So we are starting this blog up now that we have been married for six months, and we just got a new laptop. No more excuses, so here it goes! But first, a little matter of business: we likely just do samlly updates about previous six months, rather than long, detailed posts. The main goal is to actually get the blog going with timely update; something that is hard to accomplish when you are trying to play catch up.
So this past week, I (Lee) wanting to do something special for my wife, Angela, so I arranged for us to go a Honduran restaurant and to the Chill at the Queen Mary in Long Beach (I will explain that later). I personally love doing fun surprises for Angela, so I arranged all of this without telling her a word. And, of course, that involved me tooting my own horn about how special her surprise was going to be. That’s how I roll. 🙂
The first part of our special date night was to going to a restaurant named Honduras Kitchen for, you guessed it, Honduran food. This is where Angela served her mission before we got married, so I figured it would be fun to experience some of the food she loved while there.
The meal started off with banana soda. You see, this was a drink that Angela has been dying for me try ever since she has been home. It takes exactly like a banana Laffy Taffy in drink form. That really is the best way to describe. After that, we got some appetizers and our main dishes. I had a steak and egg meal with some yummy rice, creama, and fried plantains. Angela has some fried chicken dish I can’t remember the name of. She said it tasted just like Honduras, so mission accomplished, I’d say.
After that, we went to the Chill at the Queen Mary. This place is a old, early 1900s cruise ship now moored in Long Beach and is currently a large hotel and museum. The Chill exhibit is set up just outside of the shipped and is themed like a old Christmas village. There they have some performance stages, a swing ride, and an ice skating rink, among other things. Adjacent to that area, there is a large dome area that houses a sledding hill and another building with a bunch of ice sculptures inside.
The sledding hill is two stories tall and about a 100 feet long, so not super impressive for us, but for SoCal where we get no snow, it was pretty fun. Since we went on a Wednesday and there weren’t a lot of people there, we were about to go on the slide several times. Whenever you’re tired of that, you can go inside another temporary building they set up inside the dome (yes, a building inside a building 😛 ). Inside it is about 0 degrees, so they give you this big parka before you enter (all the Californians would freeze if they didn’t).
Once inside, there are a bunch of ice sculptures designed to the theme of The Night Before Christmas. Just take a look on the photos – everything you see in there is made of ice, including the walls! It was incredible! We were told that a team from small village in China come here each year at the beginning of November and make everything inside in about 20 days. The colored ice you see? It is water dyed that color before it was frozen. The pictures give it the most justice, so make sure to take a look.
To finish the night, we walked around the Queen Mary ship and went to their Polar Express 4D movie. The fourth dimension stuff in this 15-minute adaption of the full-length film included things like water, wind, snow, and even the smell of hot chocolate. While it was pretty expensive, it was a wonderful and memorable evening nonetheless.
