Vacation in ITALY!

Well, this was definitely the most amazing vacation I've ever had, or ever hope to have. Scott and I departed from San Fran on May 30th (just barely back from Heather's wedding) and headed to Rome. Our first 3 days and 2 nights in Rome were spent in awe of the city and walking around trying to see everything that we could see: Trevi Fountain (Rome's most famous fountain), Palazzo Chigi (the official residence of the Prime Minister), the Pantheon, St. Peter's Basilica and Vatican City, the Sistine Chapel and the other Vatican famous museums, the Colosseum, the Arc of Constantine, the Palatine (where Romulus - founder of Rome - killed his brother Remus), the Roman Forum (most famous ruins of the city) and the Spanish Steps...just to name a few of the big ones. There were many cute little restaurants, cafes and museums in between. We almost even saw the Pope our second day there as he was giving a speech to the young teens that evening. People lined up and filled St. Peter's Square very early in the morning. There were literally tens of thousands of people there that day, so we decided to get out of the crowd early since we didn't have any translators.
The next few days spent in Rome we stayed with one of my best friends Marika, who I met while in Sydney over four years ago. It was a much awaited reunion and I was so happy to see her after so long! Although she has been living in Norway with her boyfriend Matt for a few years, her family still lives in Rome. Her mom was so sweet and very accommodating. We were so happy to be saving some money on hotels - Italy is definitely not cheap, especially with the crappy exchange rate.
On June 6th, the four of us (Marika, Matt, Scott and I) borrowed her mum's car and drove down south of Rome about 3 hours...heading to our destination of the Almafi Coast. Along the way, we passed Naples and Mount Vesuvious and stopped to walk around Pompei. The history of everything in Italy is just amazing and it was all so cool to see all the places you read about. Scott has been studying many of these places in Art History for many years and he was excited to finally see them in person. The Almafi Coast is supposed to be a must-see and it's a place that the rich and famous stay. It definitely surpassed my expectations...it was a beautiful coastal drive and the towns were cute and had breath-taking views. We stayed 2 nights at a B&B in a town called Positano. The view from our rooms was the coolest - we were up on the hill and could see most of the town below us and straight down to the ocean. It was a perfect place to stay and was actually very cheap compared to other places around. The next morning after arriving in Positano, June 8th, 2006, we took a 45 minute ferry ride to another must-see place - an island called Capri. It was cute - there were only a few towns on this island, which was only 6km (about 4 miles) wide, and had really cute shops, cafes and again beautiful views and beaches. This was without a doubt my favorite day in Italy - this was because this was the place that Scott proposed to me! :) It was completely unexpected and so romantic...while we were looking out over the ocean, Scott pulled a homemade, velvet purple box out of his packback. It contained leaves of rose-pressed paper with lines of a poem written on each leaf that opened up to the bottom. In the bottom there was a heart-shaped book that had more beautiful words on it...the last page reading: Please will you marry me? He got down on one knee and I started crying I was so happy. It was the perfect day and I couldn't have asked for a better man to spend the rest of my life with. :) After I got over the initial shock and dried my eyes, we headed into some jewelry shops to look for a ring. He wanted me to pick something out from Capri so that I would always have something from there that would remind me of our engagement vacation...as if I could ever forget. But we found a beautiful sapphire and diamond ring in one of the shops that was custom made by the shop owner's son. The son's wife (who ran the gelateria accross the street) even came over with Champagne for us to celebrate. I love the ring because it is unique and is very sentimental. Once we have more money saved up when Scott graduates (he has about 1 1/2 years left at the Art Academy), I will get to pick out my diamond wedding ring and my engagement ring will become a perfect right hand ring...with many memories.
That's really the longest story I have about our trip as the rest of it flew by so fast. When we got back from Positano, we rested for a day, watched some World Cup action and relaxed at the pool. On June 11th, we hopped on a train and headed for Venice for 2 days and nights. It was a really awesome city and so cool that the only way to get around was by foot or by water. All of the canals were so neat and there were lots of great shops and restaurants again. It was good that we didn't have more time to spend there as it is the most expensive city in Italy. We were again lucky with finding hotels and found a great one with a canal view, a central location and a fair price. I liked it best because it had a regular queen sized bed, not just 2 twin beds pushed together like most of the European hotels have. :) We visited the famous St. Mark's Square (Piazza San Marco), the Peggy Guggenheim Museum (a rare collection of some of the most famous modern artists), the Gallerie dell'Accademia (one of Venice's best art museums) and walked along the streets next to the Grand Canal. We definitely got our workout with all the walking we did! One of my favorite parts was actually taking the ever popular gondola ride...although it was really spendy, we got to float down the Grand Canal at sunset and our gondola guy (the guy that steers with the stick thingy and wears a striped shirt) sang some love songs to us in Italian...and he was actually really good! :)
On June 13th, we headed back to basecamp in Rome. Scott and I rest for a few hours, packed up our bags and headed to the airport to go home. It was so nice to see Marika and we couldn't have asked for a better way to spend our time. Scott and I got to enjoy half of the trip as newly engaged, which was really weird but fun! We left Rome that night and flew in to Amsterdam for an overnight stay. The cool part was, I got to see another friend who I met in Sydney, Edo. It was great to see him again and to introduce him to Scott. He was so sweet and let us stay at his apartment with him that night after taking us out for a couple of beers. We woke up the next morning and headed back to the airport for our last leg of the journey home. When we returned, we slept that night for 13 hours straight and spent a few days getting over jet lag, washing clothes and relaxing in the quiet of my apartment. I feel so lucky to have had that experience and so excited about having such a great fiance! Italy...I'll be back again someday....Scott...I love you so much and thank you for such an unforgettable vacation....Marika...I was so happy to finally get to see you again and can't wait until the next time....and finally, my family and friends...I love you all for your love and support and am so blessed to have so many caring people in my life. Enjoy the pictures and have a wonderful summer!

Heather & Jonny's Wedding - Destination Vegas

My younger sister Heather (she'll be 25 in November) had a fun-filled destination wedding in Las Vegas the weekend of Memorial Day.
May 28, 2006 --> She married her long-time boyfriend, Jonny Wahl, in a short-and-sweet ceremony in a little chapel close to the hotel that we all stayed at. It was mostly a few close friends and immediate family...and we all had a blast. I think that Heather had just the wedding that she wanted: stress-free, small, simple and fun. Most of our family had never been to Vegas before, so it was cool to finally be able to see it...some of it anyway. My boyfriend Scott and I drove from San Jose (about 8 hours). Besides just the wedding, we got to do some shopping, we got to see a Cirque Du Soleil show at Treasure Island - Mystere, sooooo awesome - and we did a lot of walking along the strip seeing some of the sights.

Here are some pics of the weekend's activities. And yes, the groom and groomsmen ARE wearing tuxedo t-shirts and matching swim shorts...it was so hilarious! Plus, they were pool-ready for the reception at the pool afterwards. :) Heather looked really cute and she was glowing. Of course, that could have partly been because of the large plastic football full of slushy alcohol that she carried around before and after the ceremony. Ha! That's my sis!

Marika and pics from Italy

One of my best friends, Marika, who I met while studying abroad in Australia 4 years ago, recently sent me some really cool photos of her her and boyfriend while taking vacation (or "holiday" as they call it) in Italy. I wanted to put these pics up as I will very soon be visiting these very places and more. Scott and I have planned a trip to Rome, Venice and the Almafi Coast while we are there. We will be going right after Heather's wedding in Vegas, so Memorial day weekend and until June 14th will be a whirlwind of adventure! I'm looking forward to travelling so much and have always wanted to go to Europe. Thanks to Marika and a free place to stay while we are in Rome, it'll work out great. Plus....I'll finally get to see her after 4 years! We'll have so much to catch up on! Stay tuned for more pics when I get back from that trip.... :)

Post-busy season fun

Well, after busy season ended in March, I was ready to get back to having a life. One of the fun things was having my friend Liza's sister, Lacy, come to the city to visit in May. Robert and Liza live in Folsom (near Sacramento) and they were showing Lacy the sights of the Bay Area. We went camping and hiking around Yosemite the first weekend and then out and about San Fran the next weekend. It was really nice weather and we all had plenty of fun! The two bars that we went out to, where the pics are from, are two of our favorites here in SF - Dragon Bar and Fluid. Yosemite was beautiful and we broke in Liza and Lacy, as it was their first time ever camping. :) We didn't really rough it though, as we had air matresses, a propane BBQ, showers and bathrooms. Oh well, we have to ease them into it...so next time we'll take away the showers.

My Birthday Weekend - The Big 26

Well, I'm now closer to 30 than 20...bummer! Heehee. No worries about my age, though, because I still feel and act like I'm 20...and probably always will. :)
I had a lot of fun during my birthday weekends. I say weekends, plural, because my birthday fell on a Monday and I had to work, so I celebrated the weekend before AND the weekend after. How spoiled am I?! The weekend of the 18th, Scott surprised me by inviting our friends Robert and Liza down from Sacramento on Friday night. He cooked us all filet mignon and twice baked potatoes. Then the four of us went to "Date Movie" at a theater close to my apartment. We knew it would be really silly and retarded, but we just wanted a laugh. It was pretty dumb but we definitely got some good laughs in.
Saturday morning we woke up and drove down the coast to Monterey Bay - about 1 1/2 hours south of SJ. My surprise birthday present from Scott was supposed to be a day out kayaking and then a grape seed bath and massage at a spa in one of the nice hotels on the beach. It was a great idea, but it turned out to be a little too cold, so we decided to go to plan B and wait until later this summer when it's warmer. Plan B turned out to be fun too, of course. We went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium which is supposed to be the best aquarium in Cali. It was really cool and the jellyfish exhibits were awesome. There were a lot of kids around that day, though, because it was a 3-day weekend for them (President's Day) and after awhile, we got tired of the kids and decided we needed a grown up break from them. So we headed over to one of the sports bars on Cannery Row (the main street next to the ocean) and had some drinks and played pool. We headed home later that night and relaxed. Unfortunately I had to work all day Sunday, so my nice weekend was cut short. But I guess it was busy season and I'm lucky I got one whole day off.
This past weekend, I took Friday off of work and celebrated being done with busy season (which officially ended for me on Wed. 2/22) by catching up on all the errands that I wasn't able to do for the past couple of months...you know - laundry, taxes, vacuuming, cleaning, shopping. On Saturday, Scott and I got all dressed up nice and went to the Lion King Broadway show in SJ at the Theater of Performing Arts. I bought the tickets before Christmas and we were finally able to go. It was great! I loved it (again - I got to see it in LA a few years ago, thanks to my aunt Salli)! Scott really liked it too...the performances, costumes and stage designs were amazing. If this show ever comes to a place near you, definitely drop the money and go see it! It's well worth it.

New Year's Weekend of Crazy in Tahoe

Well, all I can say is "we survived"! New Year's weekend in South Lake Tahoe was fun but a big adventure to say the least. Here is the story of our adventure...
To start off, as soon as I got off the plane in SF from Bozeman, I caught an airport shuttle to my apartment in SJ and immediately started unpacking all my luggage and presents onto my living room floor so that I could repack the few clean clothes that I had left. Once I had repacked, I loaded up my car and drove back to SF to stay at Scott's apartment. We got up on Friday morning and packed up my car with Scott's stuff, our friend Sara, and her stuff. Then we drove up to Sacramento to drop off Sara and pick up two other friends, Robert and Liza, who live up there. The four of us actually crammed all of our stuff and ourselves into my little Honda Civic! Off we drove to Tahoe with the rest of the traffic going there for the popular weekend. The drive up wasn't so bad, timewise, except for the fact that it had been raining ever since Scott and I got off the plane. We got to Tahoe Friday night and checked into the Super 8...which was the only semi-cheap hotel with an open room for the weekend. It still cost us $205 a night and it must have been the crappiest room there. Oh well, we wanted to go someplace we'd never been. Needless to say, the rain didn't stop all night or morning. Before it was even 11pm, the field in the grass courtyard of the hotel was a lake and some of the bottom floor rooms on the ends were starting to flood a little. Unfortunately, we also had a bottom floor room. We were at the casinos that night, drinking for free, so by the time we got back to the hotel at 3:30am, we were too tired to worry about the rivers of rain flowing past the car parked at the side of the building. By the time we woke up at 10am, our room had started to flood and the water was halfway across. An hour later, when we finally had all our luggage repacked and everything off the floor, there was a good 3 inches of water in the whole room. We opened the door where my car was parked and more water came gushing in. We waded through the ice water that was up to our calves and repacked all our stuff into my car. It was soooo freezing! It was basically just melted snow water! I was so afraid my little car wouldn't make it out of the parking lot and would float away and be ruined. We slowly drove out of the large lake and made it to safety on a higher up main road.
We were dirty, wet, hungry and needed some food in a dry place but IHOP was totally full of people. So we headed over to the only place with breakfast that didn't have a long waiting list - McDonalds. We had brunch, changed our wet clothes, and tried to heal our frozen toes. Good thing was, we got all our money for the room refunded and made it out OK. Bad thing was, we had no room to stay in and both highways back to Sacramento were closed due to flooding, downed powerlines, downed trees, etc. So we drove to the nearest hotel that looked dry and safe, the Holiday Inn and made Scott go in to flirt with the lady at the desk to get us a room. We finally got a room (the only one left because of a cancellation) after a couple hours of wandering around the board shops around Tahoe. It had finally stopped raining mid-afternoon and instead started snowing. All the rivers and lakes disappeared and it was really beautiful.
After we finally got a room and were able to take showers, we thought we'd died and gone to heaven. Whew! After that whole episode, we got rested and had a good New Year's Eve down at the casinos a couple blocks away. We met another group of friends at Caesars and got more free drinks gambling 10 cents at a time on $5. :) Hey, we are all pretty low on money and it was cheap that way. We never got to go into any of the clubs because we didn't want to pay $100-150 cover charges just to get in. It was pretty mellow for a New Year's in Tahoe, but we had more fun when we tried to leave the next day. Because of the disaster, many people opted not to stay any longer and since no one could have left the day before, everyone left the same day. It took us 2 hours just to get from one side of South Lake Tahoe to the edge of Tahoe - only 6 miles! It took a total of 6 hours to go 90 miles over the windy mountain road behind hundreds of other cars. We cheered if we went more than 20 miles an hour. How sad! We stayed another night with Robert and Liza in their apartment in Sacramento (more specifically Folsom). We made dinner, vegged out on movies, and thanked the Lord that we made it safe and dry. I guess the storm was pretty bad in other parts of Northern Cali too, because parts of Sacramento and Napa Valley got declared a disaster area by the Governator.