Vacation

Every four years, the Church of the Nazarene convenes its "General Assembly," which is an elected and representative legislative body. The business of the General Assembly is to hear reports, elect leaders, and discuss many matters of legislation.

In addition to General Assembly, each of the three auxiliaries (Nazarene Missions International (NMI), Nazarene Youth International (NYI), and Sunday School (SS)) convenes a Convention, which in the case of NMI and NYI is also legislative.

As our district president, I was a voting member of the Global NYI Convention, and I also stayed and observed the proceedings of the General Assembly. We drove out, so that Melody could come along and so we could tack a week of vacation onto the Assembly. Consequently, we were away the past three weeks.

(My brother Doug house-sat for us, and kept watch of our cat Kiera.)

During our vacation time, we visited the following places: Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY; Niagara Falls; Cedar Point Amusement Park in Sandusky, OH; and the Longaberger Homestead outside Columbus, OH. However, most of our time was spent in Cleveland, where we enjoyed: the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, the Cuyahoga National Park, Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens, Jacob's Field (where the Red Sox ended the Indians' winning streak), a river cruise; a train ride, and a broken air conditioner.

Actually, we didn't enjoy the broken air conditioner, but we were able to find a shop which specialized in air conditioners and had a loaner available. The compressor must have worn out sometime this spring, and we had a couple very hot days of driving out through New York.

People have asked why we went to Cleveland, since it doesn't have a very good reputation as a vacation destination. Cleveland wasn't as bad as some have made it out to be, although it certainly wasn't anything to write home about! We chose Cleveland for a couple of reasons: 1) we needed a place that was between Maine and Indianapolis, 2) we wanted to go somewhere that we might not choose as a destination, and 3) the Red Sox happened to be playing there during our stay.

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame was nice, although it was definitely a case of sensory overload. Each display had artifacts, music and videos, and the displays were very close together. It was very interesting to see how Rock & Roll was formed out of the combination of several musical styles, including Gospel, Jazz, and Blues.

The Cedar Point amusement park was amazing. We road on 16 rides, including several of the rollercoasters. (Unlike a friend of mine who also went to Cedar Point and paid the $45 entry fee just to ride on the Millenium Force, we felt like we got our money's worth!)

We also enjoyed a tour through Stan Hywet Hall, which was built by F.A. Seiberling (cofounder of Goodyear). Stan Hywet is a 65-room Tudor Revival style mansion, and it is truly impressive. We travelled to Stan Hywet by way of the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad, and met some wonderful folks who took care of our admission to the hall with their membership card. (One small step toward recovering the cost of the AC repairs!)

In addition to Cleveland, we spent a couple of days in the Niagara Falls area, both on the way out and the way back. I would like to point out that visitors to Niagara Falls should stay on the Canadian side of the border. We were both very disappointed with Niagara Falls, NY, as it was dirty and run down. Parts of the city looked like a ghost town, and other parts felt more like a cheap carnival side show. It occurs to me that the new casino in Niagara may have taken money out of the community instead pumping money into the economy (isn't that the way that casinos usually work?).

We had the misfortune of staying in a particular hotel in Niagara which was certainly sub-par. When I made the reservations through Expedia, it was a Day's Inn, but by the time we arrived it Day's Inn had abandoned that facility/management and moved across town. Unfortunately, our reservation stayed with the facility--not with Day's Inn. The facility was run down, the front desk staff didn't know what they were doing, housekeeping failed to provide our room with towels and washcloths, the wedding reception under our room went until 11:40 (forty minutes after the noise curfew), the alarm clock in the room was broken, and they forgot to give us a wakeup call. In addition to all this, while we were checking out the manager had to leave the front desk to deal with an electrical fire in the elevator. It took a bit of complaining, and a phone call to Expedia, but we did recover a hundred dollars as compensation for the poor accomodations.

While I'm thinking of it, people should be cautious with Expedia "Special Rates." These rates require that you prepay your entire stay. You pay Expedia directly, who in turn pays the hotel. While the rates are often the most competitive, remember that it's a hassle to change or cancel your stay. But worse than that, you have little recourse if something goes wrong. The hotel couldn't directly refund my money, because they never saw my credit card. They authorized the refund, but I had to call Expedia and convince them to issue the refund as well. The first person I spoke to at Expedia refused to issue the refund, but when I got her to give me to her supervisor, he was happy to take care of it for me.

Anyway, it's good to be home. Vacation was good, but I don't know that we'll try to combine vacation with General Assembly again! Melody says, "I'm all travelled out." I'd say that I'm "all travelled out" too, except that I'm leaving for Ecuador in four days.

I'll post a bit about General Assembly sometime soon, and then I'll write a bit about my trip to Ecuador.

Grace and Peace,

PastorJon