Around the World in 80 Days!

This is a result of life happening so fast that i almost can't keep up- or at least i don't update my blog.. but i do want to fill in the last couple months of europe!

We left our job in sabina in the beginning of august and went back to the chaos of rome, only to be joined a few days later by my dear friend amanda! with amanda we traveled, first to tuscany where we stayed with our replacements for sabina (ever seen under the tuscan sun? well this british couple is living that movie, and we caught them at their villa before they moved to sabina to start working after we left) they have an amazing property and new life in the beautiful tuscan town of castiglion fiorentino, and it was a perfect start of our tour of tuscany. of course we went to florence to hang out with the david for a few days, i opted not to go in the museums and pay all over again since i'd been there before, so nate and amanda became "museum buddies" while i enjoyed some alone time- for the first time in a long time! and somehow we were able to connect with one of amanda's friend's cousin, simone, who ran a bed & breakfast in the hills, where of course we stayed for a wonderful night! and the tuscan tour wouldn't have been complete without stopping in pisa, which we did for a few hours and had way to much fun taking silly photos of the tower.

After returning to rome we decided to continue on and found ourselves couch surfing in pescara, on the eastern coast of italy. we stayed with a guy through couch surfing who showed us the town and nearby beautiful beaches and introduced us to many of his friends, we enjoyed it so much that we stayed an extra night! he and his friends cooked us the best meal i had in italy this summer, squid risotto and an assortment of other seafood, so fresh and soooo mouth-wateringly good. i literally still daydream about this meal.. i never would have gone to pescara if we hadn't found someone to stay with there, and i'm so glad we did, it was so non-touristy, i couldn't believe we were still in italy. and we attended a couch surfing dinner where we met a very nice couple from munich, and we ended up staying with them during oktoberfest! amazing.

after pescara, the museum buddies "did" rome for a couple days, and then my parents arrived! we rented a car and all 5 of us went to the amalfi coast for 3 days, stayed in maiori, visited capri where we swam through beautiful grottos, bussed to sorrento, and of course enjoyed the scenery of windy roads and cliff towns.

On the way back north we stopped in pompeii to see the ruins and the bodies that the eruption of mt. vesuvius left behind, and of course, we went to naples- in search of the best pizza in the world! if you've read eat, pray, love, then you know which pizza i'm talking about, and yes, after having to ask several italian men and getting pointed in all different directions, we fatefully ended up right in front of l'antica pizzeria da michele. got there just in time, because shortly after our arrival, a line began to form at the front door. we hungrily and savoringly ate the best pizza in the world while taking in the surroundings of the amazingly simple yet famous napoli restaurant. and this was just the beginning of our travels! we spent one last night with friends in rome, and then amanda left us for spain and we continued north to cinque terre, stayed in a camp ground, i had mentioned how much we missed camping, this was the closest we got and it felt sooooo good! we visited the 5 towns, picnicked on the beach, hiked up to corniglia to eat an amazing seafood dinner overlooking the sun setting on the sea... ate blueberry gelato on the beach (possibly my new favorite) and of course had our fill of pesto and focaccia (local to the area). after our "last days of summer" we headed north to lake como, OH MY GOSH why did it take me so long to go there!? it's really breathtaking, a stretch of lake surrounded by tall mountains, the weather was much cooler, and overall it was a very refreshing experience to get out of the heat and be in a new (and such a beautiful!) place. to top it all off our balcony from our hostel was facing the water, with amAZing views. we ferried across it, oh how i love lakes and mountains, and continued on to venice, only to return the car and be on our way to AUSTRIA!

My dad really wanted to go to salzburg and do the sound of music tour, so that's just what we did! what a beautiful town salzburg is, and the sound of music tour was definitely a highlight of the trip. we saw the von trapp mansion, the lake, gazebo, tree-lined alley, the cathedral, the abbey, the mirabelle gardens, EVerything, and we SANG! it was corny and touristy and so much fun. i highly recommend it:) we followed that up by going to the augustiner brau biergarten, a truly amazing place. the best beer i've ever tasted, right from the old barrel, walls covered in steins, the garden covered with tables full of happy people, and the smell of meat in the air, YUM! we stayed for four very happy hours. short and sweet was the stay in salzburg, for then we were on our way into germany, for a very important date. my parents were about to meet the parents of my german sister lydia, who lived with us for a year in high school. it was a sweet reunion and such an exciting meeting for all the parents! we all stayed at their house that night and had a big family dinner, lydia doing a lot of translating for them:) the next day we continued on, this time with lydia, to berlin! my favorite thing about berlin is the sandeman's free tour of east berlin which i raved about in a previous post from last year, and i happily did that for a second time. it was as amazing as the first one, a storybook come to life. we spent 4 days in berlin, during which lydia left, my parents left, megan came, and daryl also came! so finally, when it was just the four of us (me, nate, daryl, and megan) we started the BEGINNING OF THE END of our travels.

Our first stop was poland! luckily i was able to get a hold of a dear friend of mine from tahoe who is actually from poland, and he put us up and introduced us to his country! in 4 days we saw szczecin, poznan, krakow, and auschwitz-birkenau. POLAND= beautiful people, a tragic and depressing history, a crazy language, and dangerous vodka. na zdrowie! i think everyone should go to auschwitz, the "death camp", it was a very chilling experience learning about the horrible mistreatment of the people, and seeing it all still there is unbelievable. it should definitely never be forgotten. poland was an experience in itself. from there we took a bus to prague, czech republic. prague was amazing! we arrived on the first day of the wine harvest, so there was a festival going on in the town square, with little huts selling amazing-smelling food and drinks, people dancing, horses pulling buggies, parades, etc. there is an astronomical clock that puts on a show every hour, and it's just a very comfy and cozy place to be. we actually did a pub crawl one night and it was really fun, but the best part may have been the food! i had the best cheeseburger i've ever had outside the states, and the next morning we went back for a big american-style breakfast, something at least 3 of us were really missing! kudos to prague for quenching our cravings. there's a lot of history there that i knew nothing about, actually it was really interesting to have gone from the walking tour of berlin to the concentration camp in poland, and into prague because it seems to make the history of the area really come together. this is my favorite european city thus far, we spent 3 days wandering the streets and enjoying the sights before taking a deep breath and heading to munich, and you all know what that means- Oktoberfest!

Here we met up with our friend frances that we knew from rome, and like i mentioned before we couch surfed with the nice couple we had met in italy, they were so accomodating! they cooked for us and drove us to and from the train station and gave us comfortable beds to sleep in and a really nice shower! it felt good to be taken care of, and was SUCH a needed change from our first experience at Oktoberfest last year. we spent one entire day at oktoberfest, a TUESDAY, which meant we walked right into the tents at 11am and commenced the drinking. it was just what it should be- a band, people singing and dancing on tables, ladies carrying 29 steins, platters of meat, giant pretzels, and new friends everywhere you look. plus we couldn't stop eating, the food was too good. SO MUCH FUN, eventually we ventured outside and rode a roller coaster, the ferris wheel, the bean bag racing slides, and the drop tower, and the whole day went off without a hitch! and most of you know what i mean by that! thank god:) until we lost megan, but then we found her and all was well. and with that checked off the list, the last stop on our list was istanbul, for which we bought tickets all the way back in april i think. so the 5 of us went to turkey and stayed with my ever so kind and generous friends blake and liz in their tiny apartment. in the next 10 days daryl left, my friend michelle (from florida, texas, ohio, and costa rica) came, megan left (so weird! after all this time, she went back to the States), and frances left, which left just nate and i, michelle, and blake and liz. we ventured to the black sea one day, went to asia twice (across the bosphorous canal), ferried to the princess islands, and went countless times into the old town and the bazaars. my favorite was the spice bazaar, talk about overstimulation! istanbul has a population of about 18 (give or take a few) million people. it's literally shoulder to shoulder walking in some of the places in that city, and there are just people EVerywhere, it's really overwhelming. but the food was tasty and the people were really nice, and we learned a few things in turkish. it was good to see michelle again after so long, it's been since new years 06 in spain! it was challenging to be in a world ruled for and by men, when i'm so used to being treated fairly and even with chivalry in the US, and elsewhere. i saw an old woman on a bus actually get up so a younger man could sit down, WHAT!? and once i saw a man run into a woman on the street and then actually have the audacity to yell at HER for his fault. it's definitely different there, and after such a long time away and such a whirlwind of travel, i was so excited to be returning to the states after turkey. for me, there was only one foreign country left to visit: a place called minnesota.

We went "home" and surprised nate's entire family, his mom screamed so loud that both his little nephews started bawling. we went back for a wedding, so we spent the next 2 weeks visiting friends and family and seeing some of the sights of minnesota, a BEAUtiful place, before finding a ride (craigslist- love it) across the country (with a bonus layover night in Bozeman) back home to tahoe. where we are now, finally settled in truckee and just awaiting the winter season. i'm thinking about taking a bit of a break from traveling and enrolling in a program next fall that will prepare me for taking the translator certification test for spanish/english. what? me? career? yeah maybe, we will see what the next year brings! oh and i'm thinking about writing a book... so thanks to all who actually read my stories, and stay tuned:)

j

when life gives you figs, make fig jam!

so its now almost the end of july and so much has changed, im very behind as usual on updating my blog! as i mentioned in the last one, the pub crawl job wasnt really working for me, it was long hours and exhausting! though it definitely was fun, but it just wasnt for me, or nate. so we began looking for different jobs online, and we happened to come across an offer to work at a villa in the hills just north of rome, managing a yoga retreat. then basically within a week we had completely changed direction and rather than living in rome, we found ourselves in the sabine hills, in a villa/property that might as well be called paradise. its beautiful, green, flowers everywhere, the garden is perfect and happens to be the pride and joy of a romanian who works very hard full time to create this paradise. its on of one of many rolling hills (just imagine tuscany.. even though we are in lazio) so we have an amazing view and even more amazing sunsets. there are about 250 olive trees on the property, from which they harvest their own olive oil each fall, and the olive oil is GOOD! there is a swimming pool with lounge chairs, a pond, an organic vegetable garden, an outdoor yoga platform that overlooks the hills, hammocks everywhere, and 2 beautiful villas with guest bedrooms, the kitchen, etc. oh and 5 yurts for the crowded weeks.
FAQs- 1- what exactly do we do? 2- what about megan and the apartment!? 3- how long are we doing this for? 4- are we glad were doing this?
1- this happens to be a pretty demanding job and we are being compensated for working 8 hours a day 6 days a week, with one full day off. the task list is too detailed to explain, but basically i do a lot of managing work. the villa is a property owned by one woman who provides rooms and 3 meals a day to groups of about 22 people who visit one week at a time with their own yoga teacher and schedule of events, etc. so that said, she does not live on the property. thats where we come in, we are the ones who pretty much run everything. i deal more with the guests, answering questions, making reservations for car transfers and restaurants, making the shopping list, doing the shopping, and what have you. my task list is endless basically. im the right hand person of the owner, and i keep everything organized for her. i also set up breakfast every morning, while nate cleans the pool and outdoor showers. we both are responsible for watering about 900 flowers, ok, a bit of exaggeration there, setting up and cleaning up for every meal (at least we have an amazing local woman who comes and cooks lunch and dinner), and generally making sure everything is perfect and tidy. its a lot of work for such a big property and so many guests! nate works often with the romanian gardner whos name is fani, yep. and he only speaks italian (well and romanian but that doesnt help), which nate doesnt, so often they climb trees together to pick figs and all you hear are monkey sounds going back and forth in the trees, i guess they have figured out ways to communicate! when hes not picking figs nate is mowing the lawn or fixing something or helping me with something. and he has learned some italian, he might not know how to say how are you, but he can say where is the lawnmower:) and other garden-talk.
did i mention we have at our disposal an old fiat panda to drive around and do errands in? we also get it on our days off, but old pandy doesnt like to go too far..
2- dont worry, we didnt leave megan high and dry:) she basically gave us her blessing to take this job if thats what we wanted to do, and literally the day we left some of our friends moved in, so she isnt lonely, and she is still loving rome. shes a bit worn out on pub crawls now too and finding other things to do, but is thoroughly enjoying the roman city life. weve seen her a few times on our days off, and shes coming to visit us one of these days!
3- we only promised that we would work for a short time, not through to the end of the season which happens to be until november, no way! so we plan to stay until the mid-end of august until people start coming to visit and its time to start traveling! which we still plan to do with megan at the end as well, though we have no clue whats going to become of october-december. and if any of you read my posts from my horror story at the brasilian airport, youll appreciate that now amanda and i have finally set another travel date! shes coming august 18th, so we will get to finally start our abroad adventures together, it just took us a year and a half:) and megans family is coming in august, mine in september, and there will be lots to see and do for a month until october, when we plan to go to turkey and meet michelle, yay! and then no plans yet..
4- yes we are very glad we took this job. it may be a lot of work and it may be really hot days, and it may just be my last job in the service industry (yeah right) but it is very rewarding. and thats what we werent finding in roman pub crawls. i guess i always wanted to live in a villa in italy and experience real italian small town life, and i am now. we are learning something new every day about italian cooking from elide our cook, weve learned to make really yummy bread, kneading and everything, we have some of the best olive oil in the region, we drive up the road to the old farmer every few days with our empty jugs to refill them with wine, from his very own warehouse full of huge vats of merlot, san giovese, etc.. the tiny nearby village has festivals almost every weekend that we sometimes get to attend, weve been able to roam the roads in our little panda and see parts of italy that we simply would never have seen, and i personally am learning a lot about management for one, but also traditional work like making bread, cooking for 25 people (did i mention we cook the lunch of fridays?) and working in ways that we just wouldnt do things in the states, sometimes i feel like cinderella but its also fun. and nate actually really enjoys his work with the garden/gardener and is learning some italian, and we are meeting people from all over the world which is always good. we miss camping and hiking and biking and floating the river and bbqs (this retreat is vegetarian- good thing we have a meat fridge just for us!) but in the end yes its worth it and we are glad to be there doing it.
right now we happen to be in turin, where i studied abroad 3 years ago. we took the job under one condition- that she would allow us a week to take a vacation to paris, which we just got back from, stopping in torino for a couple days before heading back to sabina. id never been to france before and i loved it! paris is a lovely city and the eiffel tower at night really is a sight to be seen. no one had told me that at midnight, the tower has a series of lights that flash, and it appears to be sparkling, its amazing, and we were literally underneath when it started. so glad we were there for that! we mona lisa-ed and walked around everywhere, we stayed with a friend i had met in montana last summer, and it was nice to have a guide for at least a day! i think now id really like to try southern france and really learn to speak the language better than a few sentences!..
so that catches us up to where we are now, there are at least 2 photo albums on my facebook page, one of rome, one of sabina, and more to come! i cant believe its already the end of july!

just another day in rome!

well, the hard part is over with! it ended up taking 4 1/2 days for my luggage to arrive (let's not talk about that again), 2 weeks for us to find an apartment, and almost 3 weeks for nate to get here, but now that all that is said and done, we are free to focus on work and enjoy the hot roman summer! we found a nice apartment in san giovanni, which is only a 15 minute walk to the colosseum, and we are very happy with it, its spacious with high ceilings and internet included! being able to give my family virtual tours of the apartment through skype is unbelievable. our landlord only speaks italian, so it was a test for me right away to scrape it all up from the back of my mind and put it to use making phone calls and meeting with him, and dealing with all the lovely issues of signing a lease, paying rent and deposits and getting a new washing machine while megan stood by and politely tried to be part of everything. but now that we have our own space, it is worth it. the neighborhood is nice, easily accessible, and has everything we need within a couple blocks. we figured that we probably walk at least 6 miles a day, back and forth between home and the colosseum and the rest of the city. this is our justification for eating pasta every night and panini every day:) 

and yes, we have jobs. megan and i have just finished week 2 of work with the colosseum pub crawl. what exactly do we do? well we, along with about 15 more staff members from various english-speaking countries, hang out around the colosseum during the day (or the pantheon, spanish steps, or wherever we are in between) and invite people to come out to our pub crawl that night. it's a promotional sales job, we make commission on everyone we personally get to come out that night. then we all go back out at about 9pm to the colosseum where we meet everybody and play drinking games and get to know each other (we have anywhere from 60-150 people each night) and then depending on how many recruits we get, how long and hard we work etc, we find out at about 10pm if we "get a shift" that night, which means we either stay, party, keep the group together and get paid for it, or we have the option to go home and sleep, or stay and party and not get paid for it. i always go home and sleep if i don't get a shift, i know, no surprise there, but this job is exhausting and we desperately need our sleep! so in a nutshell that's what we are doing right now to pay the rent, and nate started friday and he'll be working with us too. i'm hopefully going to start selling tours soon (of the colosseum, vatican, roman forum, whatever) because it's strictly a daytime job and the commission is higher, but we will see how things go. 

meanwhile, in rome, the uefa champions league (european soccer) final is in a couple days, and there are tons of festivities going on, this event is way bigger than the superbowl or the world series i'd say, and it's right here in rome, so even though tickets are 1500+ euros and already sold out anyway, it'll be fun just to be in rome while it's happening, and if im lucky maybe i'll get to see cristiano ronaldo or ronaldinho walking down a street somewhere!:) it's manchester united v barcelona, it's going to be a great game, go barcelona!

today is memorial day, and usually we would be working except there's a big concert tonight at the colosseum for the festival, so for some reason we get the day off. yesterday we went to the beach, which apparently is what every roman does on a sunday, and i wont make that mistake again, but the water was cool and refreshing. and last night we went to a staff bbq and it actually felt somewhat like memorial day, since our host was from new york. we will probably check out the concert tonight and enjoy our night off! and we are planning on a taking a few day trips here pretty soon, to remind ourselves of where we are and why we are here, not just to work 24/7! but so far so good, i'm going to put up some fotos, and for those of you on facebook i already posted an album to my profile of pictures from megan's camera, more to come.. 

a presto!

j

from a 4th story hostel window..

What do you get when you mix 6am flights that last 24hrs, afternoon roman thunderstorms, 2 homeless girls, and pub crawls? Well, where to begin. First you get your luggage left behind in denver because the clueless united airline woman in reno was obviously not doing her job, which leads to wine before noon over pizza and much conversation, interrupted by phone calls from italians trying to rent us rooms in english (thank god i had my italian phone in my purse, not my luggage). Then in attempt to not look like i just got off a plane on which i hardly slept, i borrowed shoes and a shirt from megan to walk to the colosseo where we were enthusiastically greeted by our new co-workers of the pub crawl, where we promptly got stuck in a rainstorm and huddled under the arches of the colosseo with a couple gladiators and several penguin jokes. After quickly becoming part of the team we tried to brave the rain, ended up giving in, bargaining and buying a 2 euro umbrella, made it back to the hostel where we crashed until we had to wake up and go back to the colosseo for our first pub crawl, and my second t-shirt in the last 8 months that says "i came, i saw, i crawled," which i happily wore because it was a clean shirt, and all i had were my flying clothes. After flip cup, beer pong, new friends and a few strange shots, we had to drag our somehow wide-awake selves back to the hostel at 3am, where we got about 6 hrs of sleep, more than the previous 2 nights combined. 

That was day 1, this is day 2, and today our priorities were just as straight as yesterday. breakfast was gelato. we were supposed to start working today but decided i need my luggage first (which didn't come yesterday, hasn't come yet today, and better be here by tomorrow) and we need a place to live when we have to leave the hostel tomorrow morning. Fortunately we had a couple options which we checked out, and tomorrow we will be moving into a small room in a nice apartment about 15-20 minutes walk from the colosseo, with 3 italians but only for the next week. We are starting to set up appts to look at several apartments in the next few days and are hoping to find something perhaps by the end of this week that will work for the 3 of us all summer. our first apartment viewing is tonight, and i think pasta is in order and perhaps an emergency visit to H&M (i have a good excuse this time) (not that i need one) before we embark on pub crawl #2, wish us luck! (for which, i'm not sure:)