Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Published Wednesday, January 28, 2015 by with 1 comment

Venice

Next stop on our European vacation, Venice! We were only stayed in Venice for one day and the night. (Check out our previous stops in London and Paris).

I left off in Paris where we got on the overnight train to Venice. Matthew and I planned on eating dinner on the train in the dinning car, because we're on a train and how often do you get to eat in a dinning car? But the dinning car was closed down and there was no food. It's a good thing we had some snacks, we ended up having a granola bar we brought from home, a truffle from Harrods, and a macaron from Laduree for dinner. Three foods from three different countries, it could have been worse. After dinner the conductor came by turned down our bunk beds, and took our passports for boarder control stops during the night.
When we woke up the next morning we were in Italy! Matthew went to the conductors room to get our breakfast (again since the dinning car was broken, just some bottled juice and a croissant). Our passports were returned to us and we were sort of disappointed when we flipped through them and didn't get any stamps from the countries we went through, but we were almost to Venice!

From our room on the train.

Pulling into the train station in Venice.


Outside of the station. What a gorgeous view to see.

We decided to use the public transportation boats to get to our hotel. It was not a good experience for me. I don't think that I'm a prone to claustrophobia, but I was nearly in tears by the time we got off at our stop because it was so packed on that tiny little boat. (I told Matthew that I was never doing that again, we walked back to the train station when we left the next day). The view from the plank where you wait for space in the 'station' was pretty though.

I was very happy when we made it to our hotel! It was super cute and very Venetian in decor.

I needed to relax for a bit with some tea and a biscuit before heading out into Venice.

We ate lunch on one of the plazas before heading into Plazza San Marco. 





The Bridge of Sighs.


I enjoyed looking through this open air market. You had to watch out for peddlers though, we even saw some police chasing some for selling purses illegally.

Leaving the plazza. We only had to things we really wanted to do while in Venice, eat gelato, and get lost. We got gelato after leaving the plazza. 

Then we got lost exploring the island.

Found some tiny streets to wander.

Sometimes you had to look up to see the details. This picture does not do the stained glass justice. Venetian glass is a thing of beauty!

But we made it back to our hotel! We rested up and enjoyed the happy hour they hosted, with wine of course.

We headed back out to see the plazza at night (and not get lost on the way back).




Then we ended our day with how it was started, some tea and a snack in our hotel room.

If you want to see all the pictures I took in Venice click here or check out our previous stops in London and Paris. Up next our last destination, Rome {one, two, three}.
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Thursday, January 22, 2015

Published Thursday, January 22, 2015 by with 0 comment

For the bestie

So I'm a couple days late with this one. One of my best friends got married on December 20, 2014, and I was hoping to get these posted for their one month of marriage but alas I didn't, I blame island life already. 
Hope this brings back some great memories, you're a very beautiful bride, Larissa! Miss you friend!

 








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Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Published Tuesday, January 20, 2015 by with 3 comments

Our New Home

Time for a tour of our new house! Matthew parents are letting us stay in their guest cottage until we are able to get a house of our own. It actually is really nice to be so close to family.

Here is our little house.

The view from our front door. Angelina is really enjoying the sun and weather.

Going around the side of the main house.

Closer to the back. Lovely mountain and ocean view. Be jealous.

And we've reached the back yard. I should have taken the photos earlier in the afternoon while the sky was clear. But we were busy organizing our cottage and finding places for stuff and I took pictures during a break.

The other side of the backyard. If you could see a little further on the left side, you would be able to see the cottage we're staying in.

And the view from the other side of the pool.

When I got back, Angelina was sitting in one of our favorite spots to sit in. There are two reclining chairs in the cottage and we like to sit there to look out the window and feel the breeze coming through.
Maybe once we get the cottage cleaned up and our stuff put away I'll take some pictures of the inside. But right now it's a bit of a mess and I don't want people to see that.

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Monday, January 19, 2015

Published Monday, January 19, 2015 by with 2 comments

We Made it to Maui

After nearly a week of driving from Dallas, TX to San Diego, CA and a 6 hour flight we arrived on Maui yesterday.
The animals were champs the entire time while traveling. They did excellent on the plane too. Angelina was the most scared and did whine some, but is anyone really surprised by that?
We spent all day yesterday unpacking and cleaning up the cottage we're staying at to make it feel more like home. This morning I woke up at 3:30am since my body is still on Texas time. When Matthew woke up we drove to Haleakala to watch the sunrise. A must see!

Just before the sun started to come up.





There it is!








Seeing the sunrise is a very popular thing to do at Haleakala, so it reaches capacity quickly. We had to watch from the lower lookout on the other side of the crater today since it filled up. Still an amazing view. I even overheard one tourist say "I didn't even know that was on my bucket list of stuff I had to see,"

The other side of the island, where we actually live now.

We stopped for breakfast at Kula Lodge on the way down the mountain. It was super delicious and also had a great view, but I left my camera in the car. 

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