Peet's Anniversary Blend

I stopped at Peet's Coffee in Coolidge Corner this morning on the way to work to buy some coffee beans. They had a nice display for their new Anniversary Blend

so I asked the woman behind the counter, "What's the Anniversary Blend like this year?"

"We'll be putting that out later today," she said.

I screamed, "No!!!" and that spurred her to go downstairs to rummage for it. She succeeded, and as she bagged a pound of loose beans for me, she informed me, "We just got this and haven't even tried it yet. You'll be the first person in Boston to try it."

I haven't brewed it yet (but it smells good!)

ravijain.org freshened up

I got a call from someone at The Connection last week about possibly appearing on the NPR show to talk about the Big Dig. Stefan and I thought up some ways I could subtly introduce my doubts about the project:

"I'm afraid that Amorello might have to CAVE IN to the demands of Mitt Romney"

But, before I had the chance to once again speak to the NPR masses (my appearance on Weekend Edition has been seemingly expunged from the NPR archives), I was bumped off the show!

The experience did make me realize how my Artist's Site (http://ravijain.org) is woefully out of date and thus I'm happy to say that I've finally meekly refreshed it tonight. I really need to come up with some sort of snappy CSS way of updating the nav so that its not so time consuming when I want to add a new project.

The Honeymoon is Over!

We did return from our honeymoon -- to glorious grey snow in Boston. But spring returns eternal today and opening day is only two weeks away.

Sonia has posted a whole buncha photos from the honeymoon (and wedding) -- and we're easing back into life in Boston.

Play Ball!

After a day of soaking rain, in which all Grapefuit league games were cancelled, we are off to see a spring training ball game -- Orioles vs. Mets in Ft. Lauderdale.

After that, we're going to explore one of the big outlets nearby -- and then stop to visit Bahama Breeze, one of our fave FL restaurants. Mmmm...mojito!

A bit of Aruba, again

We're back in the world of wi-fi in our Miami hotel, so here's a few shots of Aruba that we never got to put up (An overview of Curacao will be next!)

As Aruba was a Dutch colony, there is still a strong Dutch influence, which translates into a vlalicious experience for Ravi, as he is reunited with the pudding-like treat, vla!



On our last full day in Aruba we signed up for a bus tour of the island. It turned out no one else was on the tour, so we had our own tour with a seventh generation Aruban, Frank. He showed us all sorts of great stuff on the island -- including the Divi trees which lean due to the steady breeze.



We had lunch at a place called Coco Beach (though there is no beach of that name), before we did some great snorkeling at a place called Baby Beach. The industrial landscape in the background reminded us of images of Iceland.



Here's one of the big geological features of the island -- The Natural Bridge formation. I then realized why they had a cocktail at our resort called a Natural Bridge...



We closed our tour with a visit to the big lighthouse on the western part of the island. I did a quick composite of two images: one of the lighthouse, and Sonia with Frank, our guide!

Miami bound!

Curacao has treated us well -- we zipped around the country on the weekend with a rental car. We visited a really nice beach on Saturday with an underwater snorkel 'trail'. We climbed the highest mountain in the country -- some 1300 feet high -- early Sunday morning.

And then found the most beautiful beach we've ever seen -- Cas Abou -- nestled between two coves. Clear, calm blue waters. Unfortunately it looks like they'll be building up a resort on this site soon, so the secluded nature of the beach will be a thing of the past.

Other than that we've been enjoying our time in our little village. We had a brief scare when Sonia slipped and fell down some super slick stairs -- some bruises, but no broken bones thankfully! She's feeling better today (I'll do all the heavy lifting at the airport!)

We're hoping for in-room connectivity in Miami so that we can upload some more pictures.

Blue Curacao

We arrived in Curacao yesterday and our resort, Kura Hulanda, is quite different from our Aruba home. The large complex has winding little alleys and walkways surrounding different courtyards/pools -- it's very reminiscint of 'The Village' from The Prisoner! We have a lovely second story villa with living room and separate bedroom. The grounds also have some very nice restaurants and a museum of Curacao/slave history.

Unfortunately, we do not have wi-fi at this stop in our honeymoon, so we won't be able to post any pics for a while.

Honeymoon Day 4

Sonia sports her new sunhat before we embark on our snorkeling cruise.



We left the digital camera back at the resort and took our disposable underwater camera for our snorkel around the Antilla shipwreck. When we came back we sat to wait for the sunset.



It was worth the wait!

Honeymoon Day 3

Okay -- we've gotten behind on the blog which means we've been too busy having fun!

Here's some highlights from day 3, starting with a view towards our beach during a morning stroll -- nice and quiet!



Ravi dives into the inviting waters...



Sonia stands outside the "super"market that we walked to...



and later that night we enjoyed our honeymoon dinner under the stars at our resort -- with a distinctive pirate theme!