Visiting the Azores - Day 1!

 And we're off!  Spending a few days on San Miguel island - part of the Azores.  We had to walk across the tarmac to the plane at Boston Logan - interesting start to our trip!  (and the same in Ponta Delgada)

 It was an overnight flight - only 5 hours, and we landed in Ponta Delgada at 6 am.  Our room wasn't available until 3 pm, so we headed out for some much needed coffee!  We already loved the narrow streets, cobblestone streets, and tiled sidewalks (and buildings)

 The flight wasn't really long enough to get much sleep, so we were a little fuzzy most of the day.  Their coffee though- excellent!  It was cloudy and the temps were in the 60's, so a pretty good day for walking.

 Our hotel!  We had a ocean view room with a balcony - loved it!

 The harbor & marina- across the street from our hotel  (all encompassing - a working harbor; a pier with restaurants, a marina, an ocean swimming pool, a water park....)

 A lot of sailboats make their way across the ocean and stop here.  Many leave notes of their journey

Many beautiful buildings and squares

 We happened to notice a yellow bus (offer tours), so we signed up for a 2 day pass (before we fell asleep).  Best idea - they take us up a couple volcanoes, so the views are incredible!

 One stop were the hot springs.  We didn't know about these (I did zero research for our trip) or we would have brought our bathing suits - a lot of people were enjoying the natural hot tubs.

 Beautiful area

 This spring was too hot for soaking - it was boiling - wow!

 Back on the bus and enjoying the beautiful views

 We were in love!

At 4:00, we headed back to the hotel to check in.   Chris told the hotel that it was our anniversary - so they treated us with rose petals all through out the room (and that night, they brought us delicious chocolate cake and champagne!)

 View from our balcony -to the left:  the water park, and a small marina

 across from our room - the ocean swimming pool; the working harbor  (to the right was the main marina)  We loved this view:  watching the kids play in the water park, seeing the crazy old guys soak in the ocean pool (temp was in the low 60's brrr!), watching the sailboats come into the marina; and watching the large ships offload their merchandise.  It was always busy and so much to see.

 We headed to the marina for dinner

 Some sangria with fresh Tuna for dinner!  Then back to the hotel & our balcony for fun viewing :)  We lasted until 9 pm, then finally called it a night.   An amazing Day #1!

Chillaxin

 We've been racing triathlons, corvettes, and sailboats.  So it's nice to have those days where we just chill :) 

Sailing weekend!

 We did a lot of sailing last weekend - with friends and with out.  Perfect weekend

 On our cruise to Newport, we saw our friend, Joe & his crew racing in a regatta.  We stayed out of their way.

 Sunshine & warm temps had a lot of people on the water.

Busy summer days & nights!

Orientation meeting/cookout for the sailing foundation!  Over 100 kids and parents showed up to meet our new program director and eat hot dogs & hamburgers :)

 I conned Chris into helping grill :)  He had fun with our other friend, Chris.

 It was a beautiful night - so happy that so many came out to enjoy it with us.

Bristol was also hosting a British car festival.  So there were lots of interesting cars tooling around town.

 and parked on the lawns by the beautiful bay

 The actual car show was the following day in Colt State Park - just down the road from our house.

 They had a nice turnout and another beautiful day for it.

After seeing all the nice cars, we decided to take our roadster out for a nice drive.

 Driving/riding in an old car along the coast never gets old!

Back to Wednesday night racing! (sailboats that is!)

 Back to racing again!  June is still pretty chilly, so we had to bundle up!  And the fog rolled in too.

 We didn't have a great start, but we still stayed in the mix & had fun!

 Chris & crew actually raced last week as well, and had a much better start (must be me :)).  We'll miss a lot of Wed night racing this year, so placing well won't matter as we won't figure into the year end awards.  So a great year to just enjoy being in the mix!