Have Oils, Will Travel

We recently returned from Costa Rica, and of course I took a whole bunch of my oils with me!  I wanted to share what I took, and what I used.

I got a fair bit of flack for the oils.  It is what it is, and all I can do is shrug it off because I know they aren't for everyone.  (Well they are for everyone, but there are some people that I know aren't looking for the change.)

Another interesting story, is that while on our night hike, our guide was talking about a type of plant that he said is good for cancer.  He didn't say it cured cancer, and he didn't go into detail about what the benefits were, but all I could think about is how similar this is to the use of oils. Other cultures are using all types of natural remedies against common ailments.  And then our culture is up here rolling their eyes.  

So here is what I brought and why:

Terrashield spray - 20-30 drops Terrashield in a 4oz glass bottle, topped with distilled water.  This was what I used as bug spray.  We used it when we were in the jungle and I didn't find that I needed it when we were at the resort.  I don't think I got any bites, so it must of worked ok!  (You can buy this premade as well.)

Headache Roller - because it's always with me!

Deep Blue Roller - for the headaches that just won't quit!

Lavender Roller - bug bites & sun burns (took a burn on my hairline away within a day!)

ZenGest Roller - because you always need help with your tummy in a different country!

Immunity Roller - because your immune system takes a beating

Small vials in my doTerra key chain case:

Frankincense - behind the ears during take off and landing on the plane.  It's anti-inflammatory so I found it helped a lot.  

On Guard

Lemon

Copaiba - for anxiety and also anti-inflammatory

Terrashield - in case I ran out of our bottle

Balance - because I love it, a bit on the wrist, feet, or behind the ears

ZenGest - for if the roller wasn't doing the trick, my friend also used some for congestion

Deep Blue Rub - we were hiking, rapelling and ziplining for 3 days straight, loved putting some of this on at night

I used every single roller blend that I brought and a few of the small vials.  We also brought Pepto, Gravol and Advil.  Oils are great, but sometimes you need more.  And that's ok!  Modern medicine is amazing, but I always like to turn to my oils first now and see if they can fix the problem.  (By the way, I do find that ZenGest fixes most stomach problems.  However when you are down south, I find your whole system is off.  I took a Pepto pill every day for the last 4 days just to try to get myself back on track.)

As for taking the oils on the plane, it was easy peasy.  They are all under 100mL so they can go in your carry on if they fit in the liquid bag.  Once we were through security, I made sure the lids of my rollers were on tightly and put them in individual ziplock bags as I had heard sometimes they leak due to plane pressure.  None of mine ended up leaking, but it was nice to know that they wouldn't leak all over themselves if they did.

Kingston Penitentiary Tour

During our holidays, we did a tour of the now closed Kingston Penitentiary.  This was by far my favourite part and the most fascinating thing that we did on our holidays.  So it deserves it's own post!

When I spoke to the people at the Penetentiary, they said that although kids are able to go on the tour, the groups are big and you want to be able to hear the tour guide.  Since we were in Kingston with my parents, we decided to offset our tours so that we didn't have to take the kids with us.

Basically, the tour was amazing, and much better than expected.  I would highly recommend it.

In the recreation yard

We had a tour guide who took us through the prison.  However along the way we stopped and spoke with 6 different retired prison employees.  There were a few guards, an ex-warden and a lady who I don't actually know what she did!  This aspect of the tour was amazing because you knew you were hearing from the people who really knew.  They were able to explain that area and tell us what that part of the prison was actually like.

While on the tour we saw things like the visitation rooms, the outside of the family visit houses, the main dome, a cell block, the short term segregation area, the shop, the yard and the gym in the Regional Treatment Centre.  We saw the long term segregation area from the outside of the cell block as well, but didn't go into it.  This is where a lot of the high profile criminals that you may of heard of were held.

The shower in Short term segregation - not much privacy

Family/conjugal visit houses

The tour guide and former guards aren't able to actually discuss any prisoners who are still alive, so if that's all you are interested in then this isn't for you!  They did tell us a few stories about escapes and such from prisoners who have died.  So when we saw long term seg they didn't tell us who had stayed there, but most people are aware that people like Paul Bernardo and Russell Williams have been in long term segregation.

In the short term segregation wing, an ex-warden spoke to us and he was by far the most interesting I found.  This was probably just because he really knew his stuff.  

In the dome, the guard talked about the 1971 riot which was also really interesting.

The main dome

Divided visitation room

I don't want to give it all away in case you plan on doing the tour.  I'm not sure how long they will be doing tours for as it seems that they have some plans for what to do with the penetentiary, so if you want to do it then I would try to do it as soon as possible!  If you can make a trip to Kingston there is actually so much interesting stuff to do there and it's totally worth the trip!

The Shop Dome

Inside the main gate

A cell block

A cell

Chicago Babymoon: Top 10

Last week we went on a 4 day babymoon to Chicago.  We took the train there from Port Huron, which is about 2 and a half hours from our house.  If you are from Canada, that's honestly the way to do it.  The train was cheaper than what it would of cost us to park our car at the hotel, and once in Chicago you really don't need a vehicle.

We stayed at the Chicago Essex Inn.  (By the way, I'm a deal finder when it comes to trips and booked pretty much everything in advance through Group On, including the hotel.)  The Essex Inn was right on Michigan Ave, close to Museum Campus.  A bit further away from the Magnificent Mile, but still walkable.  We walked multiple times!

So here are my top 10 recommendations:

1.  You need to try Chicago deep dish pizza.  We went to Lou Malnatti's, but I have heard good things about a number of chains.  There was a Lou Malnatti's 2 blocks behind our hotel, but they are all over the place as well.

2.  The Shedd Aquarium.  This is probably personal preference, but this is the one museum that I would highly recommend you do.  They have dolphins, belugas and penguins and a total of 32,000 fish and other animals in total.  

This Beluga was chatting away

3.  Second City.  We did their Dinner and Show where you book a dinner reservation with a price fixed menu through them.  Dinner was great and very filling.  However, once at the show, you can order a variety of appetizers and small plates and their prices are very reasonable.  So I would suggest you go early and just order food and drinks at the show.  The show was hilarious and we both had a great time.

4.  Check out the view from the John Hancock Building lounge.  You can pay to go up to Chicago 360 observatory right on the Magnificent Mile.  It's $19 per person.  Or, you can wait in what is probably a shorter line and go to the lounge or the restaurant.  We literally walked right in (to the elevator of course).  You could go to the lounge and not order anything, nobody is checking that you actually get a table.  But we ordered a beer for Ryan, a smoothie for me and an appetizer.  They were expensive, but it was still cheaper than going to the observatory, plus we were able to relax and enjoy the view.  Oh an check out the view from the women's washroom.  Sorry men, apparently there aren't windows in your washroom.

My Strawberry Smoothie

5. Take a Chicago Architecture Cruise.  People say that if you do one thing in Chicago, this should be it, and I 100% agree.  We went with Chicago Line Cruises because I got a Group On and it included free coffee, tea and muffins and cookies.  I was a bit worried that it wouldn't be as good as the Architecture Foundation cruise, and of course I can't compare the two, but our tour guide was extremely passionate and knowledgeable.  She talked for the entire hour and a half!  Our cruise also wasn't full, so it was nice because you could wander freely around the deck without getting in anybody's way.

The Sears (or Willis) Tower - from the river

6. The Lincoln Park Zoo.  This zoo is a bit further north and takes longer to get to, but it's free!  And it's actually a decent sized zoo.  I was very impressed with the wide variety of animals they had there.  The gorillas are always my favourite!  The kangaroos were a bit lazy that day.

7. Food, food, food.  Besides the pizza, there is lots of other delicious food in Chicago.  I suggest Al's Italian Beef, for huge beef sandwiches that are dipped in gravy.  We also had a sandwich at Potbellys, which are all over the city.  I had chicken salad and it was unbelievable!

8.  You need to get some Chicago Mix at Garrett's Popcorn.  You know when you mix cheese popcorn with caramel popcorn?  That's called Chicago mix and it was created at Garrett's.  I think the line ups can get pretty long, so we were there right at 10am when it opened.

9.  Walk out Navy Pier.  Ok so we didn't walk all the way to the end.  But that's because we stopped to play a game of mini putt (I lost badly) and by the time we were done we had to get moving because we had places to be!  

10.  Go to Cloud Gate, aka The Bean.  However silly and overly touristy it is, you have to do it when in Chicago.  We went twice, and I suggest going on a weekday if you can.

We had an amazing trip and it was so nice to get away with just the two of us before the little one comes.  I can't wait to travel with kids, as it will be a new and exciting experience, but Ryan and I really enjoy travelling with just the two of us as well.

If you could see my browser history....

If you looked at my browser history you would see:

All of the trip plans for a Vegas vacation.  

Flights and rental cars were figured out.  We were hiking to this gorgeous location.

Havasu Falls

This is Havasu Falls.  There are a group of waterfalls down in the Grand Canyon.  The only way to get to them is to either do a 10 mile hike or take a helicopter, but we're ambitious and wanted to do the hike!

Had amazing rates at Harrah's in Las Vegas. 

Harrahs's

Unfortunately to do that hike you apparently need to book more than a month in advance...So the trip is off.  Hopefully some day before we are too old to hike 10 miles each way and sleep on the ground we will be able to do it.  I did look into other locations at the Grand Canyon, but it being only a month ahead of time, and trying to book Easter weekend just didn't work for me.

Also in that history are searches for Vacations to Costa Rica.  This girl right here is really sick of winter and needs to get away from reality.  Unfortunately Costa Rica vacations have yet to drop their prices by $800 per person.  Shocker.

Costa Rica

Then there are searches for trailers.  Because I have now convinced myself that it's ok to spend this money and so it must be spent!  

So all that is on my mind right now is trips, trips and camping trips.

Clearly summer can't come soon enough.

3 Months: What Would You Do?

Today's prompt for Blogtember is: If you could take three months off from your current life and do anything in the world, what would you do?

How many people are going to say travel for today's prompt?  Probably 90% of them.  And as much as I wanted to avoid this, realistically if I had three months and money wasn't an object, it is probably what I would do. 

But, I'm not sure that a busy trip with 15 destinations is what I would want.  Maybe I would go to France for the entire three months.  I have tried so many times to learn French without success.  What's one more shot at it? 

{via pinterest}

Maybe I would go to Costa Rica for a month and just write.  I would really love to write a book.  I don't have an idea for what this book would be about yet, but I'm working on it.

{via} Who wouldn't be inspired while living in a tree house?

Or maybe I would just try to accomplish things on my 30 before 30 list.  If you have three months off, why not try to do everything that you want to do?

A Whale Of a Time

So we have reached the end of my Quebec vacation recap.  You can see the other posts here, here and here.

On the last day of our vacation, we made the three hour drive to Tadoussac to go whale watching.  It was a long drive through the mountains.  The hills were intense.  I was pretty worried because for the first time in our vacation, it was pouring rain and foggy.  We took the scenic route along the St. Lawrence, and couldn't even see it, it was so foggy.  Three hours (six total if counting the drive back) is a long way to go if you can't see any whales.


The harbor looked beautiful in the fog

Lucky for us, we saw some whales, and lots of them. 


A minke whale

We saw a few minke and humpback whales.  I was really hoping for some breaching, but the best we could get was a few tails.


The tail of a humpback

It was so foggy that we could hear the blow holes of whales that were nearby, but we couldn't see them.


A Seal

 There were tons of seals.  At one point I think about 50 of them swam past the boat.
 

A Blue Whale

 We were very fortunate that we saw a few blue whales.  This one was feeding, so it kept coming up.  It's hard to even describe how big it was.  It's a pretty amazing feeling to be looking at the largest animal ever to have existed.  (I looked it up, that's a fact!)


A Humpback

So the drive to Tadoussac was definitely worth it.  I kept my eye out for moose on the way home since all of the signs said that we should be watching out for them, but there were apparently none to be seen. 

It was a great trip and I feel so lucky that we have so much culture and beauty in this country of ours!

Swimming with Tony

Another check mark off the 30 before 30 list!  The great thing about this list is that it might make you do things that you normally wouldn't.  Like swimming with dolphins for example.  I think that if it wasn't on my list, I would have said that it was too expensive.  But instead I saw this as my chance and went for it.

This is Tony.  He is an 8 year old dolphin from Cuba.  We were pretty good friends.

Actually, I was kind of terrified of him.  I'm not sure why, but I thought I was going to hurt him by touching one of his holes...and then I thought he was going to hurt me by hitting me with his tail.  I have a feeling that would hurt.

But in the end, we were friends, and he gave me a kiss.  (I gave him one too).  Other things that Tony could do included water fights, clapping, singing and dancing around in a circle.  They are so smart.

It was a great experience and something that I will probably never do again.  Everybody should swim with dolphins at some point in their life, right?

Punta Canada

Punta Canada is what everyone who tried to sell us something said when they asked where we were from.  They thought they were being original, but they obviously weren't.

So it's pretty hard to shorten one great week and 440 pictures into one blog post, but I'm attempting to do it.  Last week we travelled to the Grand Palladium Punta Cana for one of Ryan's friends weddings.  This meant that I was travelling with 9 guys and one other wife basically.  It made for an interesting week.

To start the trip off, we had a flight that left at 6:20 in the morning.  So we decided to stay in a hotel the night before.  Unfortunately the latest shuttle we could get was at 2:30am.  So the boys decided to stay up all night and have a few beers in the hotel room (because we weren't going to get enough of those at the all inclusive resort).  Needless to say, the airport and the flight were slightly painful.  It was painful for me and I was sober and had three hours sleep.

The resort was nice.  It had decent food, and a lot of a la carte restaurants, so we only ate at the buffet one night.  The only downfall was how big the resort was.  Most of the time it didn't matter, because we had a pool and the beach and a buffet very close to us.  But, if we wanted to go to the Sports Bar, which had food 24 hours, it was a 15 minute walk or you had to find one of these golf carts or the train to take you.  Don't worry, we didn't actually steal this golf cart.

Ryan pretending to drive fast

Sometimes Ryan didn't make it to dinner (by sometimes I mean once) and so mullet man was my date.  I'm a lucky girl.  (The mullet isn't real, in case you were concerned.)

We did a dune buggying excursion with our group.  It was alright.  The best part  was probably the fresh water caves that they took us swimming in. 

Oh and then there's the reason for this whole trip.  The wedding.  The wedding was beautiful, although very hot! 

The guys were amazed by the flying boat all week.  Until they found out that it was $75 for a 10 minute ride.

Hey look!  A flying boat!

Because our husbands wouldn't do it with us - knees together Kaileigh...

 We had some free time between the ceremony and dinner, so it was back to the pool for us!

After dinner, they had a beach party for just the wedding guests.  All wedding receptions should be held on the beach, no shoes required. 

Of course you would steal a kayak for the Harlem Shake - seriously we don't know where she got the kayak

 The evening ended with myself, my friend Charity and the bride practicing our ballet (or ring around the rosie as the bride's son called it) in the ocean. 

And no trip is complete without pool beer pong.  Ok maybe it is, but we played anyways!

Trips are never as interesting to anyone else as it is to the people who were there, so I will end my post here.  It was a great week though.  I went in not really knowing what to expect, but in the end, you can't complain about sun, sand and good friends!