Greydove

What a fantastic couple of weeks we spent in the USA this year (2008)....We landed in Honolulu on Tuesday 20 May and headed to our hotel. This year we chose to stay at the Hilton Hawaiian Village. What a huge establishment! You could spend a week there and never venture out....it had its own beach and over 100 shops and the best SPA which of course we took advantage of. We headed straight out shopping on the day we arrived as we had to get a new camera and GPS system and by the time we came back to go to go to our room it we had been upgraded and it was just spectacular! Huge and with a view to die for....

We spent the next couple of days on the beach, by the pool; shopping; and met up with Daryle, Mike & Lynn and a couple of friends with the dogs on the Friday before we flew out to Boston....It was great to see our baby Ruby - she is just lovely and also especially great to see Jett had settled in so well ...

We arrived into Boston on Saturday and met up with our good friend Daniela (Tranquada) from the UK who was bunking in with us and driving down to RI for the show...it was great to see her again. We last saw each other at Frankenmeuth so there was a bit of catching up to do.

The next day we headed for the outlet mall at Wrentham on the way down to the show for some more retail therapy and arrived at the Crowne Plaza Sunday afternoon. Again we had a great room - huge – with a large sliding door which opened onto the grass at the back where the RVs were parked. As always the Welcome is a wonderful start to the week. The show started on Monday - a great week of dogs. The weather was fantastic aside a bit of wind which was at least better than the rain that we experienced at the previous National!!

On the Friday we headed up to our seaside cottage at Gloucester in Massachusetts. Gloucester is about a hour north of Boston. It is a glorious little place and an amazing house which is pitched on a cliff with nothing but ocean in front from left to right....Narelle could have sat in a chair and stared out the window for a week......We did some visiting of the surrounding towns - Rockport certainly a stunning village everyone should visit and Salem filled with the witches of the past and Gloucester itself....We spent on afternoon on a whale watching trip which was absolutely fascinating with the whales right alongside the boat - so close it felt like you could touch them. A highlight of our stay in Gloucester.

And so, Narelle returned to Sydney on the Monday and that left Val, Sandra & Daniela to return to the UK. Daniela and Sandra to go to work and Val to meet up with husband John for the Europe and UK holiday.