Italy Birthdaycation Part 2: Tuscany

We flew to Pisa on the morning of July 4th. Amazingly enough, there was no border patrol or customs to go through when we got to Italy, we just walked right in. Our passports didn't even get stamped. (Leaving the country was a lot more of an ordeal.) Since we were supposed to have spent the previous night in Pisa, the plan for the day was to take a train to a little village in Tuscany called Barga. We purchased our tickets, and luckily there was a train getting ready to leave just as we arrived. So we hopped on and enjoyed the view on our train ride through the Italian countryside.

It's funny to think about how in awe we were of the scenery on that first train ride. By the end of the trip we were taking naps and hardly noticing the castles and churches on hills and little villages, but we thoroughly enjoyed taking in all the sights on our first train ride.

We arrived in Barga just before lunch time and took a cab up to the Renaissance Hotel, which sat perched in the mountains with a beautiful view of the scenery and the village. As soon as we arrived, we all wished we were staying for more than one night.

We got lunch at the hotel, and while we all would have loved to take a nap, or just lounge by the pool, the cute little village of Barga was calling our names. So we called a cab and they dropped us off at the entrance to the medieval part of the town (there was an "old town" from the middle ages and a "new town" that was built to accommodate things like cars) and we set off to explore. It's crazy to think that the buildings that we were walking among were all older than the U.S.

There was a sweet little church at the top of the hill that overlooked both the old town and the new town.

The view from the top of the hill was amazing.

And we were really tired.

After walking around the old town we crossed the bridge to the new town, where there was a park with littles playing soccer and people just relaxing. I loved the pace of life here.

We did some of our own sitting and relaxing, along with a little bit of shopping. Derek's parents found a little family owned grocery store and made friends with the owners. When Derek and I showed up to the store they were drinking wine and sharing life stories. They were so friendly, as were so many of the locals in the village.

These are bags full of beans and things in the grocery store - so cool!

We had probably the best dinner of the trip in Barga. It was our first experience with the Italian menu and first courses and second courses and separate side dishes. We each ordered a first course of home made pasta, then we ordered 2 second courses,which were meat courses (Derek and I shared one and Bob and Linda shared one) and we each ordered our own side dish of veggies, potatoes, etc.. All of the food was delicious, but we quickly realized after our first course that we ordered way too much food. We ended up giving our salad to the table next to us because we just couldn't even think about trying to eat it on top of everything else. Dinner is late in Italy. Most restaurants don't open until 7:30, and the meal is supposed to be a social experience, so they last a long time. It was nearly dark by the time dinner was over, so we headed back to the hotel, since at this point some of us were going on 4 hours of sleep in a 52 hour period. We also had an early train to Venice to catch in the morning.

Italy Birthdaycation Part 1: Paris

As I mentioned in the last post, our trip began with a slight change of plans. We only had a 1 hour layover at JFK before our flight to Pisa, and after checking in at the Cincinnati airport, we found out our flight had been delayed 40 minutes, and there were bad storms expected in New York. Luckily, Derek and his parents knew the person working at Delta, and she found us a flight to Pisa that went through Paris. At this point, Derek asked if it would be possible to stay in Paris for a day and take the next day's flight to Pisa. She tried it, and it worked. We were set! And we had 5 hours to kill at the airport.

The flight to Paris was pretty uneventful, besides Derek having a minor moment of panic as the plane was landing and he couldn't find his passport. Luckily it just slid under the seat in front of him and another passenger found it.

We landed in Paris and waited in a very long line to get our passports stamped. By the time we arrived at baggage claim, there were only about 5 bags left and none of them were ours.

We talked to a very nice lady at the baggage claim, who luckily spoke English, and was able to locate our bags. They had been sent on to a terminal 2 miles away where we would be departing for Pisa the next morning. She told us they would be delivered to our hotel. So, with a little bit of nervousness about whether or not we would see our bags again this trip, we got a taxi and headed to our hotel to check in.

Traffic in Paris is awful, and I'm pretty sure our taxi driver didn't know where he was going, nor did he speak much English. It took us over an hour to get to our hotel. We got checked in, but since Derek was the only one with luggage, the rest of us couldn't really change, so we decided to head to the Louvre.

Luckily I had bought our tickets at the airport while Derek was sorting out the luggage issue, so we were able to walk right in.  The Louvre is ginormous. You could get lost in it, and the walls are filled to the brim with art. It's a little overwhelming but we were able to at least find our way to the Mona Lisa, take a picture and enjoy some of the art. My favorite part was probably the ceilings.

You could probably spend days in the Louvre alone, but we only had 1 day to see all of Paris, so we headed out, grabbed some lunch and were off to St. Chappelle and the Notre Dame.

I don't remember what this church was but it was across the street from the Louvre.

The Outside of St. Chappelle

Notre Dame

After the Notre Dame, we headed back to the hotel to see if our luggage had arrived. We were a little nervous when it hadn't, so we decided to head to the Arc d'Triumph then head over to the Eiffel Tower.

Luckily on our walk to the Eiffel Tower the hotel called and our luggage was delivered. So after seeing the Eiffel Tower, we made the trek back to the subway and grabbed some dinner by the hotel. It was around 11 pm when we made it back to the hotel to shower and change into clean clothes that we were so thankful to have in our possession (we had visions of the bags arriving at the hotel in the morning after we had already left for Pisa, then them showing up in Pisa after we had left for Tuscany, etc.) We ended up getting to bed by around 12:30 and had to wake up at 4:30 the following morning to leave for the airport by 5 to catch our flight to Pisa. It was an eventful first day...

We're Back!

Derek and I just got back from my 30th birthday trip to Italy! And I have lots of photos to share and things to catch up on. In addition to sharing about Italy, I've also missed out on blogging about the last 2 months of life, which have included fun things like:

• A Memorial Day Weekend trip to Florida to visit friends and their brand new baby
• Finishing up I am Third soccer season
• Weddings and wedding showers for friends
• A trip to Pennsylvania to visit family and a wedding
• My unsuccessful attempt to complete an Iron Man Triathlon during the month of June
• Game nights, bonfires and summer evenings with friends
• Planning and preparing for a two week trip to Italy

The beginning of the summer was lots of fun, but kind of overshadowed by the Italy trip. We didn't get our plane tickets until May, so a lot of planning happened in a very short time, but the trip turned out amazing. And, due to storms in NYC and delayed flights, we ended up flying to Paris first, and spending the first day of our trip there, then flying to Italy the next morning. So, next up is Chapter 1 of our Italy trip, Paris!!!

Seven

Last Monday Derek and I celebrated 7 years of marriage!

I love our anniversaries. Some years we plan trips, some years we have fun plane more locally, and others we just celebrate with a simple dinner. We decided we needed to keep a list of all of our anniversary celebrations, so here it is:

1. Gatlinburg
2. Florida to visit our friends (Brent, Karin, Jeff and Stephanie)
3. Dinner at Giuseppe's (here in Lexington)
4. A little celebartion at home, followed up at the end of the month by a trip to Marco Island, Florida
5. Derek's 5 year extravaganza, as detailed here, here and here
6. Grouting the backsplash in our new kitchen and dinner at the Chop House.

Regardless we always take time to celebrate, and we try to watch some of our wedding DVD around the time of our anniversary. (This year we watched it a week early with our friend Amanda who we've known less than a year, so it was fun to get to share our wedding with her. Don't worry, it has a highlight section - we didn't make her sit through hours of wedding footage!)

This past year was a good one! Filled with good things, hard things, fun things and lots of laughs. It really does just keep getting better, which I am very thankful for. I told Derek in the card I wrote for him that I always end my prayers asking God to grow us closer to each other and closer to Him and He has definitely done that this year, and I am thankful for it.

Because our anniversary fell on a Monday, we both had to work all day. But once we got off work, it was gift exchanging, Moose walking and a delicious anniversary dinner at Dudley's.

My favorite part about this year's anniversary was the gifts. The traditional 7 year gifts are wool or copper. I had no idea what to get Derek, but God blessed me with the perfect idea - a blue, wool blazer. We go to lots of weddings, and while Derek has a few suits, he doesn't have a blue blazer that he can just wear with khakis, a shirt and tie. Clarification - he actually has one, but it belonged to the grandfather of one of his friends and was too big for him 30 pounds ago, so now it's really too big. I was so excited to give Derek his gift, but ended up loving his gifts to me even more.

Derek had this whole set up in our guest room. I walked in and there was this awesome coral dress hanging up. It is gorgeous. On the dresser was a little packet of paper and 6 more gifts. Derek got me 7 gifts for 7 years of marriage - love that! The little packet of paper included a letter from Derek as well as a sweet note from each of my Bridesmaids, since there were 7. I was so impressed that Derek was able to coordinate that, especially because none of them even live in Lexington anymore. He was very sneaky and the letters were so sweet, I may have cried.

After pulling myself together, I opened the rest of the gifts, which included earrings and a necklace to go with the dress (the jewelry and dress were from Anthropologie - I'm a lucky girl!) and some running shorts, a dry fit running shirt and another cute top. All of the gifts had either coral or turquoise in them - Derek had a color theme going - and the packet of letters were all on coral, blue and white paper. I told Derek that I love how he is so creative and yet so detail oriented. I think that is a rare combination.

I loved all the gifts, and got to wear my new dress and jewelry to dinner. Here we are before we left for the restaurant:

Our 7th anniversary was awesome and I am truly blessed to be married to Derek. Thanks, D, for making our celebration so memorable!

13.1

This morning as I was sitting at my desk, working, and pretty much doing what I do every morning, I received a text from Derek that said:

"Look what God and I did today! We did it!!! 13.1! We ran the Arboretum half marathon!!!"

Yup, while I was working this morning, my husband decided to run 13.1 miles at the arboretum. And he did it in under 2 hours. 

You may remember 3 years ago, I trained my butt off to run the Flying Pig Half Marathon, which coincidentally happened to be this past Sunday. I think when I ran it my time was a little over 2 and a half hours. And it was one of the hardest things I've ever done. I trained for 10 weeks and didn't miss a training run because I knew if I did I wouldn't make it 13.1. 

Derek just wakes up one day and decides to go to the Arboretum and run 13.1 miles, and do it way faster than I did even thought I trained for it. Jerk. 

Just kidding. I'm so proud of him. He's been taking his exercising seriously recently so I'm not surprised that he was able to do it. Just felt like I needed to brag on him, because, seriously, that is awesome!

Way to go, D! I knew you had it in you :)

NYC Trip: Wrap Up

Time to finish the recap of our NYC trip - only 2 months later - but I wanted to get the last couple of days of pictures up here.

Sunday started off with church at Redeemer. Tim Keller was there to preach which was a bonus. We weren't sure if he would be there and tried not to act to excited when he walked out from behind the curtain and took his seat on stage.

After church we walked over to Central Park and did a little exploring...

Followed by some shopping, lunch and more Central Park walking.

We had tickets to the Knicks game Sunday night, so we had a little down time in the afternoon at the hotel and then decided to walk to Madison Square Gardens so we could shop and check out other fun sights on our way there. Fun things we got to see included Rockefeller Center...

Saint Patrick's Cathedral...

And not pictured, Radio City Music Hall and lots of great shops.

And we even made it to the Knicks game in plenty of time to watch warm ups.

Monday was our last day, but our flight didn't leave until the evening, so we decided to squeeze a few last things in, including a walk through Grand Central Terminal...

And a trip to the top of the Empire State Building.

After the Empire State Building we headed to the West Village to get some cupcakes from Magnolia Bakery (maybe the best cupcakes I've ever had!)

And to the see the big Arc thing in Washington Park (I don't know what it's actually called, but we always see it in Friends and wanted to see it in real life!)

And finally, it was time to head back to Lexington.

We were just talking about our trip last night and about how much fun we had. We squeezed a lot in to our 5 ish days that we were there, and we would definitely go back. We got a little bit lucky because we went at the end of February so flights, hotels and shows were all pretty cheap, and the weather wasn't too bad which it enjoyable to walk around, especially since we weren't freezing.  Thanks for the awesome memories, New York City, we will definitely be returning!