Emma's Fantabulous Blog

I finally finished uploading pics from My brother & I’s back packing adventure. Final 2 cities: Bologna & Rome.  Check out the galleries here:

Bologna: We braved hiking up terrifying ancient towers and surly men at the train station to eat some the most amazing Italian food we’d had in our lives & to see some beautiful art work in a practically “untouched by tourism” city.

Rome: Seeing all of the ancient ruins of Rome, that I had read about all through high school was priceless, and something I never would have really “got”, without actually seeing it all for myself. The food was mediocre, but the historic value & shit-shops were all A+++. 

So this completes all of my travel photos from My European backpacking adventure. To view all of the pictures, check them all out here. 

So I’m in Canadia for a short holiday. We took Amtrak up to Vancouver this morning. It was a bit rainy, but it’s still possibly the most scenic train ride ever. It goes right along the Puget Sound coast. Lots of beaches, seaweed & wildlife. Tons of Crows, Gulls,  Green Herons and Blue Herons. And the highlight: We saw at least 7 Bald Eagles hanging out & flying around. They are such gorgeous creatures! I guess the rainy days make it easier for them to find meals at the beach. It was pretty cool. I kept interrupting Devon, who was working on his laptop, to say: “Holy crap, there’s another Bald Eagle hunting for his lunch!!!!” or “Look it’s another Great Blue Heron. Don’t they look rediculous???”.

But yeah. I’m in Vancouver. Vancouver rocks. And I’m looking forward to eating at some fantastic restaurants in Yaletown district. We’ve been here 3 times so far & have never been disappointed by just wandering into a random joint.  It seems like everything here is made with local ingredients & lots of passion.

Love it! 

So with the whole being sick thing I’ve had alot of downtime & I’ve uploaded & labeled my pics from Amsterdam & Switzerland, as well as our wonderful hostess’s pics from Switzerland.

My favorite part of Amsterdam was the Anne Frank house. I was in tears and sobbing by the time we finished walking through the museum.  My least favorite part about Amsterdam was the plethora of bike paths and the utter lack of walking paths.  As for Switzerland: I think that this country might be the most beautiful place on earth.

My pictures from Amsterdam:

My pictures from Switzerland:

Nina’s Pictures in Switzerland:

As always, click on the big pics to bring you to each album. Also, sign in to Gallery once you go there (or create an account easily), if you want to comment on the pictures.

Alright, this has to be quick as I’m running out the door to work, and i have about 8 million things on my plate. Gawd, I miss being a little frau-line.

Album: Cote d’Azure & Monaco w/ D & the fam.

Album: Barcelona w/ my brother.

Album: Paris & Bruxelles w/ my brother (and the lemur of course).

I’ll try to post more when I have more time on my hands… Next thursday when I’m off again, maybe?

Hey gang! I’m back in town! I have about 700 pics to upload and caption and I start back to work tomorrow. I had an amazing time traveling around Europe w/my bro. It was so awesome and we saw so many really mindblowing things that I want to share with everyone.

In the meantime (while i’m at work & working on uploading all my Europe pics & stories): Y’all should check out www.howgoodiwas.com. It’s a really great social networking site, created by my dad & his friend, and coded by D, set up to help you brag about your past accomplishments. I think it’s an awesome idea and set up my own profile, complete with pics and vids of my past endeavors of my swim team era days.

I promise I’ll bake pie’s for everyone who signs up via my blog.

Hugs!

I’m getting ready for Europe, as I leave today!!! Woohoo! Fricking France!!! I’m going to eat so much “bon poulet”, its going to be awesome!

In the meantime, while I’m gone: Enjoy this amazing image I found of a Green Iguana female, swimming..

Just like a little adorable Navy Seal. hehe! (click on the photo to go to the site where I found the pic)

As a random aside, did you know that iguanas can hold their breath for 20 minutes?

Alright. So i know that D and I went to Albuquerque a week ago, but with the whole job thing I’ve been falling behind a bit with my blog updates.. SO here we go.

Last weekend, D and I went town to Albuquerque to see and for me to meet some more of Devon’s extended family. We went to a 80th birthday brunch for D’s Gram. We visited the Native American mesa topped settlement of Acoma. We took a tram up to Sandia Peak while freezing our butts off. We went The Albuquerque zoo with D’s cousin Mathais (who amusingly reminds me a smidge of D when I first met him…with the all black wardrobe, driving like a bat out of hell, and being into all things mechanical). We also gorged ourselves on Sopapillas and your other general New Mexican fare… So much so that by the time I retured, I was desperately craving leafy green vegetables and anything that wasn’t fried.

For the rest of my photos, you can go here. 

For Devon’s extensive blog post about our trip, you can go here.

For Devon’s photos, including ones from Acoma, you can go here. 

Sorry that i’ve been missing in action recently. I’ve been using most of my time on the interweb researching backpacking in Europe.

I should explain. In May, my brother and I are going to backpack around Europe for 2 weeks. We’ll start in Nice, France and 15 days later we’ll be flying home out of Rome, Italy. We plan on Eurailing it around the continent and traveling on the cheap as much as possible.

Our current itinerary includes stops in Barcelona, Brussels, Amsterdam, Zurich/Schaffhausen, Florence and possibly Bologna. I’m looking forward to eating some amazing food, drinking some great wine, sleeping in overnight trains (which actually look amazingly posh compared to Amtrack as they have white linen restaurants and bars) and staying in cheap hostel/Bed & Breakfast type places and meeting other travelers.

Its kind of daunting. Finding inexpensive but safe places to stay in each city and figuring out the european train system…. Each country seems to have its own train company, and their websites are all separate and the translations are kinda wonky. Its like planning 7 trips at once.

I’m really really really super excited…..

As I mentioned beforehand, Devon and I went to Las Vegas last week for a belated 2nd anniversary trip.

My favorite pic from our trip:

Devon wrote a really nice write-up about our adventures in a blog entry (entitled Snakes in the Desert). So I won’t repeat the same basic spiel that he did. But I’ll give a quick recap.

Some fun, delicious and beautifully decorated places we ate at were: Wolfgang Puck’s Trattoria del Lupo, RM bar, SeaBlue, Tao, Shanghai Lilly.

Some fun stuff we did was: Saw some cute sea critters at the Shark Reef, rented a Dodge Viper & drove out to the Hoover Dam (a random aside: I love the landscapes in the SW. I always feel so happy and serene there.), relaxed at THE bathhouse at our hotel (which I recommend as an absolute must to anyone who gets the chance, seriously, OMG, it was awesome.), saw Crazy Horse (awesome), saw Zumanity (I enjoyed it, Devon thought it was just ok.), and lost $15 on slots in an incredibly short amount of time.

Check out all my photos here!

So Devon and I are going to Vegas this holiday season for 5 days. We’ve been meaning to take a real 2nd anniversary trip and finally found a good time.We got an awesome deal on airfare (if you fly on a major holiday you can get great deals), and 4 nights for the price of 3 nights during a certain holiday time-frame at theHOTEL at Mandalay Bay (we had an awesome time there last year!).

I’m currently reserving seats at shows and restaurants.  Currently we’re booked to see Crazy Horse (at MGM Grand, previously named La Femme – which we have already seen and totally adored!) and Zumanity which is the “adult-themed” Cirque du Soleil playing at New York New York Hotel.

D and I have another free night and we’re debating to also see either: a.) X Burlesque at the Flamingo (basically what it sounds like) OR b.) ICE direct from Russia at the Riviera (Ice skating gymnasts and acrobats.) Yeah. Guess which one of us wants to see what. No but really, both seem really cool. Actually whatI really want to see is The Thunder From Down Under at the Excalibur, but there’s no way in hell that Devon would pay to see that with me.

For dinner, I reserved us a table at Tao (a restaurant/nightclub where lots of celebrities like to party). It serves a bunch of delicious sounding Asian dishes, and I’m totally looking forward to that. And hey, maybe we’ll even see Britney or Paris there.

Also, I’m intrigued by Joel Robuchon at in the MGM Grand complex, but the meals there are $$$$$.  They offer 6 course tasting menus for $225 per PERSON as well as a 16 course menu for $360 per PERSON!?!?!!!!

But yeah. Any rec’s for amazing entertainment or food in Las Vegas?