour is the only one you can book in advance… and has to be booked over 3 weeks ahead of time or it sells out.

Epic fail since that’s literally the only thing Kegan wanted to see. I felt terrible for not knowing this… (especially when my tickets said it included the tram tour …I just didn’t know there were 3 different tram tours) so I even went to guest services and asked if there were still tickets available for the VIP tour of Mission Control (even though they were $200 a piece ha ) but (luckily) that tour left at 9am for the day… so literally, no way to see what we came for.

We walked around the rest of the exhibits… but really… there just isn’t much there… to give perspective, the “food lab” which is a big cafeteria food court like in a mall was bigger than the whole floor of space exhibits. and all of the exhibits were mostly just printed text on boards on the wall. Most of the interactive exhibits were all broken, out of service. The VR experience ride was shut down. It was easily the jankiest and worst science museum or even NASA experience we’ve ever done.

They do have the Boeing 747 that was converted to shuttle the space shuttle between missions and you can walk through it.

They did have 2 or 3 spacesuits on display…but not nearly the memorabilia or actual space gear or history you would expect.

We watched the videos in the theater, walked all of the exhibits and in under 2 hours we had toured everything even with long lines, so all that was left was the Rocket park tram tour… and when we walked over to that, there was a line that was easily going to make it an hour wait to get on the tram…. and we said we have seen these rockets up close at other parks and it is NOT worth it to hang out that long for a tram ride… so we called it early and left pretty disappointed at what a tourist trap it seemed. So, my takeaway is that even the little NASA science museum outside of New Orleans is way better than the Houston Space Center… and if you are going, make sure you reserve your mission control tour a month in advance or you won’t actually see anything historic and will end up drinking a Starbucks in the “food lab” 🙂

So, disappointingly, we kind of ended the trip on a downer! I saved NASA for last thinking it would be such a cool experience….but I really should have known better with how terrible Space Camp was when I chaperoned Norah’s school a couple years ago. I think that NASA used to be great and we really still want it to be… and the respect and reverence we have for the historic space program is really blinding us (or at least me) to how terribly executed all of the public outreach and experiences are… I hope their real missions coming up are executed well and can show we can still accomplish great space exploration but my interaction with anything NASA in the last few years wouldn’t have me trusting my life to their spacecraft.

We headed back over the Louisiana line and made one last fun stop at the Atchafalaya Welcome Center which is just a rest stop.. but with a fun little animatronic swamp animal display and video about the Atchafalaya River Basin area.

We watched the animals and laughed at the raccoon looking like it was having a stroke when the bit ended and he retreated stiff back into his tree stump. ha We watched the video and then headed back to the car for another 2.5 hours home… which ended up being over 3 with a couple wrecks and traffic backup around Baton Rouge.

Overall, a successful short Spring Break trip. Next trip will likely be Boston, Massachusetts in June since I have a big client goLive there and Kegan and Norah are going to join me in the hotel for some tourist shenanigans as we can fit them in 🙂

Spring Break in Houston, TX – Day 2

March 31, 2024 / Erin McKinney / 2 Comments

We started day 2 with a Houston institution- TexMex breakfast tacos! With Houston having over 1 million people who identify as Hispanic (44% of the population) it stands to reason that there is some amazing Tex-Mex food to be found in the city. We decided to try Tejas Taco House and it was legit.

With full bellies, we headed back downtown where we were yesterday to hit the Natural Science Museum. There were not enough hours in the day to fit it in on Thursday and I knew we would want quite a few hours to see everything here. Norah was immediately drawn to the interactive periodic table of elements and spent a lot of time here.

We saw a show on the Universe narrated by Tom Hanks in the planetarium. Just absolutely mind blowing how big the Milky Way galaxy is..and then to learn that our known galaxy is part of 1000s of other full galaxies…and that just makes up the Virgo Supercluster of galaxies which is just one part of the observable universe. We are just unbelievably insignificant specs of space dust. and knowing this makes it easier to laugh at self-important people who think they deserve to cut in front of you at Starbucks. 🙂

The Natural Science Museum had a well laid out timeline of fossils starting in PreCambrian and leading through Jurassic, Triassic..all the way to modern era. They had an extensive trilobite and crinoid collection which I love looking at. Some of their trilobites even still had the spines on their backs!

We were able to see Sloth-Zilla, the largest ground sloth skeleton. Look at this beast! I do love my ground sloths…

Norah said she thought she had a resemblance to the Neanderthal. ha

The museum had an extensive gem and mineral collection as well as a special collection of Faberge royal pieces in a traveling exhibit. I can’t remember which photos were from which, so they are all together below.

The museum also contained a Butterfly Sanctuary which was a fun experience to be inside an enclosed greenhouse with birds, butterflies, turtles and other species just going about their business.

After the museum we headed to El Gato Coffeehouse- where you can have a coffee and hang out with some adoptable cats. Turns out you need reservations for the actual coffeehouse, so we were relegated to “the studio” with the extra cats in a big room… which was fine. Who knew you had to reserve coffee with cats? ha

After some coffee and hang out time, we headed to The Color Factory, an “art space” -aka a money-making Instagram photo op opportunity ha It was cute but its a one-time experience.

There was a giant gross stinky ball pit at the end that I had to get in with Norah. ha I just tried to forget everything I know about germs and disease transmission and make memories with my child ha

A full room with light-brite walls.

Norah and Kegan had to sit opposite each other in sound booths and draw each other without lifting the pencil. Norah’s turned out very Picasso-esque.

The next stop was dinner and we chose Xiao Long Kan – a fancy hot pot spot with very traditional Chinese decor.

We chose a dual broth- golden chicken and pork bone broth. We ordered plates to add to and cook in the broth that included beef and lamb slices, quail eggs, woodear and enoki mushrooms, greens such as lettuce, napa cabbage, pepper cress and chinese spinach, spam, handmade noodles and ramen, fish balls along with a smoky plum juice and fresh-pressed watermelon juice.

Overall, it was the 2nd best hot pot experience I’ve ever had, since we visited Xpot in Las Vegas and they had this out of this world Lobster soup base and Wagyu beef…but for a real-world meal (since I’d never spend the money on Xpot in my life again) this was so so good.

Next door was a newly-opened Moshi Moshi Japanese store with kawaii cute stuffies and Japanes beauty and snacks so we quickly browsed through to see what they had

Then I ran into Three Uncles Toast to grab a loaf of bread for breakfast in the morning.

We decompressed in the hotel room for 45 minutes or so and then headed out for out late-night shenanigans. Friday night in Chinatown is a hectic affair ha Every plaza looked worse than this with cars backed up every aisle.

We were headed to Claw Mania Kingdom

This was an arcade full of nothing but claw machines. You bought tokens for $1 each and each chance was 1 token. You could keep your stuffies or you could trade them up for a bigger stuffed animal or even a coin you could redeem on a future visit. Norah had 7 stuffies in the end and traded a few in for an anime figure she wanted from the case. It was a blast.

After playing claw machines it was time to head to Exit Lab Houston where I booked “the hardest double escape room experience”. It was a combo of two rooms in 90 minutes and was classified as the hardest escape room around…

And let me tell you…. It was hard. Ha we did not escape. We made it out of the first room in under 60 minutes but then we got into the 2nd room and with only 30 minutes left there is no way we would have made it. After we ran out of time, our game master showed us the remaining puzzles we had to solve- about 3 more major puzzles- but I don’t think I would have figured them out even with 20 hours left haha. So, we have to finally admit defeat and say we did not escape! And that’s OK. It was a huge challenge and it was humbling to see that there are apparently people out there a lot better at escape rooms than us! Ha

Spring Break 2024 in Houston,Texas – Day 1

March 28, 2024 / Erin McKinney / 1 Comment

Hello! Its been a while 🙂 Life has been “life”ing to say the least. It been a bit since we’ve been able to coordinate even a quick trip somewhere with Norah’s school schedule, visits of others to New Orleans, Kegan finishing his dad’s cabin in Indiana and me trying to start a whole new client project without dropping anything I already had going on. ha It has been an absolutely crazy 6 months or so… and not really slowing down until Summer… BUT I always say we have all the best problems. Too many people who want to hire you, a kid too involved in fun things at school, too many friends wanting to visit? Give me those “problems” any day. We are happy, healthy and living life. Soon enough we’ll be sitting in our rocking chair begging Norah to come see us…so for now we’ll just live our crazy life as it comes at us through a fire hose 🙂 ha

So, when we finally figured out we had a few days of spring break we could go somewhere, we had a few ideas.. quick flight to New York, quick flight to Ft Lauderdale, a flight to LA and spend some time in California? Chicago might be a fun 4-5 days… eventually we decided to just drive to Houston since we haven’t spent any real time in Houston in over 10 years, we didn’t need flights that I might have to cancel if something came up.. and bonus-a lot of my dad’s side of the family lives around Houston, so we were able to fit in a bit of extended family time along with playing tourist.

We picked Norah up after school on Wednesday and immediately headed west on I-10 from New Orleans through all of Cajun country Louisiana. Our first stop was for Billy’s Boudin and Cracklins.

We were headed to dinner so we kept it minimal getting 1/4 lb of cracklins- the BEST we had ever had… along with a shrimp ball, a boudin ball and a crawfish ball to share. They had tons of frozen cajun items, but we couldn’t consider those and have to keep them in a cooler for 5 days. ha Boudin is a cajun sausage that is cooked pork, rice, vegetables and cajun seasonings all stuffed in a casing. Everything we ordered was amazing and we may have to hit this again on the way home.

Our dinner stop was at a true local Cajun restaurant called Prejean’s outside of Lafayette in a town called Carencro.

Kegan got the crawfish nachos and the duck and andouille gumbo they are famous for. Norah got a kid’s shrimp and fries and I got the Crawfish enchiladas. Kegan’s was great. Norah was happy with hers… I expected chunks of crawfish and cheese in my enchiladas, but it was like a crawfish boudin mushy filling that was slightly reminiscent of cat food. ha I’m sure if I had expected that, it would have been fine, but I wasn’t a huge fan. I tasted Kegan’s gumbo and it was fantastic.. smoky, spiced, dark rue… it was definitely the winner of the meal.

Mine came with a side of “cajun rice dressing” that was soooo good… and a side of maque choux (pronounced mock shoe). Cajun rice dressing is similar to dirty rice, with browned meat, charred veggies and seasonings. I think this one had poblano peppers and grilled pork sausage. Maque Choux is a cajun side dish that’s a mix of corn and peppers sautéed in bacon grease and this version was on a cornmeal crust.

The first time I had seen this on a menu- the restaurant listed every single supplier for their restaurant as well as all chefs and artists contributing to the interior.

After we left the restaurant, we headed to our hotel in Houston crossing the Texas state line.

and continuing until we could catch the Houston skyline at night.

It was almost midnight, so we got unpacked when we got to the room, but quickly fell asleep.

Thursday morning we started off right by heading to Dim Sum breakfast at Ocean Palace. Dim Sum is basically Chinese brunch. Its usually a group activity, social occasion with tea and lots of small plates.

I purposely booked our hotel in the Chinatown district of Houston… because almost all of the food, coffee and desserts I love are all asian. Bubble tea, Vietnamese ice coffee, dim sum dumplings, hot pot, Vietnamese Pho soup, Korean BBQ and kimchi, sushi, even Korean fried chicken is the best fried chicken. So… I wanted to make sure we were in walking distance of amazing food at all times 🙂

Our dim sum spread did not disappoint – with taro cakes, beef tripe, shu mai with truffle, Chinese broccoli, eggplant, egg rolls, bbq pork buns, shrimp and chive dumplings, hand pulled noodles with roast pork, custard buns and egg custard tarts.

Once we were nice and miserable from a late breakfast, it was time to head towards downtown Houston to Hermann Park. Parking was a bear… after driving around a few loops through some parking lots, we ended up just going and finding a pay garage at a hospital nearby and walking back.

Hermann Park is a 445 acre public green space and was given to the city of Houston by George Hermann in 1914. Today, it contains a golf course, the Houston Zoo, a miniature train, a reflecting pool, pond with paddle boats, a pioneer log cabin museum, fountains, gardens, sculptures and more…

As we walked in from the north we passed this monument to Sam Houston. The American General, senator, governor AND President of Texas when Texas was briefly its own independent country. He is famous for leading the Texans to victory over Mexico at the Battle of San Jacinto which was a key victory in their war for independence.

The Pioneer Obelisk was erected in 1936 to honor the Texas centinnial and as a dedication to the pioneers who settled in the area.

Norah had never done a paddleboat, so we took one out onto McGovern Lake and Paddled around for a bit. Well, Kegan and I paddled and she lounged on the backseat. ha Then midway she decided she wanted to paddle so we got to do a mid-lake driver exchange where Norah and Kegan tried to swap seats without tipping the boat over! ha We were successful luckily.

We were stopped by a panhandling father and young son selling homemade chocolate bars in the park….why not… Norah chose the Coconut Milk and Honey and surprisingly Kegan and Norah ate it… so I tried a piece too haha. It was pretty decent.

Our next stop was the Houston Zoo… a typical city zoo. A few favorite photos below.

This monkey had my heart because every time anyone got close to the fence, he did a big wind up to throw his poop at them and they’d scurry off. haha I like my peace and quiet too, buddy.

After the zoo, we took a train ride across the park and walked across the Centennial Gardens towards the Health and Science Museum.

It was a neat cross between a children’s museum and a science museum… very interactive stations and fun life-size exhibits like the colon you could climb through.

Kegan revisited his childhood and did the PE Class bar hang. He made it over a minute…but this was the last photo I captured at 49 seconds… can’t post it without giving him his full credit! ha

Norah got to touch pig lungs and a pig heart. The lungs were healthy lungs, then smoker’s lungs with a tumor. Cool display, but all I could think about is how did we give a pig lung cancer and smoker’s lungs? I probably don’t want to know…

Lastly was Norah’s highlight of the day, we got to go into the CellLab and run experiments. Norah selected extracting DNA from Wheat Germ… and Blood Typing.

I think we may have found something Norah really likes to do… follow instructions in a lab. ha She was VERY into doing everything exactly right… keeping samples separate and seeing the end result.

The funny thing about the blood samples… Patient 1 was O+ (Kegan’s blood type), Patient 2 was AB- (My blood type) and Patient 3 was A+ (Norah’s blood type)! We thought that coincidence was pretty cool.

After the lab, Norah got to see an iron lung! She had been wanting to see one for years. We found a medical museum in Iowa last year that had one on display but the lady at the front wouldn’t let us go see it because we weren’t visiting a patient and they still had covid restriction policies in place.

Our last stop of the night was at the Museum of Fine Arts. Thursdays the museums are open until 9pm…so I scheduled this full museum day to take advantage of that. We started in the Cullen sculpture gardens and by getting Norah some pizza in the cafe. We were still full from Dim Sum at 5pm and didn’t really want to consider dinner.

The museum was HUGE and consisted of at least 3 full multi-floor buildings.. but a few captures that were my favorites:

There was a special exhibit by an artist named Kehinde Wiley that had very vibrant gigantic murals. Kegan and I both found them very intriguing.

A punch dagger in the middle eastern exhibits

An elephant ceremonial headpiece from Cameroon

This painting that just really captured the eerie reds of a giant fire.

This Norwegian silver serving platter with real ivory walrus tusk and green gems.

and lastly… this weird painting, that has to be the weirdest thing I’ve seen I’ve seen in an art museum. It has such a Salvador Dali surrealism to it… but it was painted in the late 1400s or early 1500s!

The closer you look, the weirder it gets. It is supposed to be scene depicting Saint Christopher Carrying the Christ Child Through a Sinful World. But the “sin” came from a very weird mind. ha

Very rarely have I ever wanted to take a painting home from an art museum.. but this one I would have carried off and hung proudly above my fireplace haha

After the art museum we had an Escape room booked at Escape Hunt Houston. We booked the Emperor’s Jewels since we had never done a samurai or Japanese themed room. We escaped quickly, 30 minutes or so… overall it was a fairly simple room but fun!

On the way to the hotel, we hit Walmart to replace my headlight since it burned out and Kegan is awesome and can just replace things like that in 5 minutes lol. Then we ordered Jack In the Box since it was 10pm and Norah had never had it and had declared it a “must do” on the trip. haha She reported that it was very good and definitely worth it.

Exploring Los Angeles after Christmas

5 days in Boston, Massachusetts

Spring Break 2024 – Houston, TX Days 3-5

Spring Break in Houston, TX – Day 2

Spring Break 2024 in Houston,Texas – Day 1

Kegan, Erin & Norah

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