Beautiful Wedding Cake

Beautiful wedding cake for our friends Jose and Suzanne. The ceremony and the reception were held in Los Gatos, California back in May.

Wedding and Family Honeymoon Musings

Flowers in front of Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden where our wedding and reception was held.



Walking into our reception.



View from our room at Loew's Royal Pacific Resort where we took our family honeymoon - we will take our official "just the two of us" honeymoon later this year. See the roller coasters in the background? We definitely recommend this place, especially if you have kids. The service and activities, as well as the pool, were amazing. It was definitely worth it to stay on the club level, as unlimited soft drinks, coffee and tea, breakfast, snacks and early dinner were all included. It was really awesome not to have to worry about parking, and to be able to walk back to the hotel to take a break, then return to the parks for more time in the evening.



Entrance to Harry Potter area of Universal Studio's Islands of Adventure. Love this place!

When you stay on-site you get in 1 hour early to Harry Potter and Express Passes too - basically we never waited more than 15 minutes for anything other than Ollivander's Wand Experience - and that was SO worth it!



Potter fans delight!



Yay for butterbeer - and they have frozen butterbeer too! It was kind of like cream soda with a marshmallow cream topping.



Ducks in the hotel pool - so cute!



Islands Dining Room inside the hotel.



Soup.

Although we took advantage of the "free" food offered on the club level as much as possible, we did dine at several restaurants including Islands Dining Room in our hotel. The food we had there was good, although just as expensive as expected at a resort restaurant.

Dumplings.



Mahi Mahi salad.



Fish & Chips.



Tasty nachos and Grilled Chicken sandwich at Bula Bar & Grill at the pool.

In addition to tasty food and excellent service by the pool (setting up your chair, bringing samples of smoothies) they had fun games for kids every hour on the hour. These included water balloon toss and find the rubber ducky. They also had movies by the pool every evening. We truly had a wonderful time and would recommend any of the Loew's properties at Universal Studios.

One evening we ordered take out from the Orchid Court Sushi Bar. The sushi was much better than I expected - a nice change from the typical American fare served in the club room.

I'm Back!

Loyal readers, Thank you for your patience during the past few months. I will be posting regularly again now and have a HUGE backlog of food experiences to write about. Please check back often in the coming weeks. There are also quite a few new places opening up so stay tuned!

Below is a photo of my delicious and gorgeous wedding cake made by Gail at Cheesecake Etc. in Charlotte and above is one of us in the orchid house at the garden where our wedding was held. I may do a longer wedding post later but here is a sneak peak of our big day!

Canada O' Canada - May Toronto Trip

Pure bliss - a Toronto Hot Dog from the cart - with fries.

Back in May Calvin and I traveled to Toronto for a wonderful extended weekend for a family wedding. We stayed at the awesome Fairmont Royal York Hotel, which reminded me of what I think it would have been like to stay on The Titanic. The wedding was held at the hotel and was gorgeous. See below for a photo-log.

Shabbat Dinner at our cousin's house.



St. Lawrence Market goodness: St. Urbain Bagel. These bagels are nothing like what we get in the south: warm, chewy, with a very unique taste - there's really nothing like it!

Indian Buffet in India town.





Delicious Naan.

Greek dips at the night-before-the-wedding dinner.





Greek Salad.



Chicken kabob.

Restaurant atop the famous CN Tower.

Frittata.



Quiche with salad and sweet potato fries.



Fish from the lake!



Salmon - not from the lake!



Chocolate mousse.



The family at brunch, high up in the sky.

Fabulous dessert at the wedding dinner.



Famous ice cream shop.



We tried roasted marshmallow, sweet cream, cardamom and lemon merigue.

BEFORE



AFTER

Salt and Pepper Calamari.

Crepe and croissant-wich at a cute place near our hotel - can't remember the name!

Omelet and toast with fruit.