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In: Italy, Travel
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Let’s have a little intermission from the Thailand blog post series and take a little trip to the Dolomites in Italy. Last September some very important people came to visit us in Munich, my best friend from college Sarah, and her husband Malcolm. It was their first time visiting us here and we were so excited to have an adventure with them. Prior to their arrival we discussed some different ideas for seeing something outside of Munich. Alex and I had been wanting to visit the Dolomites for awhile and I thought it would be great to share the European hiking experience with Sarah andRead More →

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In: Thailand, Travel
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After a long night on the train from Bangkok we finally arrived in Chiang Mai. We walked with our bags in the heat a good 20 minutes to our next accommodation, Swiss Lanna Lodge. We knew we picked a good one as soon as we arrived. The whole thing was constructed from Teak wood and with an airy feeling throughout. It sort of felt like a tree house. We were greeted by Toto our host and immediately treated like family. Thais are seriously great hosts! While unpacking it didn’t take long before Alex discovered his iPad was missing. The only explanation was that he hadRead More →

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In: Thailand
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1 year ago this month Alex and I were enjoying the warm weather in Thailand, eating tons of Pad See Ew and lots of new and delicious dishes. Currently we are sitting here in Munich on a cold winter day with some fresh snow on the ground. Facebook’s Memories feature has been reminding us every day of our amazing 4 week trip last year and so I figured it’s about time I sit down and write about it. We covered a lot in for weeks so this will definitely have to be broken into a series of posts. So, here we go… After spending ChristmasRead More →

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In: Austria, Germany, Life, Travel
With: 5 Comments

Part III of my wedding week posts covers the days following the wedding. Or what I am calling our “familymoon”. As mentioned in my previous post, one of the reasons we chose to keep our wedding small was so that we could spend some of our budget on a trip with our families. It was the first time our families met and the first time my family was visiting us in Germany so we really wanted it to be special. Ever since my first visit to Europe, a constant feeling I have when I visit a new place is that I wish I could shareRead More →

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In: Germany, Life
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Skip to the Photos! So, after a full year of planning, our wedding week was finally here. But let’s back up a minute and briefly talk about how we got here. As I think many newly engaged women do, I went a bit insane right out of the gate in terms of wedding planning. I found it so stressful to make the big decisions. How big would it be? Who would we invite? How much would we spend? And of course the biggest question, where would we have it? We discussed having it in the U.S., having it in Germany, or having it somewhere inRead More →

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In: Germany, Life
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The night before my entire family arrived in Munich to visit me for the first time I was a huge ball of emotion. I was excited, nervous, happy, giddy, stressed… Something I know about myself is that I get really paranoid that my guests aren’t having a good time when they visit. I was worried I would ruin the experience for myself if that happened. With the jetlag and my niece and nephew being here, and so many people in one house…there was no telling how things would go. People kept reminding me that my family is coming to Europe, how could they possibly haveRead More →

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In: Croatia, Slovenia, Travel
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Follow my blog with Bloglovin Read Part 1 first, click here. Next on our stop was Plitvice Lakes National Park or Nacionalni park PlitviÄŤka jezera. But first we needed lunch and a campsite. For lunch we stopped at a small restaurant on a creek. I love that you can get so much fresh fish in Croatia. It’s not always as available living in Germany. After lunch we had a small mishap. I was still in my swimsuit and decided I needed fresh clothes on for the rest of our ride. We hadn’t seen any cars on the road so it seemed safe enough to changeRead More →

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In: Croatia, Slovenia, Travel
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in July of 2014 Alex was invited on a sailing trip in Croatia with some of his work colleagues. He decided to ride his motorcycle there and then we planned that I would fly down after his trip and we would make a one-week road trip back to Munich through Croatia, Slovenia and Austria. I will keep this post brief and just mention all of the amazing places we visited. The pictures speak for themselves and it was definitely the way to see Croatia. So I arrived at the airport in Split, Croatia where Alex picked me up on the motorcycle. He had most ofRead More →

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In: Spain
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Coming up on one year ago Alex had his 30th birthday. As always a long overdue blog post. I wanted to do something grand and memorable for the big 3-0. After much research and deliberation I decided we could pull off a long weekend in Spain without going too overboard. I found some airline sales to Malaga, Spain. In March with the weather being still pretty cold in Munich, the south of Spain seemed appealing. After doing a bit of research I found that Malaga wasn’t a prime destination but that there were some inviting beach towns a short drive away and also quite aRead More →

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In: Germany, Slovenia, Travel
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Happy Birthday to my beautiful friend Acacia! I decided I will finally finish this blog post about her visit to Germany LAST SPRING and what better time to do it than the day after her birthday. When Acacia first told me she was coming to visit and we picked some dates I started scheming right away. After a bit of back and forth with a few different ideas we decided to spend some time in Munich and then take a road trip through Slovenia. Acacia had heard so much about my trip there that she wanted to see it. I realized that there was stillRead More →

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In: Italy, Life, Travel
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May 1st or May Day is a big Spring holiday in Europe. Although Munich puts on quite a celebration, Alex and I decided to use the two free days from work to have our first long distance motorcycle trip together through Austria and into Northern Italy. Of course we were hoping for perfect weather and instead got a mix of good and bad. We drove through clear sunny skies to cold rain and even freezing snow. But I wouldn’t have changed a single moment. It was a perfect weekend that will forever be in my mind. Our destination was Lago di Ledro near Garda SeeRead More →

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In: Germany, Life
With: 3 Comments

Let’s see. We’re going back quite a ways here to remember my first months in Munich. I guess I’ll just summarize a bit of my experience from when I arrived until present. Of course the first thing to mention was how exciting it was to arrive in Munich with Alex waiting for me and knowing that this would be (hopefully) a more permanent stay than when I arrived in Basel. This time I was arriving to a city that was new for the both of us and a much larger apartment that we would be settling into together. As anyone would be, I was veryRead More →

On:
In: Austria, Germany, Life
With: 3 Comments

Summer began to turn to Fall and then I had my first guest come out to visit me. My friend Lauren from CA had been visiting her sister in Turkey and flew into Munich for a few days before going back to the States. It was so nice to see a familiar face and have a girlfriend around for a few days (especially a native English speaker!). Showing her around Munich was also fun. I think when you give people a tour of the place you live and see them enjoying it your pride for your city grows a little bit. This was really goodRead More →

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In: Germany, Life
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Lesson #1: In preparation for Oktoberfest I spent a lot of time shopping for a dirndl (the traditional dress the women wear) and making sure I had all the correct pieces to the outfit. This felt a lot like shopping for the prom. I was finally satisfied with what I got and tested out some different hair braiding techniques. Once I had everything on I felt like a princess from a Disney movie. And not in a bad way, this was really fun like when you played dressup as a kid. I left the house feeling a bit awkward like I was going to stickRead More →

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In: Germany, Travel
With: 3 Comments

A few weeks after Slovenia it was my 31st birthday. Alex made me a nice breakfast and said he had to go outside and would be back in a minute. I assumed he had to go down to our basement storage for something. He’d actually taken the train to go rent a car and returned home with a shiny black Mercedes convertible. It was really unexpected and I was all smiles even though I had no idea where we were headed. We drove out of the city and drove along the most scenic road into the Alps. At this point I just assumed we wouldRead More →

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In: Slovenia, Travel
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One of the perks of freelancing full-time now is that I can be flexible with my schedule and join Alex on some of his work trips and turn them into a little weekend trip. At the end of June last year he had to go to Ljubljana, Slovenia for a work conference and of course I wanted to join him for that. It turned out that it was exactly one year to the day that we first met in Ljubljana that we would be back there. We decided to extend the trip into the weekend and stay in the mountains. The first few days inRead More →

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In: Life, Travel, United States
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After my cross-country road trip with Acacia I spent some time with my parents and sister in Nashville. Then I drove from there to DC to visit my friend Sarah and for the first time meet her fiance Malcolm in person. Little did she know I was just a coverup for a surprise bachelorette party orchestrated by her close girlfriends. We took a cooking class, rented a hotel room and spent a nice evening out at some local Alexandria bars. The weekend was topped off with a delicious brunch. After that I was headed to Raleigh for a much longer stay. My sister and herRead More →

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In: Life, Travel
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From Sunny San Diego to a Winter Wonderland I haven’t lived through a cold, snowy winter in quite awhile. No matter how much I remind myself that my roots are in NY and I’ve grown up through some of the coldest, snowiest winters its pretty easy to forget what its like after living in sunny San Diego for a few years. Point being that for me to leave such a beautiful place, with amazing friends and gorgeous weather…there must’ve been a pretty good reason. (wink wink) Of course, the fact that the place I was leaving it all for was Switzerland didn’t hurt either. 🙂Read More →

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In: Travel, United States
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The hardest part about moving away from San Diego was leaving my friends. Ok, maybe leaving the perfect weather and the beach made it difficult as well. Over the 4 years I spent in San Diego I met some really great people. One of those people became like a sister to me and I am determined that wherever we are in the world we will always be connected. When we first met we laughed over all the similarities we shared…it was almost scary. And as our friendship grew we found we had more and more in common. Acacia is one of a few people thatRead More →

Sunset picnic - San Marcos, California

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In: Life, United States
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Part III of III (finally!). Read Part 1 and Part 2. After spending a week in Helsinki my three month trip to Europe was over. As sad as I was to be leaving I was just as happy to be flying back to San Diego. Not only because I missed the place that had become my home over the past three years, or because I missed my friends, or Mexican food… but because I had met a guy and he was on a four week trip through California which would end in San Diego. Alex and I hadn’t seen each other since our trip toRead More →