My mother comes over from Germany once a year to visit me, and I try to take her somewhere neither of us has been before. Usually, that involves my dragging her to whichever place is next on my bucket list :-). This year, that meant heading to Québec City. I’ve had so many people recently tell me how wonderful it is there, I just had to go and see for myself.

I’m very excited to introduce my first guest writer today: Wendy Dessler is a super-connector with Outreachmama, who works to connect bloggers and businesses online. She is currently working with Uni Baggage. Note that I don’t benefit from any of the links below, other than having the pleasure of working with Wendy, and providing my readers with some great ideas on what to do if you’re still looking to make vacation plans this year. So with that said, over to Wendy!

As some of my readers may already have figured out, one of my favorite ways to explore a new place is to take a food tour. Toronto’s food scene is incredible, both in its quality and diversity. Having indulged in all kinds of ethnic cuisines when I’ve been there, I decided it was time to find out what traditional Canadian food was all about. It was time to go beyond the poutine!

So here’s my dirty little secret: after almost 12 years of living in the Northeastern US, I have not been to Niagara Falls. And sometimes I feel like I’m the only one who has not witnessed this miracle of nature. This was why, when Stu came to visit me in Toronto for the weekend, I decided it was now or never. Niagara is only a 1.5-hour drive from Toronto, so it’s an easy day trip, and there’s plenty of time to explore some of the other attractions of the Niagara peninsula. Which in my case of course means only one thing: ice wine. Happy days.

It heralds our next big adventure in October. We’re actually hitting two birds with one stone in a very Stu-centric vacation, by doing European delivery of a BMW, and going to Switzerland to experience the Axalp Fliegerschieβen.

I’ve been itching to go to Elements restaurant in Princeton, NJ pretty much since it opened back in 2008. It’s since then garnered all kinds of accolades, most recently as the best farm-to-table restaurant in New Jersey, according to Travel and Leisure. When our fourth wedding anniversary conveniently fell on a Wednesday this year, I was able to grab a reservation at short notice – an impossibility on the weekend.

Sometimes we’re so busy traveling remote corners of the earth, or planning our next trip, we forget that there’s actually all kinds of good stuff going on right on our front doorstep. Case in point: The New Jersey Winemakers Co-op Spring Portfolio Tasting at Beneduce Vineyards, which I attended for the first time this year. When my wine-buff friend Lara asked me if I wanted to come along, I didn’t need much convincing. Spending a warm spring day at a pretty winery, sipping on local New Jersey wines, and listening to people talk intelligently (but not for too long!) about wine sounded like a good way to spend a day.

My employers, in their infinite wisdom, have decided to assign me to a project in Toronto for the next couple of months – starting today. For once, Stu was quick to volunteer to come up for the weekend sometime (funny, there just wasn’t the same level of enthusiasm when it was Bloomington, IL). While business travel doesn’t offer much opportunity to play the tourist, we’ll try to do some exploring and report back!

At the very tail-end of our Southern road trip, we stopped off in DC for the night before heading home to NJ. Stu being the aviation nut that he is, suggested we stop by the air & space museum near Dulles airport, officially known as the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center. I had never even heard of the place, but it’s actually an extension of the Smithsonian air & space museum in DC. It is housed in a giant t-shaped hangar, with aviation exhibits in the crossbar of the T, and the other portion dedicated to space travel. Entrance is free, you just have to pay $15 for parking.

In this second part of my “hotel room key series”, I thought I’d talk about the not-so-new trend of using your cell phone to open your hotel room door, instead of a key provided by the hotel. While this technology has been touted by various hotel chains for a couple of years now, it’s taking a while to spread, and I only just had the pleasure of experiencing it myself at the Hilton Knoxville last month. Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG), Marriott and Hilton have all jumped on the bandwagon, but it wasn’t until I tried the technology myself that its full glory revealed itself to me!

One of my friends recently asked me whether it was true that your hotel room key card contains your credit card information. This reminded me of a co-worker I used to travel with, who had a pile of old key cards sitting at home because she was afraid to leave them at the hotel. It sounded like some investigating was in order.

It’s the last day of our road trip, and a sad day indeed. But we still have some great activities scheduled, starting with the most important meal of the day. Biscuit Head had a line out the door, but that’s a good sign, right? It gave us time to peruse their menu and make up our minds about what to get for breakfast, which wasn’t easy. They make “cat head biscuits”, so called because they’re the size of a cat’s head (recipe here, if you’re interested – let me know how they turn out!) and breakfast is mostly a selection of cat head biscuit sandwiches. So good! You’ve got to love any place that features a bacon of the day.

Day 3, and we were leaving Nashville. To fortify ourselves for the drive to Knoxville, we headed to the Pancake Pantry , which is a breakfast hotspot near Vanderbilt University. Very cute neighborhood with good shopping. Inevitably, there was a line out the door, but it moved pretty quickly, and we were soon seated and perusing the menu. The Pancake Pantry is particularly known for its sweet potato pancakes, but one of the things we’d noticed over the last few days was how sweet everything was – definitely extra sugar compared to up north. So we ended up passing on something that sounded like it would be super sweet, and went for the buckwheat pancakes and “the grill cook’s medley” – basically everything with an egg on top. Yum. You need to go there.

We ended up getting a late start on our second day in Nashville, which meant that we showed up to our distillery tour and whiskey tasting on empty stomachs – probably not a good thing. While we’d been tempted to make a trip out to the Jack Daniels facility in Lynchburg, it’s an hour’s drive from Nashville, and Nelson’s Greenbrier Distillery is right downtown and receives excellent ratings. I had booked tickets in advance (only $10 per person including the tasting), which I think is advisable in the high season given the distillery’s popularity. The distillery is located in an interesting neighborhood of old red-brick factory buildings that is clearly experiencing a renaissance as coffee houses, art galleries and even churches move into the empty spaces.

Stu having driven down the previous day (what can I say – he decided he wanted to drive his own car, not a “boring” rental), he picked me up at the airport on Saturday morning, and off we went on our adventures. We had some time to kill before our walking tour started, and decided to check out the Parthenon. Back in 1897, Nashville wanted to be know as “the Athens of the South” really badly, and to drive home the point, this exact replica of the Parthenon in Athens was erected. It is now used as an art museum. Having each paid our $6 to get in, we found that the art on the lower floor was somewhat eclectic, to put it politely. The real attraction for me was the 41-foot-10-inch tall statue of Athena Parthenos on the upper level. This statue was created in 1990 and was closely modeled on descriptions of the original statue in ancient Greece. The sheer size is impressive, and she doesn’t look like you usually imagine Greek statues. This may be because of the gold leaf, but also due to her commanding presence and sense of fierceness.

For our next adventure – and the first one documented on this blog – Stu and I are exploring the American South. In the tradition of this new home country of mine, we are going on a road trip. Starting out in Nashville, TN, we’ll be making our way to Asheville, NC via the Great Smoky Mountains. Along the way, we’re looking forward to lots of music, barbecue, and that famous Southern hospitality.