5 posts tagged “france”

Ok, I know it's a few days late, but apparently I've been really bad at blogging lately! Here's the 2008 recap:

January

• January 1st: Shadow breaks my nose. Happy New Years!
• January 13th: I get smacked in the nose again at a CERT drill and realize that my nose really is broken.
• January 17th: I started EMT school - so exciting!

February

• February 28th: My first of many encounters with the neighborhood turkies.

March

• March 8th: Houseboat weekend with Brigitte and Amber!
• March 15th: Mather Air Show Day One: lots of patients to practice on!
• March 16th: Mather Air Show Day Two: more patients!
• March 26th: My hospital rotation - a life changing experience!

April

• April 18th: Rivercats baseball game with Dad, Brigitte and Amber
• April 19-20th: CERT Mobex - disaster drill in Clovis

May

• May 10th: Kati graduates from UGA - Mom, Dad and I flew back for a fantastic weekend in Georgia!
• May 13th: NREMT exam - I passed and am officially an EMT!
• May 24th: EMT party - absolutely hilarious - everyone came dressed as some sort of victim... it was great!

June

• June 10th: Metro's CERT team is called up to help out with the local grass fires
• June 21st: Saved my first patient at a CERT event

July

• July 14th: Visited my customer in Houston. Hot and sticky. Ate more steak than a girl should!
• July 20th: Kati moves home from Georgia!

August

• August 8th: Joanna and Chris come to visit!
• The rest of August - Kati and I go to Germany, France, Italy and Greece... it's the trip of a lifetime!

September

• September 14th: Met Mike! :)
• September 24th: Had a close encounter with a tomato hornworm. Had to call Julie in for backup.
• September 26th: Went to the Neil Diamond concert with Kati!

October

• October 9th: Went to the New Kids On The Block concert with Julie, Mindy, Amanda and Chris.
• October 16th: Selected for the Sarah Weeden jury - little did I know it would last two months!
• October 31st: Halloween party!

November

• November 1st: Went to the Madonna concert with Adam and Eva!
• November 4th: Barak Obama is elected president
• November 26th: Thanksgiving vacation at Lake Almanor
• November 15th: Second Annual Friends Thanksgiving!

December

• December 11th: Sarah Weeden trial ends
• December 30th: Kings game with Mike
• December 31st: Mike's New Years Eve Party - LOTS of pig!

All in all, I'd say it was a fantastic year! Who can complain?!

Hope everyone had a wonderful New Year! Mike's party was a blast - they roasted 120 pounds of pig! It took four of them just a few minutes to cut it all up (lots of practice apparently!). Here's a picture of the pig on the spit:

It was insanely delicious! The party was a blast!

As you probably know, today is my birthday. It's been fantastic... it's 2:30pm and I'm still in my jammies! I've watched a bunch of episodes of "ER" (thanks Mike!) and some "Friends" reruns. It's been wonderfully relaxing!

I won some really cool tickets at work... last night Kati and I went to see Neil Diamond. We had such a blast... that man is still 100% selling out arenas! He sang all of his classics (shoot, he sang "Sweet Caroline" TWICE!) plus some new stuff off of his lastest CD. What a cool prize to win for dressing up!

I finally got around to uploading all of my Europe videos... enjoy!

These first two are a band that was playing in the metro (subway) in France... they were amazing! In fact, every metro all over Europe had these incredibly talented musicians!

 

Next is a little safety video that Kati and I were inspired to make on the plane from France to Italy. You see, they started in on the whole water landing thing, however, Kati and I realized that we weren't really flying over any large body of water:

The next is our Eiffel Tower video. Sorry it's sort of sideways, but work with me. We discovered that when you ask for water in most of Europe, "with gas" means sparkling and "without gas" means plain old tap water. For some reason this struck us as hilarious (I swear we're both grown adults). Thus, I present to you, the Eiffel Tower - with gas (get it... sparkles?):

Finally, our Greek video. Needless to say, we were just goofy at this point:

On that note, I'm off to bed!

I know, it's taken forever to get to this. Jet lag killed me. Then I caught the "plane cold" which just today turned into a sinus infection. Fun times.

 

That said, without further ado, here is my review of the fabulous food Kati and I scarfed in Europe! Click on the names below to see pictures of each dish. 

 

Germany

There was pretty much nothing that I didn't love in Germany. Of course, I grew up on it, so how could I go wrong? Some of my favorite dishes:

Schnitzel (pounded veal that is breaded, fried and you squeeze lemon on)

Kaesspazten (a doughy noodle that is covered in cheese and onions)

Apfelstrudel (a delicious dessert that is an apple filled pastrey)

Rouladen (beef wrapped around pickles)

Pretzels (just like Oma used to make them - way better than Auntie Annie's!)

And, of course, there was beer. It was delicious. Never as cold as we tend to drink it here in the US, which I actually like better. My favorite beer was the last night... I had a delicious hefewieizen that was to die for. Kati fell in love with what they call the "Radler" beer. Basically, it's beer that's flavored with Zitronenlimonade, or lemon lime soda. If you're not a mjor beer fan, it's a good way to go.

 

France

Crepes (they come in a wide range of flavors... I loved the ones with the dark chocolate in them)

Chocolate Croissants (these were awesome in France... I ate more than one every day!)

Roasted Chicken (this seemed to be a big French thing... we had a lot of chicken)

French Champagne (we had this at the mMoulin Rouge. DELICIOUS!)

Baguettes (I have never tasted French bread this delicious before)

Apple Beignets (these had an apple filled center that was like a pureed apple sauce)

We also had some fantastic wine while we were in France... in Saint Emilion I had a glass of merlot at this little sidewalk cafe... it didn't taste like alcohol at all!

 

Italy

Spaghetti (I discovered that tomato sauce in Italy tastes much better... it's much less sweet and more like real tomatoes)

Canolli (I had one of these as soon as we got off the plane in Italy... it was to die for!)

Gelato (I fell in love with the chocolate)

The first day that we were there Kati and I shared this amazing salami sandwich... rather than having mustard and mayo, they used this spiced, olive oiled bread... it was so flavorful! We also had this wonderful, but simple, pasta dish on the ferry. It was linguine pasta, with bell peppers, all with a little bit of olive oil. Simple yet incredible delicious - one of the best pasta dishes we had!

 

Greece

Greek salad (I'm not a huge fan, but this was delicious. I even ate the feta cheese!)

Kati had this fantastic pastry (that I can't remember the name of) which had a creamy custardy center with a phyllo dough outside. Sometimes it was even vanilla cream. Yum! We weren't there very long and were still craving pasta, so we ended up eating spaghetti while we were there (I know...). It was really good!

 

Diet Coke is also different in Europe. Besides the fact that they never serve it with ice (we had an Italian waitress tell us it was because Italian women teach their sons that it will hurt their tummy), it had a different taste. Less Splenda and more natural sweet. I sort of liked it! We also had a really hard time getting water that wasn't carbonated (or "with gas" as they said). I felt like I was ordering toilet water when I asked for tap water!

Well, that's it for the review. Enjoy!

Hello everyone! Here's the latest and greatest!

Day 8/9: Bordeaux, France

Bordeaux was another one of those trains, planes and automobile stops... we had to take basically everything to get out to our hotel, which happened to be in the middle of the French countryside. It was beautiful, but I'm not sure it was worth all of the transit to get there. We stayed at this lovely little chateau in the middle of the vineyards, but there was not much to do. We took a short bike ride in the morning, but couldn't go too far because there were no helmets and my bike had almost flat tires (with the speeds these people drive at, I was not risking it!). That said, the views were spectacular and we had a nice chance to rest a little before the crazy, jam packed days of Italy. Kati and I even snuck out into a vineyard and tried some grapes (I know... we HAD to!).

Day 10: Venice, Italy

I absolutely loved Venice. In fact, I think it was my favorite stop so far. The city is basically built on water, so there are all of these amazing canals that are actually used like roads. The city is fairly small and had a lot of churchs (our running joke is now that if you've seen one church, you've seen them all), but we walked all day and shopped and checked out the local people. It was so relaxing and mellow... and beautiful! The gondolas were cool to watch and there was even an evening 'canal breeze' as we called it.

Day 11: Train Snafu (Rome, Italy)

We had a bit of a snafu getting to Rome from Venice. Our train was supposed to leave at 9:21am, so we got to the train station about half an hour before (I'm seriously amazed... they don't check your bags or anything on the trains in Europe) only to discover that the two different people that told us this was the ONLY station in Venice weren't entirely right. We had to run like mad, hauling our luggage to get on a train that would take us to our train. We made it with 6 minutes to spare - scary! The train ride was a very long six hours, but we made it safe and sound. We had another two hour bus tour booked, which I highly recommend because they show you everything in the city before so that you can decide what you want to see. After that, it was sort of late, so we headed back to our hotel room to plot the next day.

Day 12: Colosseum, Forum and Parthenon (Rome, Italy)

Today we got up nice and early to head over to the Colosseum. It was one of the most amazing things I've ever seen - I keep thinking that there's no way that these things can possibly still be standing after all of these years, yet here they are. It was so cool to see where they had kept all of the wild beasts that battled the gladiators (it was under the floor in this complex maze of tunnels and cages). After that, we headed over to the palace and Roman Forum... again, amazing to think we walked up the steps that could very well have been walked on by Ceasar. After that we headed over to this little church that actually used to be Pontius Pilate's headquarters. There, they had the 28 stairs that Jesus climbed the day he was crucified. We had to buy t-shirts to wear in because it's like a zillion degrees and we're in shorts and tank tops, but they actually allow you to climb those very stairs... on your knees. They are originally marble, but have covered them in walnut to save them - but left areas open where supposedly there was blood. Let me tell you, that was the most painful half an hour of my life... I said a prayer on each step. I'm pretty sure I'll have crazy bruises on my knees tomorrow, but it was well worth it... how many people can say I climbed the actual stairs that Jesus climbed just before he died!? Now we are headed over to the Parthenon and then to do some more shopping... woo hoo!

Ciao bella!  

I'm ridiculously excited. Kati and I are planning a backpacking trip through Europe. We've been emailing, calling, etc back and forth for the last week making all sorts of exciting plans. We've got it narrowed down to four countries: France, Germany, Italy and Greece. Tonight we're working on swapping air miles to make sure that we can both get over there for free. We'll see if it all works out!

 

Europe, here we come!