Vacation, Vacation, Vacation!!!

Ok, time to get caught up I suppose. But honestly, I'm not in the mood :) So here it is. I was lucky enough to go on two great vacations this month. First I went to New Orleans, then to Boston. Two great cities that I had never been to. I went to Mardi Gras in New Orleans, check off the bucket list :) It was amazing. I stayed with a good friend and former roommate of mine that is now a grad student at Tulane. And a former co-travel-nurse and partner in crime drove down from her home in Asheville, NC to meet us. We walked all over the city, and had a great time, ate some amazing food, heard some amazing music, and just had an all around amazing time.

Boston was explored with two former travel-nurse coworkers of mine in NYC. We also walked all over that city and saw all there was to see. We ate some amazing food, saw some amazing history, and spent some truly amazing time together ...and picked up a new accent :) The pictures are great, and they're reminiscent of the things we saw. The thing is, pictures can't capture the moments. As we were discussing at dinner one night. There is just no way you can capture the true beauty that is enjoying a berried lamb dinner at the top of the Prudential Building overlooking the Charles River and Cambridge. The amazing food, the moonlight, the view, the mood, it just can't be photographed. The spirit of the city has to be felt, is has to be experienced. It can't be captured.

The same is true of each city I've been to. Try as I might, I can't capture in words or writing what exactly it feels like to walk the streets of New Orleans in the deep south, expecting the characters from Pride and Prejudice or Gone With the Wind to walk around the next corner. You can't capture the experience of eating a traditional southern breakfast at a corner coffee shop with an in-house pianist and trumpet player playing 1940s style jazz. You can't record the way the moon looks over a certain skyline or a certain river. These things just have to be experienced. That being said, I've had an amazing time, and seen a lot of amazing things with a lot of amazing people. I came home with 7 new blisters, a new hoodie, three new tshirts, three new keychains, two new magnets, two bags full of mardi gras beads, two bags of stuff for my Bosty, and a lifetime of new memories and experiences. And I did of course take a lot of pictures :)