Oink Oink, We'll Be Pigs!

On Saturday evening, Nick, Joe (his dad) and I returned from a wonderful 10-day trip to Europe. The main purpose of the trip was to visit Joe's paternal & maternal relatives in Croatia; however, we tried to see and do as much as 10 days would allow. We had such a fantastic trip, and I especially want to thank my svekar (father-in-law) for acting as our fearless vodič (guide)and translator!

Wednesday, August 5th

Waiting to board our Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt in Logan

Thursday, August 6th

Exhausted after flying all night here Nick is filling up somewhere in Germany. Following this, we ate our 1st authentic German meal at Burger King.

Friday, August 7th

Salzburg

Saturday, August 8th

Dinner with Joe's cousin Nada. Nada was so much fun and became our travel companion for the next several days.

Sunday, August 9th

Zagreb

Monday, August 10th

Dubrovnik

Tueday, August 11th

Plitvička Jezera

Plitvička Jezera

Wednesday, August 12th

Pašman



Zadar


Thursday, August 13th

Three generations of Priselacs! Visiting with Joe's uncle Yanko near Zagreb- I can see the resemblance!

Friday, August 14th

Driving to Munich

To visit Annette & Christian, who prepared us an authentic German feast!

Jacob & Martha helped :)

Joe & Nick loved this car in our hotel's parking garage in Munich

Saturday, August 15

I think even Nick is sad to drop of our Citroen Picasso at the Frankfurt Airport

What a great trip! Now, back to reality...

Orlando Magic

My mom and I took a trip down to Orlando last Wednesday to play some golf and visit Disney World. The two of us visited about 10 years ago, so it was great to make a return trip with my mom! We managed to plan our flights from Boston and Hartford, so we'd arrive early Wednesday morning. On Wednesday afternoon, we sat by the pool for a bit and took some bikes around some trails that ran throughout our hotel's property and that evening we headed off to the Magic Kingdom.

We were the only 2 people over 4 ft waiting to have our photo taken with Goofy

Thursday morning we woke up bright and early to play some golf, and later in the afternoon we headed over to EPCOT. EPCOT is my favorite Disney theme park, and we ended up spending about 8 hours exploring Future World and World Showcase. There was no line for Spaceship Earth (really no lines in any of the parks), so we hopped on that ride first.

There have been a lot of changes to this ride since I was last on it; most notably, Walter Cronkite has been replaced by Dame Judi Dench as the narrator. I missed Walter Cronkite, but otherwise the ride was great. They take your picture at the beginning of the ride, only to insert your photos in a short cartoon that's played on the screen in your cart at the end of the ride.

The future looks like a scene from the Jetson's

Friday morning we headed over to Animal Kingdom. I had never been there before, and really enjoyed all the attractions. Aside from Expedition Everest, my favorite activity was the Kilimanjaro Safari tour.

We saw baby elephants

I thought this rhino was going to hop in the car with us...

That evening we went to dinner in Downtown Disney and browsed in the shops afterwards. LEGO's were my favorite toy growing up and there's a store dedicated to all things LEGO there.

A history of LEGO people since the beginning. This was really awesome & I wanted to play with all of them.

Over the next 2 days, we played golf a couple more times and made a return visit to EPCOT. On our final golf outing on Sunday, we learned that Tiger Woods shoots some commercials for Nike on a short par 3 that features an island green.

Hopefully Tiger didn't lose as many balls here as we did...

We had a great trip, and it was so much fun to spend time with my mom and get out of the city for a few days!

Let's See What's Behind Door No. 1

Despite the fact that it's supposed to in the low 90's today, I wanted a light jacket to bring into the office in case the AC was cranked up to arctic levels. So, I walk over to the hall closet...

Open the door...

and...

ARGH! Closet fail.

Once I dropped an entire bottle of olive oil on the floor. The immediate realization that it was going to be a major pain in the rear end to clean up was so depressing that I left the mess as it was for about an hour, just to regain my composure (although secretly hoping it would somehow take care of itself.) In this case, I'm leaving tomorrow morning for Florida with my mom and I'm hoping that the coats, fleeces & parkas will have resumed their normal hanging positions by the time I have returned on Sunday.

Son of a Beach

Leah, Lauren and I had a fun time in Newport this weekend. I've known them for almost 18 years and they've known each other even longer than that! It's so nice to have life-long friends that share a lot of memories and inside jokes. Despite the rainy forecasts, it was sunny and warm both days. We arrived on Friday afternoon and on a friend's recommendation we ate an excellent dinner at Sardella's and had drinks at Fluke. On Saturday, we spent the day at Sachuset (2nd) Beach. The water was actually pretty warm; however, there was a lot of seaweed in the ocean which colored the ocean waves reddish brown. That night, we had drinks at Tucker's (check out the photos on their website- cool artsy decor) and ate some of our ocean friends at Newport Tokyo House. On Sunday, we decided to skip the beach in favor of the Cliff Walk. This is a beautiful, relaxing walk that offers great views of both the ocean and Newport's mansions. Non-resident parking in Newport is scare, but we were luckily able to find either metered, street or lot parking without much trouble. Since our hotel was in Middletown and not in Newport, we didn't take advantage of the public transportation. There's a seasonal trolley that provides transportation to the beaches and points of interest, so it might be worth paying extra to stay directly in Newport for the trolley's convenience.

A Running & Donation Update!

Time to get this blog back on track! First of all, many thanks to Betsy, the Stacey family (especially little Isabelle), and Lyndsey for their generous donations! Tonight I am continuing my stamina training and running 6 miles at the faster pace- 6.9 mph on the treadmill.

Oh, & here's one more photo from Lisbon. What do you think the safety rating on the Smart car is? 0?

Some Photos from Portugal

Please enjoy some photos from our trip!

The hotel mattresses were so stiff that even my 210 lb husband couldn't make a dent in them.

Here's the view of our hotel from the beach.

Friday night we had dinner at a local restaurant, which provided us with some fine local entertainment.

I'll raise a glass to that!

About 10 years ago, Lisbon had some art commissioned by the same artist who designed the LOVE stamps. Here's Nick in the O.

Nick with fountain.

Here I am posing with some chick near the castle in Lisbon. If you think this is crude, you should have seen what we caught some British dude doing... (the photo is a little too risque for the blog...)