Marriott's Ocean Pointe -Vacation Club on Singer Island

The Marriott's Ocean Pointe video was taken during the sales meeting we had to attend on 4/4/08 as part of our package deal. A really low pressure sales meeting, great beaches, a great condo, and great weather made our week on Singer Island a real vacation.


So for a beach that does not have a boardwalk, with really great sand, check out Singer Island. From the sales meeting we listened to, it seems that the island is going to be under a serious development phase in the next couple of years. So if your looking to get into a beach time share at the preconstruction phase, give our sales person Brian Simon a call at 561-882-3050. You can also check out Marriot's Ocean Palms website for more information on purchasing a vacation on Marriott's Singer Island resorts.

Tags: Singer Island, Palm Beach, Time Share

New Orleans Weekend

New Orleans is a great town that two years later is still recovering from Katrina. Well over half of the population as of yet has not returned, and it will be years until the recovery will be anywhere near complete.

We arrived in New Orleans on Saturday, without our luggage. This makes it the second time I lost my red Riccardo bag, the first time being when Southwest Airlines lost it when we flew in to PHL from Los Vegas. This time however, it was US Air in Philadelphia's mistake. After waiting in a line for almost half an hour, we took a taxi to LePavillion Hotel, checked into hour luxurious room, and hot footed it down to the French Quarter for some grub.
I am not going to go into detail about the food we ate, but will be blogging about the New Orleans food on The Grub Hound.
Restaurants we visited included:

Acme Oyster House

Bourbon House Restaurant

Mr.B's Bistro
LePavillion Crystal Room
Beignets at Cafe Du Monde

What we Did Besides Eat

• Walked around the French Quarter especially Bourbon Street.
• Checked out some art galleries.
• Did a tour of New Orleans with Cajun Encounters.
• Took the Free Ferry to Algiers.
• Lost money at Harrahs Casino.
• Shopped for souvenirs.
  
• Relaxed in our LePavillion Room.
• Took lots of pictures which can be seen in my New Orleans Picture set.
• Used LePavillions in room Wifi to write several short blog posts and check email.
  

I plan on doing a few more posts about our New Orleans vacation, but for now,
read the previous New Orleans post in addition to this one.

Sun Set on Lake Pontchartrain

Sun Set on Lake Pontchartrain
Originally uploaded by Emperor Anton

The highlight of our trip to New Orleans was the Cajun Encounters Katrina tour we took.
We cruised through New Orleans and saw the different types of architecture, visited the City of the Dead, stopped at the New Orleans Botanical Garden, then went through the part of New Orleans were the levy first gave out during Katrina. Passing through this area, we were led to Lake Pontchartrain, were this photo was taken.
We also were able to see several of the new Pumping Stations and one of the new gates which are designed to prevent the lake from flowing back into the city, which is what happened during Katrina.

The tour then went back through the garden district and ended up back at our hotel by about 7pm.
We highly recommend the tour, but suggest taking the earlier tour rather than the afternoon tour because of visibility towards the end of the tour, which nevertheless was very informative as well.

Check out our New Orleans Pics on Flickr.

Thousand Islands : Red Horse Lake as a Mirror

Red Horse Lake as a Mirror
Originally uploaded by Emperor Anton

Several weeks ago we had taken a short vacation in the Thousand Island region of Ontario. This was the view of Red Horse Lake early on Sunday morning. A short time later the wind picked up and the mirror was lost.
As it turned out Sunday was the best day we had in the Thousand Islands. After getting up, we headed out to take a cruise around Boldt Castle, which is actually in NY. I also got some photos from that as well.
Check out the rest of my Thousand Island pictures on Flickr.

Airbus A380 in America

I was reading the headline stories this morning on Yahoo, when the article Airbus A380 makes 1st flight to America, caught my eye because of the A380's enormous wingspan, which is a little less than the length of a football field, and is able to carry over 500 people. Wow, that is one huge jet.

As I was reading the Airbus article, I could not help to think of the Titanic. Hopefully this was just because the Kate Winslet movie was on yesterday, and not because of I am experiencing a premonition. The full service A380 Airbus is a doubledecker jet that has a better fuel economy than smaller jets that are in service and will save the owners more than 10% per seat in fuel.

Airbus, currently has 166 orders for the A380 from 15 different airlines, including Asian airlines. I wonder if Lizzie's favorite airline, Cathay Pacific is one of the airlines that has an A380 order. I asked Lizzie if she would like to or if she would be afraid to fly in such a large plane, and she said she prefers flying in large planes to the small planes like Cessnas. Perhaps we can take an A380 next time we fly to Whistler for a skiing vacation.