Week 13 - "eat at an African or Middle Eastern restaurant" (or Brazilian)



Copacabana Brazilian restaurant

      Right across the street from our hotel in Niagara Falls was a great Brazilian restaurant with seating inside or on the porch.  There was a large grill along one side of the porch and a platform for the nightly bands on the other side of the porch.  We could hear the music well into the night from our hotel across the street and up on the 30th floor.  The music competed with the sounds of the Falls to help us drift off to sleep each night.
     We remembered that one of our adventures was to try a different ethnic restaurant, so we decided to try Copacabana one night.  It was rather expensive, but the food was so wonderful that we would do this again.


22 items on the salad bar (mostly cold, but all delicious)


     The place had a large salad bar with lots of dishes that we didn't recognize.  We did, however
recognize feijoada and had to add that to our plate.  There was a lot of bean and vegetable dishes, mostly cold.  We tried a lot of them and all were delicious.  After the meal, we practically had to waddle back across the street to the hotel.




     

Cheryl using tongs to remove a piece of roasted pineapple

  

     In addition to the salad bar, the restaurant served 17 different meats.  These were grilled on a metal post and a waiter would bring them around to the tables one at a time.  We used little tongs to remove a slice of meat.  We tried most of them:  leg of lamb, prime rib, filet mignon, skirt steak, chicken breast, picana brazil, parmeson filet, salmon, chimichurri steak, port ribs, flank steak and, my favorite, roasted pineapple.  As long as we wanted the waiter to keep bringing meats, we had a card on the table that stated, "Fire it up!"  When we wanted to take a little break, we turned the card over to read "Cool it down", and the waiter would pass us by.    



Bill with Brazil's wonderful caipirinha drink.

        
     We also had to order a caipirinha, a typical Brazilian cocktail made with a sweet Brazilian rum, sugar and lime.  We have tried to make these at home, but why is it they taste so much better in a Brazilian restaurant?  All the waitresses were Brazilian and really beautiful and friendly, just like our Brazilian daughter, Camila.  It made us homesick for her.
     Thanks to this Excellent Adventure, we can now add Brazilian food to American, Italian, Chinese and Thai food that we eat in Charleston!!

Week 12 - "visit a museum"



Bill outside the H of F where the first ceremony was held.

      After a year of planning, we finally made our trip to the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, NY, last week. When we first thought about retiring in the fall of 2011, we thought we would like to go to Cooperstown, Niagara Falls and see the leaves of Upstate New York.
     I (Dad) had been to Cooperstown about 15 years ago and was anxious to return with Mom. I only got to spend about 2 hours there on my previous visit so was excited to have more time to spend. Mom has been reading James Fenimore Cooper's "Leatherstocking Tales" so she was anxious to see Cooperstown and the area. We loved the town, the area and the Hall of Fame. The weather was cool and overcast so we didn't walk around as much as we would have liked. I mostly like the old-time stuff in the Hall of Fame -- the early 20th century up through the "60s. They had displays on the Cubs' powerhouses of 1906-1910. I also learned that Hack Wilson's Major League record of 190 RBI in a season has been amended to 191. Some historian going through box scores has discovered one additional RBI for the Cub slugger in 1929. It's a great museum for baseball fans with videos and audio of famous events. They have improved the Hall of Fame plaque area from when I was there in the mid-90s. It's very impressive.


One of several sculptures -- Roy Campanella.

      We arrived at the Hall of Fame about 10 a.m. and spent a couple hours wandering through one part of the museum. The nice thing is you can leave the building. They stamp your hand so you can leave to have lunch and then return later. So we left for lunch and went back for a couple more hours. They have tons of books for sale that have been written about baseball. The day we were there they had a couple shelves with books about the Cubs. It's a very stately building.      Cooperstown is such a quaint little town. There are no neon signs, no fast-food restaurants, no chain hotels or anything like that in the village (it's a village, not a city). The town was founded by JF Cooper's dad in 1785 and some of the buildings actually date to the 18th century. Many of the buildings are from the early 1800s. The village is on the edge of Lake Otsego, which was "Glimmerglass Lake" in Cooper's Leatherstocking books.


A portion of the entrance to the Hall of Fame.

      There aren't even any big signs saying "Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum This Way." It's just another downtown building. Doubleday Field, where they used to play a Major League Exhibition game on Hall of Fame induction weekend, is about a block away. It's also a cute little field with residences beyond the short outfield fences.
     As I mentioned, it was cool and overcast while we were in Cooperstown so the scenery wasn't very colorful. Cooperstown is between the Adirondack and Catskill mountains so it is a hilly, forested area with lots of lakes in the vicinity. We spent two nights and parts of three days there. Our hotel was a couple miles outside of town.
The beautiful old bed-and-breakfasts in town are very expensive and we wanted the comforts of a modern hotel. We did eat at two different local restaurants 

Some of the 111 Hall of Fame plaques.

each night we were there. And, although it wasn't crowded because it was early October, the restaurants and Hall of Fame had a steady stream of people.
     When we weren't actually inside the museum, we were walking up and down Main Street looking in the different souvenir and specialty shops.  We also took a short walk down a side street to Otsego Lake (Glimmerglass) and could picture the Deerslayer and the Indians in the forests surrounding the lake.  There is a magnificent Country Club with manicured grounds right on the lake and we explored that area as well as the town.
     It was the start of a great week.  After Cooperstown, we were off to Lake Ontario and Niagara Falls before driving back home.