A super-speed tour of Italy

My last post detailed how we got around to so many great places in Italy now I am ready to talk about each of them.  This post hopefully won't upset my stomach the way the last one did, though it might hurt my heart since I can't go back anytime soon.
We drove from Venice to Cinque Terre, this is a series of 5 small fishing towns along the west coast of Italy.  It is more towards the northern part of Italy, almost directly west of Venice and about a hour north of Pisa and a couple hours from Florence.  Most importantly it is amazing.  It is featured in Rick Steve's guide books which means it is now more of a tourist stop for Americans than small fishing towns but it hasn't lost its charm.  There are a few things that make this place special.  They are in a national park so it is not overly developed.  The towns are all small and sit right on the ocean or on cliffs overlooking the ocean.  The best part is that they are all connected by several different hiking trails or if you prefer a quick train ride.  So John and I were staying in the southern village of Riomaggiore and we had rented for 2 nights a big apartment right on the cliff over the water.  We had a kitchen and even better a huge balcony all to ourselves where we could eat and watch the sunset.  We took the train to the Northern town of Monterosso and then hiked our way back south.  We had to take the train in between 2 towns because one of the trails was washed out.  For one portion of the hike we also went up in to the vineyard covered hills and hiked, rather than staying on the coast the whole time.  The hikes were hard enough to give you a work out but not to ruin the fun of what you were seeing.  It truly is incredible and you could spend a week there just hiking through the hillsides and visiting the towns.  Each town is charming in its own unique way and full of colored houses and blue water.  It was probably our favorite part of the trip and we have to go back.
Then we started our car ride to Rome which included a stop in Pisa and a drive through Tuscany.  Pisa really is so much more than the leaning tower, which is really cool.  The tower is in the middle of a fortress built to protect the city.  Within the walls you have the tower but also several other buildings that served as things like an armory and church.  They are all so gorgeous and the town seemed small and charming as a whole, once again I wish we would have had longer.
Instead of taking the interstate the whole way to Rome we drove through an area described generally as a highlight of Tuscany.  The area we were in is called like Umbria or Chianti, it is mainly this road called the SR222 that takes you from the highway near Florence through the countryside and then we got back on the highway after Siena.  It is full of hilltop towns/castles and little towns that you can stop and eat and shop in.  We stopped for lunch in a town called Castellina In Chianti, as you can imagine their main wine was Chianti so we had to get a bottle for later.  We were probably the only people at lunch not drinking wine, since we were driving, but we did have a great meal that included a boar sausage pasta that was to die for.  John hadn't had much meat the past couple days, so he said, and ordered a kabob type thing with 3 kinds of pork.  I would say he covered his meat deficiency there.  My stomach was so upset, probably from the car stresses, that my delicious meal couldn't be enjoyed as much as I would have liked.  If you go to Tuscany it is best to have a car and it is one of the few places were people would recommend it.  There really isn't a great means of public transportation for getting to these little countryside towns and part of the fun is just stopping on a whim and checking them out.  On a side note you might be suprised to learn that roadside prostitution is a big problem on these country roads.  They basically take a van full of girls and drop them off along the road with a plastic lawn chair to sit in and then at the end of the day pick them back up.  Strange and sad but we tried to overlook it.
We had to move pretty quickly to get to Rome where we turned in our rental car and took the train in to the city.  We had a great room in Rome right on Piazza Nova with a window over looking the bustling streets.  It is a major nightlife area but we were so tired and busy most days that we didn't really take advantage of it.  One restaurant we wanted to eat at had a 3 hour wait so we just wandered around and tried random spots.  The great thing about dinner in Italy is you can get a bottle of house wine for like 4 bucks and sit there all night drinking and eating.  Rome was John's least favorite stop only because of the crowds and difficulty getting around.  We were there on a weekend and it was overrun with people and as always hot.  We were probably to worn out from the crowds to really enjoy a lot of what we saw after 10 AM.  We also made the mistake of going to the Colosseum right after lunch, which involved some beers and 2 pizzas.  That meant we were full, sluggish and hot, bad combo.  I forced John around the city at lightening speed and we managed to see most major attractions in one day, no wonder he was tired.  The night before we had gone to the Vatican on a special Friday night tour.  In the summer on Friday nights you can reserve a ticket to see the Vatican which is really cool because it isn't hot or crowded at that time.  I love the Vatican and John thought it was cool too even after getting in trouble for taking pictures in the Sistine Chapel.
Well that was Italy at a glance, some cities and some countryside.  I think we are more countryside folks but now that we can check some of the tourist attractions off our list we can spend more time exploring the outlying regions on our next trip.  I would like to see every inch of Italy basically.

Stick Shift and Panic Attacks!!!

So I am writing 2 days in a row, I know what you are thinking, "she is going to burn out" but I will try to stay strong.  I also apologize for my totally incorrect coma use, I use them whenever I feel like it, not so much based on correct writing rules.
When I left off we were running through the Venice airport trying to make up time for oversleeping.  We got our rental car with no major problems and ran to our car, all this running now seems a little unnecessary but was very dramatic and important at the time.  When I was reserving a rental car I confirmed with John that he could drive a stick, they are about $200 cheaper than automatics so you could see why I was leaning towards the manual.  He never actually owned a car with manual transmission but had learned the basics along the way and said we would be fine.  I on the other hand have no experience with a stick so I was betting he wouldn't become incapacitated and I would have to drive.  We get to our cute little Fiat, throw in our bags and prepare to take off.  John puts the car in drive and off we go, by go I mean we slammed forward but didn't actually drive off anywhere.  Basically it was like we went head first in to wall but there was nothing in front of us.  No one panic lets try this again and again and again, OK now we are panicking.  Thank goodness no one was parked in front of our car.  So I suggest maybe he needs to do something with the clutch, though I have no clue what.  He agrees and after pushing in the clutch off we go.  I am trying to work the GPS and John is screaming about where he should be going and this sets the tone for most of our road trip through Italy.  If you are fluent with a manual than by all means you will have a smooth road trip through Italy, otherwise, get an automatic.  Everyone there drives a stick so it isn't a big deal to them to get close to other cars, make frequent stops, or go uphill, for us all of these things proved very challenging.  We had a plan to drive to Cinque Terre, which is the opposite coast of Italy, and along the way stop in Parma or Bologna for lunch.  As both of these names indicate they are home to some delicious food.  We get to Bologna around lunch time with no major issues and had a smooth ride on the interstate.  There was beautiful weather, scenery, and our IPod music bumpin.  As soon as we get off the interstate in Bologna we realize we have made a huge mistake.  Keep in mind along the way John has informed me that he is not good at stopping and starting and if we come to a stop on a hill we are screwed.  So as we enter Bologna and are following the GPS to our lunch destination we realize it will be one stop light after another, very bad.  We kill the engine so many times John informs me that he thinks we were burning out the clutch, who knew that could happen so fast.  We received many honks and angry looks but I was more concerned about John's face of panic every time someone would get to close to the back of us and then we would kill it and have to start again.  The place we were going to eat at happened to be down a small hill so we were going to have to improvise on the parking.  We ended up parking in front of a small fruit stand just off the road and the bystanders gave us some strange looks but we decided to just go with it, we only had an hour to eat.  After walking on foot for 10 minutes looking for the restaurant, we got it in our sites but realized there was no way we would have time to eat and get to our hotel by 5 and had to abandon ship.  I felt like those people that climb 95% of Mt. Everest and have to turn back because of weather.  We are still slightly bummed about this part of the trip but it was the cost of over sleeping.  Back in the car we go and we just needed to reverse out of our spot and hit the road, we would worry about food later.  Panic Attack #2, reversing.  After several attempts to get the car in reverse we had yet to go backwards.  We were also attempting to back up in to a busy street so this only added to the panic with each attempt.  I told John that I had heard my mom say to my sister when she was learning to drive a stick how it can be tricky getting the car in to the R gear so even though he had given up hope and thought we would be spending the night in our car in front of the fruit stand, he gave it another try.  Sure enough we were off, if we got killed in oncoming traffic it didn't matter we were going.  I can only imagine what that fruit stand owner was thinking.  We were both annoyed we had wasted 45 minutes in a town that wasn't made for our driving and getting out wasn't going to be easy.  John was terrified we were going to have to go uphill to get out of the city but God worked a miracle and we made it out of there alive.  So was our life in the car, on the highways we were smooth sailing and happy, in the cities we were sweating and screaming. 
We decided due to time and driving constraints to get lunch at this gas station type place they have all along the highways, it was not impressive but it did the trick.  Ordering was a challenge because this place is in the middle of no where and English isn't their forte.  They did pump our gas for us which was good since we had no clue how to even open the tank.  Italy does have beautiful countryside and I would drive through it for weeks, in an automatic of course. 
So we make it to Cinque Terre 30 minutes before our check in time and drive down a huge hill on a one lane street to the check in office.  The hotel directions said to do this but they acted surprised that we had driven in and told us we had to move right away.  One problem, the hill, I informed the desk clerk that there was no way my husband was getting that car up that hill and so she had her assistant drive the car up, another miracle.  I will tell you all about Cinque Terre in the next post but I am going to skip ahead to our next part of the road trip.  It is making my stomach hurt just talking about it again.  I can't tell you how many times in the car John would say "we are screwed, we are never getting out of here."
Our car is parked at the top of the hill but in a small garage in a tight space that we have to navigate out of and then we get to a gate that only residents can open so we have to wait for someone to open the gate for us.  A nice lady comes and opens the gate for us but of course we killed the car so then she comes to our window wondering why we didn't go.  She gives us a very annoyed second chance and we manage to take off.  So begins the screaming and stress of navigating when John won't stop the car.  This means that I have to tell him where to go way ahead of time without actually having a clue.  Stop signs mean nothing to us because we avoid stopping at all costs.  We had several stops planned between Cinque Terre and Rome but I had already decided that list was going to have to be scaled way back, based on our driving limitations and time.  I knew there was no way we were going to get close to Florence with our no stopping or hills restriction so Florence was abandoned, which we probably wouldn't have had time for anyway.  Our first stop was Pisa, which is a smaller town so slightly less stressful.  I will talk of my love for Pisa and Tuscany in another post.  Then we head towards the small country roads of Tuscany.  It was definitely less stressful than the cities but had several near death moments.  We chose our stops based on level parking spots we could get in and out of and lack of hills. 
The final stop we were going to make before Rome was in Siena. We get off the interstate and realize that Siena is in one of these awful places called cities. You know with all the stop lights and traffic. To make matter worse the city center is on a large hill, you guessed it we had to abandon ship. John hated to disappointment me but he said this was not going to work. My stomach by this point is so upset from all the car panic attacks that I was more than happy to skip it. The problem we encountered trying to get out of Siena were millions of roundabouts. The first one we came to was on a hill so we needed the roundabout to be empty so we could enter it without stopping on the hill. That meant we had to do one u-turn after another illegally until we got our chance. For the next 500 roundabouts we would just scream at the top of our lungs and go for it because stopping or stalling out in the roundabout wasn't an option. I wish we had a camera in the car. It is funny now but traumatic all at the same time. Finally we made it to Rome's airport to drop off our car. I wasn't worried about filling up the tank just getting the thing turned in. The whole way to the airport was interstate and I had very detailed directions printed off so it went smoothly but then of course our return area had to be on the 4th floor of the garage. That is right, uphill! Between floor 2 and 3 we almost stalled out and risked a roll back collision but John got er done and made it in to the first available spot. I have never been so relieved in all my life. Goodbye tolls, gas, stick shifts, and my insides. I don't want to discourage anyone from renting a car in Italy. We loved the freedom, the countryside, and it was actually easy to navigate, just make sure you avoid busy cities and know how to drive a stick.

Italy, the land that I love!

Ok, so once again you thought I gave up on my blog but really I am just trying to weed out any casual readers by only writing 3 times a year.  It is not that I am to busy at work to write it is more a lack of motivation and feeling overwhelmed by how far behind I have gotten.  Heaven forbid I skip any weekend of my life, I feel compelled to keep everything in chronological order and when so much fun stuff is happening it is hard to stay current.  For that reason I will try to do some quick summaries of my life from May through Sept.  Most of these adventures take place with John so I should say "our" lives.

So we left off in Paris...  John and I took a 5 Am flight from Paris to Venice and since dinner doesn't end until midnight we were totally worn out when we arrived in Venice.  I was convinced John would love Venice, how can you not like a "floating" city.  I even planned for us to take the longer boat ride, instead of the bus, in to the city center so he could get the full effect.  What does he do to show his appreciation, he sleeps the whole boat ride.  I tried not to be annoyed but seriously.  So when he would wake himself up I would mention how he missed tons of impressive stuff, not totally true, but my guilt tactic for his sleeping offense.  We had a great room in Venice, tiny but right on the square.  Once we checked in John committed his second large offense, suggesting we take a nap.  I know he had only slept a couple of hours in days but we have 24 hours in Venice, come on.  He really gave me no choice and since I had been to Venice before I didn't have a strong desire to go sight-seeing on my own again, so we napped.  I only allowed a short nap before we mazed our way through the Venice streets.  The key to Venice is to never plan on finding anything, just assume you will wander around aimlessly the whole time and stumble upon cool things by chance.  John did pick out 2 places to eat ahead of time and so we broke rule one and set out to find them.  Despite our best efforts we got totally lost but we did accidentally find the places we were looking for.  I need to emphasis this was mainly by accident.  It was a wonderful accident though because we had some great food.  That night in Venice I had one of my favorite meals of the whole trip.  We ordered so much food we should have been ashamed.  The highlights were a beef carpaccio and an eggplant dish that were to die for!!! 
As always we got back late from dinner and needed to leave Venice early so we could get our rental car, head thru Bologna and be in Cinque Terre by 5, otherwise we lost our hotel reservation.  We also decided that there is no way we would sleep in so why bother setting an alarm.  Big mistake.  We planned to be in our rental car by 9, instead that is when we woke up.  Woops.  To get to the airport where our rental car was involved about 2 hours of running and shuffling around, I don't think there was one airport we didn't run in the whole trip.  Keep in mind we now had about 6 hours to make a 5 hour trip to our next destination and we planned to have lunch in Bologna.  We were delirious because we should have realized no Italian lunch could be done in under an hour.  But little did I know one of the highlights of the trip, the rental car/stick shift driving, was about to take off and make things really interesting.

Paris, oh how lovely you are!

Ok so it is hard for me to get motivated to write any blogs lately despite plenty of free time at work but I am going to give it a shot this morning. I already detailed how we planned our European get away so lets skip straight to the plane. We had a 12 hour direct flight from LA to Paris and it would put us in Paris at 9 AM Sun. morning. Everything went smoothly other than John not sleeping a wink on the flight over. We did take some sleeping pills but they didn't have any effect on him. Maybe if we had known the booze were free he might have slept a little better, oh well. We landed at CDG and had to take a couple trains to get in to downtown Paris where we were staying. When we got came up from the station we knew we were near the Eiffel Tower and were looking around for it and someone jogging by pointed and said it is over there. We turned around and sure enough there was the Eiffel tower. We did a little walking and managed to find our hotel, drop off our bags, freshen up and start our exploring. We were staying in the Rue Cler area and Sundays have a bustling outdoor market so we basically strolled around looking at all the stands set up like a flea market, but a Paris flea market not like Flealand in BG. Then we grabbed our first Parisian meal. I wanted to go authentic so I went with the special which was a salad with duck and brie and was amazing. John had a roasted chicken dish that was also delish so we were off to a good start. We just took our time with lunch because we had to kill a little time before we could get in to our room. Once we could check in we were pleasantly surprised. Our room though small was very neat and clean and had a great window looking out to the Eiffel tower. From our shower you could also look out and see the Eiffel tower but our neighbors would have had quiet the view in of us. We spent the rest of the day walking around Paris and checking out the Eiffel tower and some other sites in our area. This is why we loved Paris so much, you can just wander aimlessly and see beautiful things everywhere. We ended the day with a bottle of wine and a blanket watching the sunset at the Eiffel Tower. There is a huge lawn in front of the tower where tons of people just gather and eat food, listen to music and just hang out, it was awesome. That first night for dinner the first couple of places we planned on going didn't work out so we just winged it and had a nice meal not far from our hotel. That night we really needed to catch up on sleep and it was one of the few nights we could sleep in so we were excited for some rest and didn't get back until around midnight so we were exhausted. Unfortunately John's cell phone alarm went off at 5AM, even though the phone was turned off, and neither of us could fall back asleep, major fail! We knew sleeping the day away in Paris wasn't an option so we just got up and got the day started.

Day 2 and our last full day in Paris we decided to conquer a lot of sites, the Louvre, Champ de Mars, the Latin Quarter, Notre Dame, and everything in between. I have to say we were tired by the end of the day but we saw so much great stuff. We enjoyed the Louvre more so for the funny picture taking opportunities it gave us. John got caught touching a statue of course, what a trouble maker. After a lot of walking around we ended the second day much like the first, laying on a blanket sipping wine at the Eiffel Tower. We did go to a restaurant that friends had recommended called La Gitane and had an amazing meal. Of course I ordered the special but John had an amazing bowl of french onion soup, which he had been craving. We ate, we saw, we loved. To recap why we loved Paris, BEAUTIFUL weather while we were there, clean and not to crowded city since it is a little spread out, wonderful buildings and sights to see, long lunches and dinners with amazing food, lots of cheap wine, the Eiffel Tower, and friendly people. The people were so much nicer than I had heard and most people spoke English so it was a great and comforting way to start the trip. We had to leave at 5 AM in the next day for our flight to Venice so sleep was not in our future. You don't really go to dinner until almost 9 so getting home after 11 is almost unavoidable and it seemed to stay light forever there. I am so glad we had 2 nights there and having amazing weather definitely helps your outlook on a place. So I am now part of the crowd of people who will say go to Paris you will love it, I know we did.

Making our dream vacation a reality

So John and I came up with the idea to take a trip to Europe almost 2 years ago and so it is hard to believe it has now come and gone. Part of our pay as the apartment managers is that we get to keep all the quarters from the washer and dryer in the building so in order to save for the trip we collected all of the quarters for almost 2 years. I called our bank to see about cashing these in as the trip drew closer and they informed me that we would have to roll all of the quarters to cash them. We had been collecting them in one of those huge water containers like you see in offices and rolling all these quarters was not a great option. I also didn't want the coinstar machine to take 10% of our earnings. Luckily some of our friends belonged to a credit union that had a coinstar type machine in the bank and they wouldn't charge you a fee for using it.  So we had to meet them at their bank and dump this huge container of coins in the machine, it was such a scene that everyone in the bank was watching us.  They even seemed to be excited for us once it was all done.  All in all we made over $2000 in quarters, not as much as we hoped but still a nice start.  We came up with a general game plan of where we wanted to go on the trip fairly quickly, I am not sure how decided but all of a sudden we had a starting plan. The rest of the details were now up to me. I knew we wanted to see Paris, Venice, Cinque Terre, Rome, Athens, and an island in Greece, we ended up going to Santorini. We only had around 11 days due to the amount of vacation time I had at work so we had to eliminate several stops we originally wanted to make and still were left with a pretty ambition schedule.  To start planning I knew the flights would be a major part of the costs so when I got a credit card offer from American that involved getting 30k points just for signing up and then another 30k if you spent 10k and the annual fee was waived I knew I had found my niche.  I got the card and we had not trouble racking up those 60k in bonus miles, it was the remaining miles that were slow to add up and I only had a year to do it. I realized almost to late that I really had less than a year to have the points I needed because I had to have the points before I could book the flight and awards type tickets get booked fast.  To get the miles we needed in time to still get tickets we ended up having to buy some miles.  All in all we basically got 2 tickets for the costs of 1.  There are lots of things about reward tickets I learned from this experience but as long as you have patience and time to call the airlines everyday to look for cancellations you can make it work.  Our original flight we booked got us home all in 1 day of travel and we booked all our other travel arrangements based on our overseas flight schedule.  Unfortunately we got a call closer to our trip that one of the connection carriers went out of business so now we had several long connections to get home and had to use an extra .5 day of vacation, this was our biggest hiccup in travel arrangements so I can't complain to much.  We also made the most of our layovers by adding a trip in to downtown London and NY City, I will get to that later. 
So as you can imagine I was a very unproductive employee for a large portion of the pre-trip period.  All of my free time at work was spent looking for the right hotels, train schedules, easy jet flights, car rentals, and activities we might want to do.  The internet has so much information that it can almost be overwhelming but we ended up relying a lot on trip advisor.  My criteria when looking for a hotel was that we had to have our own bathroom and how nice were the actual tourist pictures, not the hotel advertisment pictures.  My first time I went to Europe I mainly stayed in Hostels, the second time I stayed in tiny rooms with shared bathrooms, and so this time I wanted to go just a step above that.  I have to say that all of our hotels turned out to be more than we expected and we were totally pleased so apparentaly my formula worked.  Most places were between 100 and 150 Euro per night so you could definitely go cheaper but that is pretty reasonable for a comfortable room.  Since we were also going to several places in Europe I had to conquer how we would get to each location, basically plane, train, or car.  We used all 3 along with several other transportation methods.  For the longer distances we mainly did flights because we were on a tight schedule and didn't have time to waste on trains.  Also flights within Europe are a lot of times cheaper than taking the train, but you have watch out for fees and consider costs of getting to the airport.  We used 5 different different airlines on our trip so I made sure to read all the rules and tips for each airline because flight complications were my biggest concern.  Being a pound over a luggage limit can also cost you big time on budget carriers so I didn't want to risk it.  Another key when flying so many places is to plan ahead how you are going to get to and from the airport.  Most cities we were going to were usually close to an hour from the airport so you don't want to get stuck taking an expensive taxi in to the city. If you are wondering how you are suppose to keep all this information straight I used a binder.  I had copies of all our boarding passes printed, they charge you extra for that on some airlines, I also had information I found on travel sites online with detailed instructions about where to go in airports and how to get to the city.  Even if we didn't follow the instructions exactly it gave us a general idea what to look for since everything was foriegn to us in each new location and it can get overwhelming quickly.

In Italy we decided to rent a car so we could drive from Venice to Cinque Terre, which is on the west coast of Italy, and then from there to Rome.  We hoped to see Bologna, Parma, Pisa, Florence, and parts of Tuscany all from our little car along the way.  We were dreaming but it still made for some of our best memories of the trip.  Rental cars are a whole different level of planning because we wanted to be flexible but had timelines to be places so you have to have some general routes planned and then alternate routes and I spent a lot of time looking at different places we could stop along the way.  I will get in to more detail about our Fiat experiences in another blog. 
Also since we would be taking public transporation once we were in all the cities I knew from past experiences that we would be hauling our luggage down city streets trying to find a hidden gem of a hotel.  That is another reason we tried to pack lightly.  We each took a duffel with wheels, mine was small and John's was medium and then we each had an average size backpack.  I actually have very little trouble packing and never felt like I needed more clothes while we were over there.  The key is to be realistic and we knew we weren't going really formal anywhere so I could leave the heels at home. I bought a pair of toms that I could wear with anything and read online that they should be comfortable with all the walking and they were. I also had a couple small sandels and a pair of tennis shoes for our hiking day. I brought an old pair so that I could just throw them out after I didn't need them anymore, this left room for a few souveniers.
Most of the remaining research time I spent online involved researching sites we might want to see. It is good to look ahead at places you know you will want to see because museums are closed on random days, so our restaurants, and markets and you don't want to set yourself up for dissapointment. Also you can find lots of tips online about how to efficiently see stuff, like where to find the shortest line.  I did drop the ball on my Athens planning but other than that we had a pretty good plan for each day.  Don't get me wrong we wanted to be flexible but when you are on a tight schedule it is good it have an idea of what you really want to see so you can make sure you can fit it all in.  We also planned the trip so that we had a mix of cities and non-cities. Cities can be very tiring and overwhelming so we actually found most of the non-cities stops to be our favorites.  We also love beautiful scenery so sometimes you have to get out of the city to find that.  So now we've got our binder of plans, copies of important documents, and bags packed, next blog we will be in Europe.  If you are wondering what planning John had to do for this trip, he looked up food stuff, that is his speciality.

Where Have I Been???

So it turns out that planning a 12 day European vacation is very time intensive.  So any free time I had at work on the Internet was purely devoted to trip planning, I am sure my boss appreciated all my hard work.  Hence, my blogging has suffered.  Once again I debated just stopping the blog but I am no quitter so here I am again.  With a few trips between my last post and this one I will try not to overwhelm you with details all at once.  I have many stories to report from Europe but before we jump across the pond I need to blog about the amaziness that is Utah.
If you are like I was a few months ago then when you think of Utah you mainly think Mormons.  I am here to tell you that there is so much more in Utah than just Mormons.  I said after we went to our first trip to Utah last year that if we moved from California I would put Utah on my list of top places to live.  I know that might seem surprising and perhaps I haven't thought out all the sacrifices of living in a primarily dry state but what it lacks in liberalness it makes up for in natural beauty.  We have now visited 4 must see places in Utah, all natural parks I might add.  Zion, Bryce, Arches, and Canyonlands.  Given we only had like a day at each place so I haven't fully been able to enjoy all they have to offer, but after what I have seen I can definitely give it 2 thumbs up.  Currently Zion and Canyonlands are competing for the top spot, not that the other 2 weren't awesome in their own rights.  The problem with seeing overwhelming natural beauty is that you want to capture it and show it to your love ones so they will be inspired to make the journey themselves but pictures never do it justice.  If you have ever gone to the grand canyon, which I did for the 2nd time last month, you have been struck by the size and taken lots of pics only to get home and look back and think that is not the same thing I just saw.  So frustrating.  Hopefully enthusiasm in this blog in combination with facebook photos will inspire you to book your plane tickets now.  If there was ever a place to take a week long RV trip I would say it was southern Utah.  We are already planning more trips back, if only we had unlimited vacation days.
Let me break down a few details for you to help you understand.  Zion, amazing colors and mini-mountains layered in tons of shades of pinks and browns with lots of greenery on top of everything.  Water is abundant and you can even do hikes in the river.  No cars allowed in the park so you just drop your ride and take a shuttle where ever you want to go and it is small enough that you don't waste to much time doing this.  Canyonlands, so we only got to explore one little section of the park which is massive so it will definitely require follow-up visits.  We explored the Needles area of the park which is basically rock spires that I guess resemble needles but not in a bad way.  We stayed outside of the park in an area that is just free camping off the road, so there weren't amenities like bathrooms but you quickly get over that.  Our campsite felt like Mars, red rock boulders, canyons, crevasses, climbing, you had it all.  The hike we did once we got in to the park was our own creation since we combined a few of the trails together to make a big loop and it was seriously in my top 3 hikes ever.  Most of the time what makes a killer hike for me is a huge payoff view at the end and maybe some along the way.  This trail did have some good views but it also had a ton of variety which made it so interesting and fun the whole way.  We experienced lots of different terrains.  For example caves, overlooks, desert, woods, red rock, white rock, and sand.  It was like 5 hikes rolled in to one.
What also made this trip great is that we met John's sister and brother-in-law, Amy and Josh, at the park.  It was nice because they had some experience in the area and a good idea of where to camp so it took some of the usual trip planning stress off of us.  Considering my time had been devoted to Europe trip planning I didn't have much time to think about logistics on this trip so it worked out great.  Sometimes I want to be a control freak but this time I was happy to just sit back and enjoy the ride.  We also took turns cooking dinner so it was less work and since we could divide up some of the stuff we needed to pack it cut down our load a little too.  I am usually nervous to go camping with other people because if they don't camp often you will be doing twice the work to get them ready but when you go with experienced campers it just makes life easier.  Did I mention the weather was also amazing on this trip and that we made a stop at the Grand Canyon on the way home.

OK so I have a few other stories from before Utah and after that I need to tell but I am typed out for now.  I also want to give an update on how my annual goals are going so far.  Stay tuned.

Photography Update

I just wanted to say quickly how much I am loving my new camera. I know this might seem like a strange concept these days but I recently got a Snapfish coupon and went online to print off several pictures I had taken with our new camera. They were mainly from Christmas and New Years and therefore contained pictures of all my favorite people. I am also not exaggerating when I say they were amazingly crisp and vivid. They might have seemed even more amazing because I am so used to just looking at pictures on facebook or my computer these days. But printing photos is like reading a paper back, sure I could download a book to read on some electronic device (I don't actually own one of these it is just for an example) but something about holding the book in your hands and flipping through the pages is just nostalgic. I think it made looking at the pictures even more meaningful because it was like I was holding on to the people I love. They weren't there with me but holding a picture of them someone made them seem more tangible. Maybe it is just the novelty of never printing pictures anymore or maybe it is some sort of homesickness but I was just loving looking at these photos. I wanted to share them with everyone in the pictures and say here is a great pictures of us don't you want to stare at it too. I am sure soon enough they will be put in an album somewhere and I won't be staring at them all the time but even going through an old album can bring back such great memories. I almost look forward to putting them away and then finding them in a year and remembering those times all over again.

P.S. This last comment might make me seem strange so if you are feeling warm and fuzzy stop reading. I think for some reason I associate really great old photos with funerals, like when you go to some one's funeral that you have known a long time but you see pictures of them from earlier in their life when you didn't know them and you just wonder what they were like when that picture was taken. So I can't help when I go through pictures of other people and think we have to put this up at their funeral because it is such a great picture of them and captures them so well. I even had a dream the other night about having to get a picture of someone before the end of this really happy party because I was thinking if they pass away I want to remember this day. Am I the only person like this, probably so, it is OK I don't mind being strange. I warned you to stop reading.