In our backyard...

Me: She's too little.

Josh: No, she's not. Look at her. She likes it.

Me: No she doesn't. Look.

Josh: Yes she does, you just have to push her.

Me: Not too high! Her little neck...

I was wrong. Or course. Once she started going, she was all smiles.

To quote my friend Amy, "this is why kids need dads."

Wordless Wednesday: Lazy Morning

Overheard Last Night

Josh (on the phone to his friend while we were at the Apple Store):

Hey, I'm so sorry. I forgot about the Fantasy Draft tonight and will be late getting back for it. There's been an emergency.

My iPhone died.

***

No, our house hadn't caved in. No family members had died. Riley hadn't developed a serious illness. And I wasn't in labor. All situations that would constitute as emergencies in my book.

But the iPhone dying? Apparently that's an emergency to my husband.

I may never let him live that one down.

A Happy Five Years (and one week)

As of last week, I've officially been married to this guy for five years.

FIVE YEARS!

He makes me laugh.
He hugs me.
He trusts me.
He prays for me.
He loves to buy me thoughtful gifts.
He's my best friend.


... And he's as cute as ever.

I'm a very, very blessed girl. Thank you, Lord.

Europe: Josh's Top Ten (4 of 4)

1. Ancient Rome

With my interests in both history and architecture, I was anticipating this sight more than any other that we would see on the trip. For whatever reason, I have always been fascinated by the classical civilizations (and Rome in particular), and it was great to finally be able to see the area that I’ve been studying on some level for more than a decade. For the purposes of this post, I’m defining Ancient Rome as the Forum(s), the Palatine Hill, and the Colosseum.

For those that aren’t incredibly familiar with the area, the Forum was the main public square of Rome throughout both the republican and imperial period. The ancient Via Sacra (Sacred Way) is the central axis of the Forum, and it is lined with the ruins of the vast temples, administrative buildings, and triumphal arches that served as the heart of Roman society for a thousand years.

The Palatine Hill overlooks the Forum, and over time it evolved from simply the most desirable address for the Roman aristocracy to the seat of imperial power. While there are certainly gardens and other structures on the hill, a large portion of the hill is covered by the ruins of the massive imperial palace built by Domitian in the mid 1st century AD (in fact, the word palace is derived from the word Palatine).

The Colosseum is probably the most famous building in Rome, and this massive stadium, built over 1900 years ago, served as the entertainment centerpiece of the Roman Empire. The Colosseum boasts an intricate network of tunnels and a structure that allowed over 50,000 people the opportunity to see the often grotesque spectacles of the day. It was a true marvel of its time, and it remains impressive these many years later.

The Forum was the highlight for me. It was so incredible to see things like the mound of earth where Julius Caesar was cremated, the rostrum (speaker’s platform) that Mark Antony used to eulogize him, the triumphal arches that celebrated important military victories, and the delicate, curved façade of the Temple of Vesta, but I was most pleasantly surprised by our visit to the Palatine Hill. I pretty much knew what to expect from both the Forum and the Colosseum, but the splendor of Domitian’s Palace was incredible. In particular, the personal stadium enclosed in the walls and the immense patio that looked out over the Circus Maximus were impressive even in their current state.

All in all, it was just such a pleasure to experience this area, and gain a better understanding for all the history that took place in this very location.

The Emperor's personal stadium at Palatine Hill

The Temple of Vesta

A view of the Forum from Palatine Hill:

Europe: Josh's Top Ten (3 of 4)

3. The Jordaan

While the party town nature of Amsterdam makes it somewhere that I would never want to live, the charm and beauty of the Jordaan made it my absolute favorite neighborhood on this trip.

This segment of the city was built on and between four major canals that served to expand the city beyond the historical center during the “Golden Age” of the 16th and 17th Centuries. The area is now an upscale, but lively, community that abounds in charm is a pleasure to walk.

The main attraction of this area may very well be the canals, but the beautifully gabled row houses and the atmosphere created by all the cafes and bicycling locals give the area a unique quality that would be difficult to duplicate anywhere else.

The area is certainly not devoid of tourists (the Anne Frank House and Canal Tours bring a lot of people to the area), but the Jordaan still feels predominantly authentic, and it was a wonderful base for our time in the Netherlands. We spent the majority of our days in the Netherlands traveling to other towns, but it was always nice to come back to the Jordaan at night and find a café or just stroll along the canals and soak it all in.

The row houses were extremely picturesque - tall, thin, and sporting different types of gables.  There were also several house boats docked along the canals. 


The canals at night were especially pretty.

2. The Cinque Terre

The Cinque Terre (“five lands”, in Italian) is a collection of five cities built on a mountainous and rocky segment of land on the shores of the Ligurian Sea just south of Genoa. These cities were once quite remote, and they still can’t be accessed by car. There is a train that runs between the towns, and footpaths (some more difficult than others, as we found out) now connect the entire area. This area was the birthplace of pesto sauce, and it featured heavily on the menus of the seaside restaurants that we enjoyed over the two days we stayed in the Cinque Terre.

When we scheduled the Cinque Terre for our last stop on the trip, we knew that we would probably be exhausted from travelling and would welcome a place to enjoy beautiful scenery and get some rest before we headed back home. Well, we did get to experience some incredible scenery, but rest wasn’t exactly in the cards.

When we arrived on the train with our massive backpacks, we stopped at a local shop to ask where we could find our hotel, and we were greeted with a laugh and a simple point toward the ceiling. He told us to turn around the corner and take the stairs up to the top. When we turned the corner, we understood why he was laughing. The stairway was incredibly steep and seemed to go on forever (to add insult to injury, the portion that we could see turned out to be about a third of the total stairway). There are other stories that I could tell that involve a copious amount of stairs, but they probably only serve to make my wife angry with me again, so I will leave those for another time.

The area was insanely beautiful however, and probably the most beautiful stretch of sea coastline that I’ve ever seen. The footpaths afforded spectacular views, and the quaint nature of the towns and the nice people that we met provided a really nice setting for the end of our trip.

The stairs.  They were especially intense with backpacks on.

We stayed in this town, called Manarola:

Not a bad place to stop for a snack.
The view from our balcony:

The views from our hikes were pretty incredible.

Europe: Josh's Top Ten (2 of 4)

Continuing on with Josh's Top Ten...

6. The Vatican

As we walked into St. Peter’s Square for the first time, we knew that we were in for a grand experience. The vast, curving colonnade really sets the stage for the massive scale and artistic excellence of the entire Vatican. We went on to tour the Vatican Museums and St. Peter’s Basillica, and the splendor of each surpassed the expectations that were established for us.

The normal highlights of the museums, the Sistine Chapel and the Raphael Rooms, were obviously a delight, but it probably won’t surprise anyone that I was most enthralled by the massive Gallery of Maps. This 16th century gallery, longer than a football field, acts as a complete map of the Italian peninsula. After it was painted, it allowed the Pope to get a better idea of the geography of the surrounding countryside without ever having to leave Vatican City.

The scale of the basilica was really a surprise. It is so much bigger even than the other massive cathedrals that I’ve seen (St. Paul’s in London, Notre Dame in Paris, etc.) that it just overpowers the senses. It is an incredible building, and the structure itself is noteworthy in its own right, but even this can’t overshadow the wonderful collection of artwork that is housed inside. From the soaring Baldacchino by Bernini to Michaelangelo’s Pieta, it was incredible to walk through the basilica and see all of these masterpieces.

While it could be argued that the splendor of Vatican City may not be the most effective use of church resources (I’m still not completely sure where I stand on this), as a tourist it was absolutely incredible.

The Map Rooms:

Raphael's Deliverance of St. Peter:


Standing on the spot where Charlemagne was crowned Holy Roman Emperor in St. Peter's Basilica - a little crazy.



The dome was really impressive.


5. The Neighborhoods of Paris

Of the three major cities that we visited, Rome had the best sights, Amsterdam had the nicest neighborhood (more on that later), but Paris was the most consistently beautiful city of the three. From Le Marais (where we stayed) to Montmartre and the Latin Quarter, I was really impressed with the walkability and community feel of all the neighborhoods that we saw.

Although I would have liked to spend more time almost everywhere we went, this would especially apply to Paris. Unfortunately, we were really only able to breeze through these neighborhoods with the amount of time that we were in town, but even in that short amount of time, it was easy to see why so many people seem to like Paris. It would be a fun place to live someday to really gain a better understanding of the city.





4. The Hill Towns of Tuscany

After our time in Rome, we stayed in Florence for two nights before renting a car and exploring the Tuscan countryside on our own. Florence was wonderful (I’m sad that I have to leave it off this list), but the hill towns that we encountered on the road will probably bring us back to Italy for another vacation.

We stopped at three towns in the course of our day on the road. The first, San Gimignano was a fascinating medieval citadel with over a dozen tall towers that overlooked the rolling countryside. Significantly less touristy was the walled city of Volterra that was a bustling city of the Etruscans almost 2500 years ago. Finally, we made our way to Siena, a somewhat bigger, less quaint, but amazingly beautiful city in Central Tuscany.

While they all provided a different view of Tuscany, the real highlights were San Gimignano and Siena. The towers of San Gimignano provide a spectacular backdrop for the quaint twisting streets and storefronts that lie below. In Siena everything revolves around the central square, the Piazza de Campo, and this is truly one of the most spectacular squares I have ever seen. We spent a couple hours just sitting in the square, and it was a great way to end our wonderful exploration of Tuscany.

Our little quasi-automatic car:

Overlooking San Gimignano:



A tower in Volterra:

The square in Siena.  It is hard to tell from this shot, but it is fan shaped and slopes down toward this building.  A perfect place to sit and spend an evening.

Europe: Josh's Top Ten (1 of 4)

We have so many memories and pictures of our much-loved vacation that it has been a little difficult to decide what to share on this here blog. After all, we're confident that you don't want to read about it until kingdom come. And since we don't agree 100% on what we liked best (really, there were simply too many choices!) we've decided to write separate series of brief blog posts on what we liked best about our trip.

Josh is going to give you his overall "Top Ten" while I plan to concentrate on some favorites from the specific countries we visited (France, Holland, and Italy).

So, in his second ever blog post, here is the beginning of Josh's Top Ten:

10. The view from the Arc de Triomphe

This designation is somewhat of a cop-out as I was trying to decide between the Arc, the Champs-Elysees, the Eiffel Tower, and the museums of Paris, and this kind of covers them all. The Eiffel Tower obviously features prominently from this vantage point as do the avenues, gardens, and buildings of the Axe Historique, but the view extends beyond these things to the curve of the Seine, the spires of Notre Dame, the dome of the Pantheon (St. Genevieve), and the elegant Basilica of Sacre Coeur that sits atop Montmartre.

The Arc also sits in the middle of 12 of Paris’s grand avenues, and it allows the perfect perspective to view Baron Haussmann’s grand plan for the city of Paris. Haussmann’s bold initiative in the mid 19th century bulldozed large segments of the city in order to create broad boulevards and grand monuments, and this has paved the way for urban design projects in cities around the world. This “New Paris” is certainly a sight to see from the top of the Arc.








9. Dutch Food

Going into the trip, I knew pretty much what to expect from the culinary offerings of both France and Italy, but the cuisine of the Netherlands offered the potential for more surprises. Fortunatey, the surprises turned out to be positive. From the Dutch pancakes covered with nutella and bananas to the croquettes (even of the McKroket persuasion), everything was excellent.

Everywhere we went, it seemed like there were foods to tempt us. One day, in Alkmaar, we must’ve stopped at about six bakeries and three cheese stands and piled ourselves high with bread, cheese, and waffles that we could enjoy on the train ride to Haarlem. The next day we enjoyed a roadside stand in Drimmelen that served the best bami croquettes and fries.

Those who know me will vouch for the fact that I am not the most adventurous eater (especially with meats), but I really enjoyed sampling the different foods of the Netherlands and I look forward to having them again.

These are croquettes. They're sometimes served with bread, so you can eat them like an open-faced sandwich.
Jessica's mom wasn't too pleased that we chose to eat at McDonalds while in Europe.
You can sometimes find croquettes at these unique vending machine-type restaurants. They make them fresh behind the scenes, then put them in these slots. You come up, put in some change, and open a little door to grab your treat.


8. The Pantheon

The fact that the Pantheon comes in at number eight on this list really speaks to how much I enjoyed this vacation. This is a building that I have been eager to see for years after learning so much about it from my days as an Architecture major in college. Fortunately, it didn’t disappoint.

From the square, this temple dating from the 2nd century AD is certainly imposing, but it is on the inside where the Pantheon really impresses. Upon entering the Pantheon, the expansive coffered dome soars over the circular room that now serves as a church and a shrine (the graves of Raphael and the first two kings of Italy reside in the space). The dome, which was the largest in existence for much of its history, later served as the inspiration for renaissance architects Brunelleschi and Michelangelo as they designed their famous church domes around Italy.






7. Brielle

One of the true highlights of our time in the Netherlands was our day trip to see the places where Jessica’s grandparents lived in the past, and the jewel of that trip was the town of Brielle. Brielle is outstandingly picturesque collection of orange-roofed buildings surrounded by canals. For a small community, it was very lively. There were plenty of shops lining the streets and boat traffic in the canals.

In the few hours that we spent there, we ate on the main canal, walked the streets to the boyhood home of Jessica’s Opa, and climbed the tower of the local church to look out over the surrounding country. Brielle was one of the more charming towns that we saw on the trip, but it was also a wonderful opportunity to learn more about family history.



The view from the top of the church: