5 Year Anniversary Trip Stop 3: Cinque Terre

So the next stop on our trip was the Cinque Terre, or "The Five Lands." This is a spot that I had wanted to see for a long time so it was part of my "must see" for this trip.  For those of you who don't know much about this area, it was, and still is, a fishing and boating area.  There are vineyards as well that are carved into the hillside, along with homes. It is now also a very popular tourist destination because it was virtually unheard of for many centuries. They are also a National Park and on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

These lovely and dramatic villages are definitely worth a visit but beware-they are tough to get around if you're not in shape!! There are only two ways to go, up and down! Another big attraction to this area is the hiking trails, which is what we were interested in.  We wanted to take the easy coastal trail to all the villages, which would have taken all day but would have been doable for the two of us since we weren't in the best shape.  Unfortunately there were some terrible floods in 2012 and part of the trail was inaccessible which gave us three options. 1. Take the train to each town to look around that way. 2. Take a boat. 3. Hike the "panoramic" vista trail. We (in a moment of insanity) chose option 3.  So instead a few mile trek along the coast we headed straight up the side of the hill to a 4-5 mile HIKE.  To give you an idea of what we did here is a map: we wanted to take the blue trail.  We did from Manarola section 6, 6d to Corniglia. Now I know that doesn't look to tough. The first 1/2-3/4 was all up hill. We are fatties. It was tough!

 

BUT, we survived!! And it was TOTALLY worth it! We got some of the most amazing photos on this hike- some of the best from the whole trip.  And it was great proof that no matter where you are in the world, hikers ban together and are always friendly and will give you a wave or "hello."  The great thing about a killer hike is the descent down to a yummy meal, complete with beer (for Matt) and a Limoncello for me! I even got to try a local variety which was SO GOOD that I was on a quest the rest of the trip to find a bottle, which I did our last night in Florence!

 

Our first night walking around Riomaggiore (where our B&B was)

 

 



The beginning of stunning coastal views

 

There were these beautiful flowers growing on an old stone wall-so Italian!

 

You can see the village built up into the hillside and the vineyards beyond that! Along with some wispy rain clouds.

 

Great scenery. Even more handsome subject!

 

Starting off in Manarola to hike the coast.

 

Manarola village, no beaches here!

 

Uh oh! Trail is closed! No going on the coastal road!

 



 

That's OK! We'll just trek up the side of a freakin' mountain! No biggie right? Yes, we were all the way down at the bottom before.

 

Endless stairs and uphill. It was almost more difficult because it was all stairs!

 

We can glimpse the next village through the hillside and vineyard.

 

On the way down and am SO happy!

 

A well deserved limoncello and pizza lunch for our efforts.  The scenery was amazing as well.

 

You can barely see the furthest village on that point all the way to the left. We took the train from here.

 

Matt likes to make me look directly into the sun while taking pictures.  It's painful.  And we had just witnessed a couple making out very inappropriately below us so my eyes were already hurting.

 

We also played with the miniature affect with the camera. Oh boy was that fun! And this was the perfect setting for it.

 

 

All in all it was a wonderful 2 nights.  I wish we had been able to take the coastal trail or go on a boat ride to see them all from the sea but we can always revisit one day.  Again I would highly recommend coming here for a few days away. It was actually quite quiet since it's hard to get a car around these villages, and they are closed to cars in the evening too! Just make sure to bring your walking shoes ;)

5 Year Anniversary Trip Stop 2: Venice

 

So there is a reason why people always suggest going to Venice if you are to ever visit Italy. BECAUSE IT'S AWESOME!! Sorry for the yelling, I just get excited easily! This was the 1 place Matt emphatically said, "we ARE going", when we said back to Italy.  He didn't care where else we went. Only Venice was on his agenda. So I then gave him the reins to book a place and figure out what he wanted to do. Only part of that happened. but oh well, it was a good combo effort! He did book a beautiful old palace for our hotel (and broke the budget BIG time! I guess that's allowed when you make the big bucks :0  ) and it was in good walking distance to the major sites. Although we have said if we are to ever go back we're going to stay in another part of the city, on the other end really, so we can explore there better.  But here's a MAJOR heads up everyone: in case you didn't know, Venice is CRAZY expensive! So make sure you budget for everything-I think the cheapest thing we got was the umbrella at the kiosk for 4 euros.  Sure you can buy really crappy knock-off plastic masks for 2 euros but that's not what I'm talking about, and we didn't get those cheapos anyway.  Thankfully we went when it wasn't too hot so it wasn't stinky at all. Sadly, it did rain a little bit but not so much it deterred us from walking around. And Matt lucked out in that we didn't go see any art museums. I would have loved to go to the Academia or the Peggy Guggenheim Museum (I've been before and it's amazing!) but I knew the poor guy would get more later in the trip so I used my museum card sparingly ;)

 

 

 

Taking in the sites on the water taxi.

 

 

St. Mark's square was intermittently busy, depending on the rain situation.  It took a few tries to NOT get people right next to us. 

Gross. Don't people know pigeons are basically rats with wings. We saw people feeding them and letting holding them. Again, gross.

 

So handsome!

 

Inside the basilica.  Again, mosaics and gold plating everywhere. It's kind of overwhelming at times. 



Of course everywhere you look in the canals you see gondolas.  They are pretty looking but not the most efficient way to see things!

 

 

On the Rialto Bridge. That place was PACKED! And the wears were even more expensive!

 

The Bridge of Sighs.  Very interesting history and we've seen it's replica in Bath!

 

We went to a classical music concert which was very nice. The music was great!

 

On a taxi headed to Murano Island!

 

Seeing a glass blowing demonstration on Murano. He made that horse in no time! 

 

Rialto Bridge-it was a cool building/bridge!

 

A beautiful old clock-look how interesting it is!

 

Back inside St. Mark's Basilica. So much gold!

 

I feel this sums up Venice perfectly, canals, gondolas, and churches.

 

Classic Venice!

 

Such a stud!

 

Having so much fun on the boat tour!

 

View from our hotel room. Loved seeing the hanging flowers!

 

The architecture of this city is truly amazing!

 

 

This is one city you could spend days just wandering around, getting a little lost, and seeing some really beautiful old buildings.  The history of it is fascinating as well.  Even if you only have a few days, Venice is very much worth a visit!

5 Year Anniversary Italy Trip-Stop 1: Ravenna

So after much discussion and research we finally decided to go back to Italy for a 10 day trip for our 5 year anniversary.  There were cheap flights into Bologna so we headed there.  First stop, after our flight being delayed more than an hour and having to wait for a very late train out of Bologna, was Ravenna.  Any art history major knows that Ravenna is a must see place for Byzantine mosaics.  Matt being the indulgent husband that he is agreed to some very artsy first few days.  Happily, this is a lovely little town that is laid back and easy to navigate so we go to relax and enjoy some beautiful sights. Our hotel was  little outside the city center but they hired out bikes to the guests so we grabbed a couple of those bad boys and pedaled around town quite easily.  We saw all the "major", aka, UNESCO, sites.  The mosaics, although most were restored, were still beautiful and something glorious to see.  The colors were vibrant and really made you stand and stare for a while. It's always funny to go into a church and see everyone looking up with their mouths hanging wide open!  We really enjoyed this town and ventured to the neighboring one to see the most famous church (regarding Byzantine art) of all, Basilica of Sant'Apollinare in Classe.  The road was nice and flat so it was and easy bike out to it. Unfortunately when we got there they were closing for a funeral for about 1 hour so we biked around town some.  Happily, we found the BEST gelato of the trip. Too bad it was on day 1 right? That gelato is now the standard of all gelato in our life. 

 

The old gate entrance to Ravenna.

 

 

So much color!

 

So much gold too!

 

Look at the beautiful detail! All done with tiny mosaic tiles-so much work!

 

Inside a mausoleum. Love the "stars."

 

As always happy to see pretty sites!

 

Matt wanted to experiment with his artsy photo style too ;)

 

Our fearless steeds, I mean bikes.

 

Saint Apollinaire.  It is HUGE!

 

He's so hard core-show those bushes who's boss!

 

Our future door-knocker.  We saw tons of these all over the town. 

 

We brought the tripod and wireless shutter-release to play some. Not too shabby huh?

 

 Ravenna was a great first stop on our trip. In some respects it would have been great to end here though too since it was so quiet and peaceful.  After the end of the trip and some reflection we decided we did the route backwards but oh well-it was still great!

 

Oh Dear......

So I realize that it's been quite sometime since I last updated what's been going on. Too much has been happening! January hit and we've been going almost nonstop.  Harley has been a superstar when he's been sound-he had a little muscle trouble but it's getting so much better. We went to Vienna for a long weekend and got to see my dad. Then my parents came for a great visit and we headed to Portugal for some more riding with the Valenca's-money well spent for sure!  Lots has been happening at ceramics and I've been making oodles of things, not just baby stuff too ;) Matt just finished his second to last semester of grad school-one more to go then he's all done! Yippee!! We also have been to Italy 2 times since the new year. Our super hilarious friends Jodi and Tim asked us to go with them to Lake Como for a few days in March and then we just got home (yesterday!!) from a 10 day whirl-wind trip for our 5 year anniversary.  Oh yea, that has happened too! I can not believe it's been 5 years already. Well, sometimes I can. Our life has been so amazing, blessed, and rich in such a short amount of time; it's overwhelming to think that we have so many more years ahead of us of, hopefully, such blessings and happiness. When I actually stop to think about it all, I am more in awe of how much the Lord has given me, especially when it comes to Matt and our life together.

 I'm not going to put too many pictures up right now; I am actually going to blog about all the spots we've been too. It's just at this point I have about 4,000 pictures (no joke, we just took about 1,500 on this last trip) to go through and weed out the stinky ones, then do editing on the real keepers. Oh dear, my eyes may fall out soon! Here are just a few tasters of what's to come!

 

Taking in the sights in Venice on our anniversary trip!

No trip to Portugal is complete without wearing traditional garb! I love my beast of a big black horse!

 

Our good friend Charleen recently got married!

 

My parents are just hilarious!

 

And even when it's cold in Vienna we were still smiling!

 

 

Stay tuned for more posts to come, I'm determined to get my act together!!



It's Been to Nice Outside to Stay In...

So one of the best parts of living out here is that the weather is *usually* pretty amazing most of the time. This has been the case recently-sunny, sometimes a little clouds, temperatures in the mid 70s, it's awesome! So with that comes being out a little more, lots of time at the yard, and very little inside. The bummer part of that is we've been playing with my new camera a lot so have some pretty fun shots but I have yet to edit those bad boys. I still need to finish editing Italy-that was how long ago?? Oh my.
One great thing that is going on is I've started a little "trial" time period with my new instructor to determine if I should keep trying to jump (sometimes very, very badly) or if I should throw in the towel and just focus on dressage 100%.  The thing is I usually like jumping, after I'm done with it! The few days, and yes hours even, leading up to it I tend to become slightly queasy, nauseous even.  I do sweat a little more than usual and have even been known to have a slight panic attack. BUT, after it's all said and done, and if I've survived pretty well intact, I think about how fun it is and how the challenge of it had made it more enjoyable.  And to go along with this journey, I am sharing my tale with a horse rider's blog that I follow called "Horse Junkies United." It's a pretty cool site actually; a huge amount of diverse riders and stories are shared on it.  So I emailed them and said I'm starting this trial and do they want me to share it and they have begun putting up my posts-crazy yea?  So here is the first one-I've called it "Tales of a Jump Weenie." Sadly someone put a somewhat hurtful comment up on the first day but another reader was very encouraging and is ready to see how I progress so yay! I suppose that's what I get for putting it out there on the Internet for other people to see. I really need to work on developing some tougher skin! Here is the link to my first post!

"Tales of a Jump Weenie-Part 1"

I also shared a bit about Harley and how stressed he can get-here's that link:
 "What Stresses My Horse Out?"

Other than that not much is going on. Ceramics has been good-I've been "teaching" a class the last few weeks and Tuesday is our last day.  It's been fun and the ladies are really nice. Plus it's given me an extra day in to pour and work on stuff. Poor Matt isn't too happy that I am now making even MORE stuff; he swears we're going to run out of room to store it all.  The biggest thing is I've started to pour things for kid rooms. NO! We're not preggo but we will have one, one day in the far distant future, and I would like to have made some decor for the little rascal(s???).  Right now it's bugs (like caterpillars and snails) and aeroplanes (which Matt can not complain about right??).  Now please don't harass me about when babies are going to happen-when we are, we'll wait a few months, then let you know that we're expecting. So in reality, you've got some time before that happens. Just relax and please don't hold your breath!

So that's all I've got for you at the moment. Here are some unedited photos of Joey that I took yesterday-we went to the salt lake/beach/dunes to let him run around and so I could play with the camera some more. I'm getting better at the settings. Matt also showed me some tricks with the new(ish) tripod and wireless shutter release-it's oh so fun!!

And here is Joey balancing some Christmas goodies! Look!! 4!! He's so talented!!! It took a few tries and LOTS of concentration (on his part!) but we finally got them balanced!