My sister Deborah and the Peabody's Ducks

This is the beginning of the story about how we got married, you will understand why a little later in a series of posts to follow, but I had to start from the start so here we go.
My sister Deborah came to visit us early this summer, she rented an apartment in Manhattan, I took the Acela train from Boston to New York and stayed with her.




Deborah fell in love with Central Park, it wasn't her first time in the city but her first time in NY during the summer

 She had fun New York for a couple of weeks and as soon as she had all her shopping done and her museums visited she was ready to stretch her trip a bit
My sister is a Dentist and a professional photographer too, so she decided to invite us to take her on a cross country road trip to take pictures and visit our dear friends in Oklahoma, who she met when they went to Brazil in the 90's, Gil is not a big fan of traveling but he loves spending time with Deborah so it was easy to talk him into coming with us, they love to talk, for hours and hours and hours.




Deborah is a Dentist, she also took a two year professional photography course, she is an awesome photographer


Here is a picture of Gil, he is a little different now, he has a beard:




My awesome  husband Gil

 I should explain at this point that I was an exchange student in 1989 and I lived in Oklahoma for one whole year as a Senior in High School. I made friends for life which I still visit today, we are like family.
Gil and I have spent countless Thanksgivings and Christmas with our Oklahoma family.
So, Gil drove the Expedition down to New York, picked us up and off we went to Oklahoma.
Let me tell you one thing, THANK GOD FOR DUAL A/C TEMPERATURES in cars, my sister is always cold, it was 80 degrees outside, Gil and I had the A/C turned down to 60 degrees on our side of the car and Deborah had it full blast on 80 degrees the whole time, plus she was wearing a sweater.
I remember traveling in my family's Chevrolet Caravan's station wagon as a child and we all either froze with the A/C or we burned up with the heater, someone was always complaining, you just couldn't make everyone happy, that is partly how we drove our parents crazy, this small new device would have made our family vacations much more pleasant.




My parent's station wagon in the 70's - Powerful one temperature A/C



This is the car we drove to the beach every weekend, all 6 of us, plus luggage and surfing boards tied to the top


Sorry, I love cars so much, I had to to tag some pictures for my own our mutual enjoyment ; )
Back to our trip, Deborah took so many awesome pictures on our Manhattan to Oklahoma trip I will have to dedicate a post to her professional photos soon.
I have an addiction strong cravings for Dunkin Donuts coffee, it is just the absolute best, I will talk more about that later as well, but we unfortunately stopped finding delicious Dunkin Donuts coffee somewhere around West Virginia and had to live on nasty overpriced, over rated Starbucks for the rest of the trip :(
We love animals so much that my sister, Gil and I made reservations to spend the night at the Peabody Hotel, downtown Memphis for the sole purpose of watching the "Ducks March" to the water fountain on the following morning, yeah, we are silly that way :), I say we find pleasure in the simple things in life.
We stopped so often for pictures and pee breaks that we never made it to Memphis that night, we called in, canceled our reservations and stayed at a small Motel on the side of the road 100 miles short of Memphis, the plan was to wake up early and head to the Peabody to watch the Ducks marching into the Hotel's central water fountain, a Memphis tradition for almost 100 years.
It all worked out fine at the end.





Peabody Hotel, Downtown Memphis Tennessee



Here is a link with the Peabody's awesome ducks history. 

 

We spent the whole day in Memphis and had a blast, we watched the ducks, took lots of professional pictures of the ducks, the carriages up front had beautiful horses and downtown Memphis has some interesting historical buildings.
After watching the ducks we had some awesome authentic Memphis Barbecued Ribs downtown at a traditional restaurant that I can't remember the name, but there were many, many Barbecued places downtown, they were apparently all filled with customers and were all great according to some locals, you just can't go wrong eating barbecued baby back ribs with your hands plus corn of the cob, to my sister's horror, everyone ate with their hands and so was she by the end of the meal...Paulista's are just fork and knife people, what can tell you, we adapt but it doesn't come easy, you Expats in Brazil might understand exactly what I am talking about when it comes to eating with your hands in public.
Graceland was our natural next destination, we spent the rest of the afternoon strolling around Graceland, buying souvenirs some awesome Elvis music and taking pictures and talking ourselves to death,
I love my sister :)


We left Memphis around 5 pm and arrived in Oklahoma some time after midnight, the trip was going without a glitch until now...I will continue with our adventurous trip in the following post.



Ray