Naples

This is so pathetic. I have this nagging thought in the back of my head to finish posting our Europe pictures before I forget it all--the good and bad--and have to resort to romaticized notions that I read while I prepared for this trip. It seems silly and almost insignificant now that a whole year has passed since our trip of a lifetime and bigger things (namely my increasingly gigantic baby belly) are hovering on the horizon. But alas, I have to finish what I started....over a year ago. Alright, Naples was something special. I'm sure I'll say this about every city I write about, but Naples was one of my favorites. It was the first time Andy and I tasted REAL pizza. After all, pizza originated in the city of Naples. The crust was so thin and crispy and light and it wasn't doused in cheese, so it was easy to feel less guilty about eating half of a whole pizza. Our favorite was the Margherita Pizza. It had tangy, fresh tomato sauce. Each piece was topped with a slice of homemade mozzarella and a basil leaf. So simple. So good. It rained almost exclusively during our two night stay, but it was kind of refreshing after being in the hot roman sun the few days prior.

So yummy right? We decide to go to Naples on a whim and we didn't really know what kind of history was in the area other than Mt. Vesuvius. So most of our pictures were of all the things we deemed "cool." Unfortunately because of the weather, the ferry that takes visitors to see Pompeii and it's dreaded volcano was not running. But we did try to get some shots of it! It's overcast and dreary, but I kind of loved the foreboading image it created.

And a few shots of us on the way to Florence. We really loved the train system in Europe. It was so punctual (maybe a little too punctucal on a few occassions that I'll detail later).

Florence

Florence was my favorite city. There was no metro system to learn, as everything was in walking distance. Unlike Rome, Paris, and London, Florence was soooo clean! It was beautiful. Even the view from our hotel room was enchanting. It was out of a storybook with the clothes lines, green shutters, and red roof tiles.

Our room was lovely. We even had our own bidet right at the foot of our bed. The toilet and shower were in a separate room that was shared with the rest of the floor. But it was a small hotel, and we never even saw anyone else, so the bathroom-sharing was no problemo.

Florence was home to the best geltato ever! We had our very first taste of it in Rome right across from the Pantheon, but Florence topped them all. It was the perfect mix of creaminess. We tried all sorts of flavors from tiramisu to mint to blood orange. I'm sad that we were to busy stuffing our faces with it every chance we got that we didn't even take pictures of it! Of course I couldn't have cared less at the time...the only thing that mattered was savoring the gelato before it melted in the Italian sun.

On our first day, we went and explored the city and came across the Duomo. Brunelleschi had to build the dome out of bricks due to its light weight compared to stone. He was commissioned to build the largest dome in the world and though that's obviously not the case anymore with new architectural technologies, the Duomo is still the largest masonry dome in the world.

I literally could not stop looking at it. Something about it just seemed so awe-inspiring. That's kinda cheesy--and not all of Italy was sublime and romantic and other-worldly--but something about the Duomo really spoke to me. I was so mad when I saw that Andy had taken this picture because it's, well, it's kind of weird (and I had burned my bangs with a curling iron in London due to a bad outlet converter, so they were poofy and frayed for a lot of our trip). But I didn't delete it because it captured my genuine wonder of the building.

After we explored the city (and ate our weight in gelato), we walked down to the Medici chapel. It was in a beautiful courtyard filled with replicas of famous sculptures.

That's the best photographic evidence we have of "David" and the others. The originals are housed in the Uffizi Gallery (which we went to the next day) and the Accademia, but they don't allow cameras. We even had to go through security where they make you check your bag...so no sneaking pictures...at either place.

Our next stop was Poncho Vecchio. It's a beautiful bridge that houses a ton of luxury shops. I was drooling at all the window displays. Jewelry stores lined both sides and I couldn't fathom the kind of money people dropped to shop there.

We loved the view of the river that ran through Florence so we took lots of pictures of it. We got really good at holding the camera out at an angle that put us both in the frame. Some turned out better than others.

Our last stop before we headed to Venice (I'm posting these backwards because of photo accessibility), was the Duomo at night. We had a tragic mishap at Versailles and our camera was dropped and subsequently...broke. We had to buy a new one in Paris and we spent a lot of the trip learning how to use it. The flash was a little weird, so we decided to play around with it in front of the Duomo.

Our first attempt was less than successful. I will have to put this into photoshop and see if I can lighten it.

The second try was a little better, but it still came across as too bright.

But there is a reason they say "third time's a charm."

Europe Part 1: Venezia!

Yes! We finally have a valid Internet connection and a new laptop. I feel like such a slacker since we've been back from Europe for almost two months now and I haven't posted a single picture...anywhere.

After loading our pictures onto our (new!) laptop, I realized that blogging about 2000 pics would be ridiculously tedious, not to mention horribly boring. So with that in mind, I decided to post pictures according to each city we visited so hopefully I'll only be boring people with relevant pictures of our backpacking adventure.

The last city on our trip was Venice, Italy (I'm going backwards because these are the pictures that are most easily accessible). If we look really grungy and smelly, it's because we are. Living out of a backpack is surprisingly difficult. We rotated four or five outfits and hand washing really takes a toll on clothes! The hope is that we'll look better, more put together during later pictures.

This is the glass bridge that you can cross to enter the actual city of Venice. We didn't stay on the island because of the outrageous prices...and we were on a budget.

We saw incredible architecture in the buildings, bridges, and parks. It was impossible to take pictures of everything, but we tried our best. I had heard from others that had been to Venice that the city was dirty and stinky. I wholeheartedly disagree. The city had an old world charm full of what was once Venetian opulence. It was once the richest city in the world. The pealing paints and scuffed walls only added to the testament of its character. The pigeons, however, were dirty and stinky...and aggressive. As you may or may not know, I have a fear of birds. So me+mean birds+an open courtyard by the sea=worst nightmare ever.

I was quite enraptured by the gondolas, as they kind of represented a mythical creature or something. You grow up hearing about them, but you never actually see one. We didn't get a chance to ride one because they were about $130 an hour. Now that we're back from Europe and not totally broke, I think I would have liked to spend that money for the experience. Ah well, ces la vie. The gondolas, the water, the character of the city really to make Venice the most romantic place in the world. After seeing museum after museum for three weeks, Andy and I decided to spend money on a candlelight dinner on the canal and a baroque opera (the photographic evidence of which are temporarily missing). The dinner was three courses of deliciousness. I had a grilled salmon, spaghetti, roasted veggies and a chocolate mouse. Andy opted for the roasted chicken, vinaigrette salad, and lasagna with the same dessert. When we were finishing the started pouring rain. It was almost like a fairy tale where you have this amazing, romantic day ending with kissing in the rain.

Only our fairy tale ended with us running a mile in the pouring rain to catch our bus. But we laughed almost the whole way, until we got lost and had to back track. Then we were grumpy. Then we were laughing at how ridiculous the whole situation was. It was a fitting end to our three week trip.

Next Up: Florence

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Update Coming

We're finally back from our three week backpacking excursion through europe. It was quite an adventure that deserves hours of uninterrupted blogging on a "real" computer. I am currently stranded at a hotel in savannah, GA with Andy and our trusty dog, Toby. Our whole life is sitting in 12 year old Saturn in the parking lot. Thirty-eight hours is an unbelievably long time in a car! I will try to post pictures of our europe trip as well as our cross-country trek this week. I would do it now, but unfortunately the only relevant picture that my blackberry has is of my distraught face after I voluntarily got into the full body scanner at the SLC airport the morning we left (so far less exciting and way more idiotic than pictures of Rome). Full update later!

Congrats that Lisa and family for your new adventure. South Dakota will be great.
Congrats to Heather and family for your new edition. Keep us updated. Nathan will be an awesome big brother!
Congrats to Alex and family for third! You're a supermom so it will be absolutely amazing and a piece or cake.

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Goals

Andy and I decided to make a list of our top three goals. Hopefully by putting them out there for the "world" to see, we'll be more accountable. Since our goals are shockingly the same these days, it wasn't a hard little list to put together.

1. Participate in the New York marathon next year and finish it...even if we're last.

2. Take our respective graduate school tests by February 2011.

3. Get into a graduate school on either of our lists--Mine: NYU, Boston Univeristy, UC Berkley, San Francisco State University. Andy's: USC, Standford, UCLA, NYU, Dartmouth.

We realize these are ridiculously amibitious schools to get into, but why not go for it right? The worst that can happen is that they'll say "no" and we'll go to a different school. No harm in trying though.

4. Go backpacking through Europe the end of March/beginning of April (Thanks to Natalie Oaks for suggesting such an outrageous idea that we can't seem to get out of our heads. Thanks for encouraging us to have some spontaneous life experiences instead of just following the "plan").

5. Find a career AKA a "real job" that gives us benefits like health insurance so we can get crackin on that whole baby business.

I think that's it for now, thank goodness. I'm a little aprehensive about finding ways to accomplishing these goals as they all take severe motivation and dedication, and to be honest, some days I don't think I like looking at our list of goals...lol.
Hopefully we'll be able to keep ourselves accountable and motivated!

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Epic Fail

So Andy and I have come to realize that we're so pathetically behind in our blog. I'm 100% sure that we've lost the little audience we had to begin with, so I apologize for the seemingly inconsequential ramblings of our boring lives, but I figure I should be keeping some sort of record for ourselves.

Right now we're in that weird, transitional limbo phase of being adults, but not being "grown-up." I never thought the day would come when we'd both be done with school, but it's not only come, it's passed us by! The only thing we've realized is that we miss school so we're trying to go back. Somewhere in the universe pigs must be flying. That being said, Andy and I are spending are hours of free time studying for the GMAT and the GRE. I've spoken with some admission counselors at NYU and Boston University and that's given us some excitement in our lives. We still need ridiculously good scores, so hopefully our brain matter hasn't downsized too much since our education hiatus.

My once awesome job was taken away from me, leaving me job hunting...again. The only upside is that I've gotten quite good at finding jobs and my resume is top notch. The FBI came into my ex-work and took all the paperwork and computers and everything. It was like something out of a movie. I've added it to my growing list of "things that don't happen to normal people." I was lucky to be able to work at Hale Center Theatre during the months of September, October and November, helping out with costumes. It's been quite a ride.

We're still applying for job after job, but it's looking like we're just going to have to pick up and move...take the plunge into the world of big cities and corporate America. The plan is to do it in April if nothing comes along by then. But what's life without a little risk-taking? We've played by the rules for so long, so it's time throw caution to the wind and just jump.

Andy is working on his resume with the help of the International Marketing manager from eBay. He's been a godsend and we're truly blessed to have met him the day Andy and his team won the case competition all those months ago. Hopefully some interviews will come our way.

Besides job hunting, working, exercising, and studying, we were able to go to Disney World again--this time with Andy's parents. The heat was sweltering and the humidity was unbearable...but we had a great time! We were also able to go to the Puyallup Fair in September with my sisters. It brought back so many funny memories of Krumpy pups, free chocolate milk, and trolling the fairgrounds for cute boys.It was so surreal to see Celeste and Olivia there doing the things Lisa, Heather, Alex and I used to do. I can't believe how fast they are growing up. They went from playing barbies and dress-up to squealing over Justin Beiber overnight. Weird.

The goal is to update more frequently, especially since the holidays are upon us. Fun and interesting things are bound to happen.

Monday, April 5, 2010

And the winner is...

This past week has been a whirwind of chaos, but in a very good I-can't-believe-this-is-happening kind of way. Andy participated in an extra-curricular case competition sponsored by Union Pacific and with long hours spent crunching numbers in the library came a spot in the top three! The top three finalists had to present their findings to a group of board members from the marketing advisory. Andy and his team had the best presentation. It was well put-together, thought out, and funny (well as funny as anything with a ridiculous amount of numbers can be).

The other teams did great too, but we were ecstatic when Andy and his team were announced as the winners. They won money and the chance to network. That evening we were able to attend a banquet with 40 top executives from companies like eBay, Amazon.com, Proctor and Gamble, Union Pacific and others. Andy made some excellent contacts, so we'll see if anything comes from them.


Andy and his group posing for their "win" photo

Wednesday greeted Andy with a call from the VP of Sales for Paramount Pictures. They set up a time to meet for lunch on Saturday in between conference sessions. We couldn't believe it. So we prepared what he was going to say, we updated his resume and got some business cards together. They met at Wendy's and bonded over spicy chicken sandwiches. The meet-and-greet turned into an interview and Andy came home bursting with excitement. Though Paramount has had to cut back personnel, it came down to this: Andy has a lot of work to do. He needs to research the industry and come up with some good ideas. If he can do that, a real interview with the hiring manager will be a realistic probability.

He's never been closer!

And though nothing may happen, it's been nice not being in a stand-still regarding employment. We're going to encounter lots of "no's" for sure, but we're making contact and we couldn't be more hopeful.

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