Murano and Gondolas, again wet and rainy

Well, it hasn’t stopped raining. 

We woke up this morning and it was dark outside, but it wasn’t raining yet. Even through breakfast, it wasn’t raining. By the time we were ready to head out the door…it starts raining. Hoorayyyy… 

But, at least today is was mostly drizzles, whereas yesterday the sky was sobbing tears. We headed over to Murano this morning to shop around and see the glass. Mom and I were having a blast looking at all the different shops, jewelry, designs, etc, but Dad just kind of followed around and handed Mom the credit card when needed. Haha. We had a good time, regardless of the rain. We saw the lighthouse and some really cool outside glass art exhibits. 

From there, we took the vaporetto back to Venice/San Marco square where we were scheduled to have a gondola ride. Our gondola ride wasn’t scheduled until 3:45, and it was only 1:30 at this point. So we decided to walk around the shops in the alleys behind San Marco for a while. Then, it was on to the gondola ride! 

We met up with our gondola riding group and hopped on. It wasn’t raining at this point, so most of our gondola ride was spent in sunshine. This was quite a nice change. It was beautiful getting to go in between the alleys where almost no one is…it was so quiet, compared to the loud San Marco square and the Rialto bridge where we have been spending most of our time! Unfortunately, by the end of the ride, it was raining. 

From there, we walked around a tad more. Mom has been wanting to see a church here called San Zaccharia. We hadn’t been able to find it yet, but we finally did today. It was really pretty inside. It’s funny to me how churches are always the most grand. Then, we stumbled upon, yet again, another pastry shop. :) I don’t know how we always find ourselves there… ;-) We all picked out a pastry for tonight. Then we decided it was time to grab dinner. Our family usually doesn’t eat a big lunch when we are on vacations, so we hadn’t really eaten since breakfast this morning. We found a cute little place, had some wine, and ordered ourselves some pasta. I had gnocchi with gorgonzola cheese sauce. Mmmm. I don’t know what it is, but the cheese is just better here…it’s so. good. Everyone reported having a good meal, so all was well. :)

After dinner, we sat in the square by San Marco after looking, again, at some more shops. …we did a lot of shopping today, apparently. My Mom had been wanting to see the square all lit up, but we got cold and left early. So now we are in our hotel room, packing up and eating pastries. Tomorrow we head to Florence! I am so ready to see my sweet Firenze again. :)

Here’s a few pics:

 

Until next time,

Beth

Venice, rainy and wet

Ciao!

We have spent two days in Italy now. We had a long day yesterday…it was technically two days, I guess. We left May 14 and arrived in Venice around one p.m. on May 15. We left bright and early, stopped in Boston and Madrid – we got to see the sunrise over Madrid, that was pretty cool – and finally arrived in Venice!

Once we got in Venice and got to our hotel, we decided to go walk around. We took the vaparetto over to San Marco and explored just a bit. We were all exhausted…we had been up almost twenty four hours at this point. By the time I went to bed last night, I had been up for twenty eight and a half hours. Yikes. Anyway, we walked around, took the vaparetto for awhile, and then grabbed some dinner. I had macaroni with tuna and peppers. Pretty decent. We were sitting right by the grand canal, so we had a great view. Our hotel is right by the Rialto Bridge, which was the first bridge to be built in Venice, although the current one is not the first – it has been rebuilt several times.

After sleeping for almost fourteen hours straight, we had a breakfast at the hotel and took the vaparetto to San Marco. We had a walking tour today…boy, we should have done this yesterday. Let me just say that the weather has been the exact opposite of the first time I was here. When I was here three years ago in July, it was so stinkin’ hot, that my sweat actually cooled me down. It was pretty miserable. Yesterday the weather was PERFECT – sunny, just a tad windy, and the perfect temperature of not too hot, not too cold. Today, however, it rained nonstop and was windy, but the wind was COLD. But, we braved it anyway and went on our walking tour. We got to see inside San Marco Basilica and walked around the back parts of Venice. It was lovely, despite the rain.

We were supposed to have a gondola ride around the canals after the tour, but we were told it was post poned due to the lack of people available to go on the tour – honestly, I don’t think I could have gone on a gondola ride today without yarfing all over the place. It was pushed back to tomorrow, where hopefully the weather is better and we will have more people to go on it with us…apparently you need a minimum of six people.

After our tour, we grabbed some lunch. Our only wish was to sit inside for about an hour to get a break from the rain. We found a restaurant by our hotel near the grand canal and had some pizza. HA. We asked the waiter how much pizza one got with the price on the menu, and he said enough for one person, so we were thinking one slice. Nope! We each got our own whole whopping pizza. Dad ate all of his! Mom and I saved some and decided that leftovers would serve for dinner, since we heard that it was going to be flooding by then. Due to high tide and all the rain, they were expecting around one meter of rain in the square of San Marco. So, after eating lunch, we walked around the shops, bought a bottle of wine, some cheese, bread, and pastries, then took them up to the room.

Unfortunately, a tornado went through my hometown last night. It hit our neighborhood pretty badly. A few of our neighbors were reporting to us via facebook what was going on, and I have phone service here for emergencies so my Dad spent some time talking to insurance people about our house. The damage was very limited to our home, but some others in the area were not so fortunate. A scary thing to wake up to, but so so happy that it looks like it will all work out. We are lucky to have some really great neighbors! They were so extremely helpful in getting that all taken care of.

After relaxing in the room for awhile, we took a walk to San Marco. It was flooding pretty badly at this point. I was wearing flip flops and decided to venture in the yucky water out in to the square while my parents stayed dry in the alley. The water was COLD, but I am so glad I did it. You always hear about Venice flooding, but now I have actually gotten to see it! I thought that was pretty neat. From there, we walked around some more, rode the vaporetto around to see the canal lit up, and then went back up to our room, poured some wine, and chowed down!

Here are some pictures – these were all taken from my phone. I don’t feel like editing the ones on my camera just yet…most of these I posted on instagram..

 

Tomorrow we are heading over to Murano, hopefully getting our gondola tour, and doing some more exploring! Then, we are heading to Florence. Ahhh, sweet home.

Until next time,

Beth

Arrivederci, Grad School (and Texas)

Ciao, all!

Phew, it’s been quite a while since I posted. I fully intended to keep using this blog to follow my internship journey over the spring semester while I was at Connections Individual and Family Services. Alas, I found myself quite busy between going to two classes, writing papers, studying for my national exam later in the year AND school, and seeing clients. The spring semester flew by; I was enjoying seeing clients so so much. I have learned a LOT about myself, others, and the counseling profession over the past few months. I feel so passionate about my future career and I feel fortunate to have met the people I have through my internship.

Now that the semester is over, I only have one quick summer semester and then I am officially done with graduate school! In August, I will have my Master’s in Arts in Community Counseling. Eek! I have been going to school for so long…I have a feeling I am not going to know what to do with myself after the mayhem of this summer (I only have 10 weeks to get 300 internship hours…I did it in 16 this past semester, and barely.)

But, for now, I am getting ready to head to…

ITALY!

:)

My parents are the best and are flying me to Venice tomorrow morning for an early graduation present. I will be getting to spend 12 days with my mom and dad in one of the most amazing places I have ever been – I am STOKED. We are spending time in Venice, Florence, and Rome. At the end of June, it will have been three years since I studied abroad there. The little italian I learned while I lived there has long since left my brain, but hopefully I can pick it up again while we are there. I am so excited to eat the food again (gelatooo), drink the wine, and see the sights!

I will try my best to update while we are there; I am unsure of what our internet situation will be like, but hopefully I can update at least once or twice.

Now I am off to finish packing and load up my kindle with books for the loooong day of traveling tomorrow…check back here for more updates soon!

Arrivederci,

Beth

Canada Christmas: Post 3

Hello all!

Alright, so like I said, I am only going to hit the highlights of the Canada trip. So next on the list is the Campbell River Museum.

The Campbell River Museum is a tiny museum in town that highlights Campbell River’s history. If you are ever in Campbell River for an extended period of time, it is worth checking out. It has a really good First Nations section, with totem poles, jewelry, masks, and a little “show” – a recording of a man is telling the story of Siwidi, and as each character is talked about, a light shines on the appropriate mask. It sounds kind of cheesy, but it was actually quite interesting.

Some of the other sections allow you to “walk through” what life was like for the population of Campbell River in the past – there is a miniature boat house, a mini hotel, and a whole section on salmon fishing and logging. After walking through these and reading everything (there really is a lot of stuff to read in this tiny museum – I didn’t even get to it all!), go to the little theater at the end and watch the movie about Ripple Rock. I had never heard of Ripple Rock before, so I quite enjoyed the little movie about it. Wikipedia describes Ripple Rock as an “underwater, twin peaked mountain” which caused a lot of trouble for fisherman and tradesmen. In order to provide safety on the water for those traveling near it, the town decided to – what else – BLOW IT UP! It took them years to get it all ready because they had to do underwater mines and tunnels and tubing. It all sounded very dangerous and scary to me; I definitely would not want that job. When they finally blew it up, it went down in history as the largest non-nuclear explosion in history.

We later went to the site of Ripple Rock – it now looks like this:

So peaceful.

The outside of the museum has some noteworthy objects, as well. There is a big boat that is in surprisingly good condition for it’s age – it was made in the 1930′s or something and was a fishing boat. Along with the boat, there is a “steam donkey.” This was used to replace horses and oxes in the logging industry.

Here are some pictures:

The old fishing boat outside the museum.

The “Steam Donkey”.

And that is it for now!

Next time I will tell you all about the beautiful Mount Washington…still dreaming of that place…

-Beth

Canada Christmas: Post 2

So if you have ever been to Canada, I would bet that you have seen a Tim Horton’s. Tim Horton’s is basically Canada’s version of Starbucks, but better – they have DONUTS. I thought it only fitting that we get Tim Horton’s for breakfast while in Victoria. There were a few within walking distance downtown, but we were going to have to drive to our first stop of the day, Craigdarroch Castle, anyway, so we found one close to our destination. Tim Horton’s is supposed to have magnificent coffee, but I am not a coffee drinker. I got a chai tea latte instead and it was pretty satisfying, especially since the sun hadn’t come out yet and it was chilly and gray. Chris got some breakfast bagel thing with eggs and cheese and bacon or sausage or something, but I decided to get donuts. I loooove donuts, but I don’t eat them very often because they are so awful for you. I probably have donuts on average two to three times a year, and we were on vacation, so I figured “yes.” I got two donuts: one regular chocolate dipped donut and one special Christmas donut, chocolate candy cane. Holy. Crap. It was a chocolate donut, dipped in chocolate, with candy cane chunks on top. Mint and chocolate is probably the best combination ever created, and this donut was perfection. 

With our bellies full, we went to Craigdarroch Castle. This castle was built by a rich family in the 1800′s, the Dunsmuirs. Unfortunately, the father died just before the castle was completed, but his wife and family still lived there for many years. It is absolutely gorgeous and has a really cool history – it was the family home for years, then a hospital during WWI, then became the housing and classrooms for Victoria College. When you walk in, you are told to go up the four floors on the “main side” (where the family lived) then go down the servant side. You can imagine my excitement because we were basically in Canada’s version of Downton Abbey. The main side is full of Victorian Era furniture, silverware, books, etc. etc., and it was set up with Christmas trees and 1800′s toys. It was so fun to imagine what the house really looked like during those Christmases in the past! Most of the stained glass was original, and the dining room table and chairs were original to the house, as well. Each room told you a history of the family member that inhabited that room, and what it was utilized for during the war and during the house’s college years. The servant side was a little more bare, and a lot of the rooms are now being used as offices, but it was still really neat.

After spending about 1 1/2 hours to 2 hours at the Castle, we went to the Fisherman’s Wharf in Victoria. I had wanted to get fish and chips for lunch down by the water, but everything was closed up for the winter, (sad face) but we decided to walk around anyway. We were looking at the beautiful boat houses when we heard a noise in the water. So we look over, and there is a seal within about 5 feet of us feeding and playing! It was so neat! We stood and watched him play for awhile and then kept walking around and looked at the boats, when we saw another seal! This guy just swam up to us, literally about a foot from us, and I swear we made eye contact. He was so precious. He came up for a breathe of air, looked at us again, then swam off. Ah, it was so cool! 

The weather was so lovely, and we enjoyed a nice walk over to the Laurel Point Inn to see their annual gingerbread house competition. I was expecting to have to pay money for it, but it ended up being free. A nice surprise! The gingerbread houses were sooo intricate – there was an Up House, a Millenium Falcon, and my favorite one, the Nightmare Before Christmas, just to name a few. I liked seeing the different materials they used for decoration. 

It was about 1:00 at this point, and since we hadn’t had lunch yet, we decided to go ahead and head out of Victoria. I wanted to stop in Duncan on the way back to Campbell River and see the totem poles, so we thought we could just grab some food on the way out. Downtown Victoria can get a little pricey if you eat a lot of meals there, and we were on a budget. We ended up stopping at an A&W (which are everywhere in Canada, it seems) and then drove straight to Duncan. It seems we got out of Victoria just in time – they had a big snow storm that night. By the time we got to Duncan, it was raining quite a bit, so Chris just stopped the car and I ran out and snapped some pictures of the totem poles. Duncan is a cute little town, though. There isn’t much there other than the poles, some shops, and the world’s largest hockey stick. (Which, we looked for, but didn’t see. After talking to Chris’s family later, they said it is really hard to miss – it’s apparently just right off the highway. Oops. We’re just special, I suppose.) 

When we got about an hour and half out of Campbell River, it started snowing. I am really glad I wasn’t the one driving, cause I would have been really really nervous. Chris handled it really well, though, and we ended up at one point driving behind a snow plow for a bit which really helped. It made our drive back a LOT longer, though, but we were safe! 

And that was the last of our Victoria experiences. Quite a cute city that I definitely would love to go back to. My favorite things were the Butchart Gardens and the Craigdarroch Castle, so if you are planning a trip to Victoria – PUT THEM ON YOUR LIST. 

Craigdarroch Castle

The Billiard Room in the Castle

Seal at the Fisherman’s Wharf

Winner of the Gingerbread House Competition at the Laurel Point Inn

Totem Poles in Duncan

Until next time,

Beth

Canada Christmas: Post 1

Happy new year, all!

Sorry it has been awhile since I have posted; I was planning on blogging while I was IN Canada, but I ended up not really having time to do that. SO, you get blogs AFTER the fact. We did a lot of cool stuff, but not everyday. Our main purpose was to spend time with Chris’s family. I am so glad I finally got to meet that side of his family and I felt so welcome by them. We had a lot of good laughs, A LOT of good eats, and a great Christmas.

So, instead of giving you twelve day-by-day posts, I will just cover the exploring that I thought was the most enjoyable.

First up: Victoria!

Chris’s family lives in Campbell River on Vancouver Island, which is about 3 and a half hours away from Victoria, the capital of British Columbia. Chris’s parents gave me and Chris a night in Victoria for our Christmas present, so we drove down there for two days and one night.

We left at 7 A.M. It was DARK when we left. The darkness was the hardest thing to adjust to while we there, I think. I kept sleeping later than I normally would at home and I think it is because in San Antonio I have the sun creeping through my windows. It’s not like that in Canada during the winter. It also gets dark early, like 4:00 PM.

Anyway, we made the beautiful drive to Victoria and survived the Malahat! I was not expecting to see sun while we were in Canada (which I was ok with – I like grey weather), but we did have sun on the drive down AND the whole time we were in Victoria. I love dark gloomy weather, but I am glad we had sun in Victoria because we were exploring so much. After checking in to the hotel, we ventured over to the Royal B.C. Museum. This museum is a must see if you are interested in history. There are two floors – the first floor covers the First Nations history with masks and totem poles and a life size First Nations hut! I really enjoyed seeing all the artifacts. The third floor has been converted to an “Old Town”; basically how people lived in B.C. during the late 1800′s to the early 1900′s. They had old clothes and shoes and I was all over that. I was kind of rushing our visit there because I wanted to go to Butchart Gardens that night and we still had to grab lunch and do some other things, but I definitely definitely want to go back and spend more time in that museum.

From there, we walked around a bit and decided to just find somewhere to eat lunch. We stumbled upon a little restaurant called The Clay Pigeon. They had interesting sandwiches and salads and things. Chris got a reuben sandwich…which had “house corned bison tongue” as the main meat. That is weird to me, but I DID try it and it was pretty tasty. I had the porchetta sandwich, which was really refreshing! It ended up being a good pick with decent prices for being in downtown Victoria.

After lunch we walked over to the Fairmont Empress Hotel. The Empress is a gorgeous hotel that I want to actually stay in (someday when I am rich and famous and own a library) and have afternoon tea! We heard there were Christmas trees set up in the lobby, so I had to get to see some of the inside. The trees were all sponsored by local businesses and groups so they had themes – one was a hospital so it had blood bags and gauze hanging around. It was fun to see what the groups had come up with; our favorite was the Victoria Lego Club’s tree. Chris was so jealous that Victoria has a Lego Club.

I wanted to walk around the Parliament building because it is free to walk around, but we got a little side tracked. We were walking up the stairs to the door and there were two security guards hanging out. Chris literally had his hand on the door knob and we were about to walk in when he heard the guards say “..then a tesla drove by…” and I knew we were not going inside. Chris stopped, looked over, and said “Did you just say you saw a tesla?” Turns out, there was a group of people who decided to drive a Tesla from the East Coast of Canada (Newfoundland) to the West Coast (Vancouver Island) and there was a celebration for them outside of a hotel right down the street from the Parliament building. Chris looked at me, and I knew he wanted to go. Since I had planned everything we were going to do in Victoria and I didn’t really care about going inside the building, we went to go see what the hoop-la was all about. For those that don’t know, the Tesla is an all electric car; Chris has been going on about how cool it is for the longest time, otherwise I wouldn’t know about them. Chris had never seen one in person before, so he was really giddy. It was pretty cool to see the guys that had done all the driving – it is a big deal that they drove across Canada in an all electric car.

I wanted to leave for Butchart Gardens by 4:00 P.M. because it is a 20 minute drive and I wanted to see the place before the sun went completely down. We both wanted to go sit down and chill for thirty minutes before heading out there, so after gaping at the cars for awhile, it was 3:30 and I made Chris leave so we could relax for a bit.

I was so excited to go to Butchart Gardens; all the pictures I had ever seen of it, though, were in the summer or spring time. It is supposed to be fantastic during that time of year, but I am a firm believer that if you are somewhere and you want to do something – do it, because you never know if you will actually come back. So, it went on my list of things to see. I had looked into their holiday season information before we left and was pumped. As soon as you drive up, there are twinkly lights EVERYWHERE. When you walk in, there is a coffee shop that had hand made snowflakes all over the windows, a skating rink, and LIGHTS EVERYWHERE. I loved it. Everywhere you looked, there were lights. We walked through the gardens and saw the lovely greenery with red bows and lights…truly a winter wonderland! It was pretty magical. They had a “12 Days of Christmas” hunt; throughout the gardens were the twelve days (partridge in a pear tree, two turtle doves, three french hens..etc etc) and at the end there was a little stage set up where carolers sang and a brass band played. It was definitely one of my favorite things we did in Victoria.

When we got back to downtown, I wanted to walk around and see the Parliament building and the Empress all lit up. It was COLD, but worth it. We walked around down by the water, saw a swan swimming, and gazed at all the lights. I was, at this point in the trip, in the middle of a cold, so I felt awful and my legs were hurting from all the walking. I was starving, but I did not want to walk around to find a place to eat. We went back to the hotel and Chris tried to find a restaurant close to us that was reasonably priced with food we wanted. Sometimes, when Chris and I are deciding on places to eat, we both get really reaaaaally indecisive. I wanted to try an Italian place, but Chris wanted Chinese. We ended up just ordering room service since I wasn’t feeling well and it was freezing outside. It was nice to stay inside in my pajamas with a hot bowl of soup and a warm cup of tea and relax.

Masks in the Royal B.C. Museum

Chris with the Teslas

Butchart Gardens

Parliament Building at night

Well, that was our first day in Victoria! I immediately fell in love with the city as soon as we got there – it really is a beautiful place. Tomorrow I will post about our second day there.

Until then,

Beth

Vermont Wedding Trip: Post 4

After we recovered from all the food we ate on Saturday, we packed up because it was time to leave Stowe. Chris, my mom, dad, grandpa, Mae and I were all heading down to Orwell for some time at the lake. I was really excited because 1) it is my most favorite place in the world and 2) Chris hadn’t been there yet. 

Before heading out though, we all went to the Cold Hollow Cider Mill. When I was about 10 or 11, my Mom and I went to Vermont for a wedding of one of the lovely ladies of the lake. I had danced with her the whole night at my first wedding (the one I had blogged about) and then were pen pals after that. I loved that group of women who watched me grow up at the lake; they used to babysit me from time to time and I looked up to them (and I still do). Anyway, I was really excited about this wedding, and it is what solidified my goal to get married at the lake in the fall. Her wedding was absolutely gorgeous and I loved everything about it. But, I am digressing a bit. (I told you guys I love weddings.) That Columbus day weekend we were there for the wedding, my Mom, Grandpa, and I went to a cider mill. We got hot cider and…CIDER DONUTS. They were SO delicious…hot out of the oven and covered in cinnamon sugar. Ohmygoddd. Just thinking about it makes my stomach growl for cider donuts. 

So when we got to Stowe and I saw that cider mill…and they had a sign for donuts…I kind of freaked out. And that is how it came to be that on the Sunday we were leaving for the lake we stopped at the mill and enjoyed some hot cider and donuts! It was the perfect rainy Sunday morning. The only thing? The donuts were good, but nowhere near as good as the ones I had as a kid. I don’t know if I just built it up in my mind or something since then, but…they were just so darn-tootin good! But hey, I still ate like, three cider donuts! 

 

 

After a few donuts a piece, we all loaded up in the car and took the beautiful windy drive to Orwell. It seriously was a gorgeous drive – through the mountains and all the changing leaves on the trees; I was in Heaven. 

Upon arriving at the lake, Chris and I walked around for awhile and then it started to rain (it rained almost everyday we were in Vermont), so we went inside and did a puzzle and then played games until bed time. 

Monday was our last day in Vermont and lucky for us, the sun decided to come out! Chris, my dad and I took a hike up the mountain that is behind our house for a view of both of the lakes. I hadn’t done that hike since I was in high school, and it is a lot harder than I remember it being. (Or I’m just older.) The views are worth it, though. After lunch we took a canoe ride to the other side of the lake with my mom where a Boy Scout camp is. We technically aren’t supposed to go over there, but we figured that Chris is an Eagle Scout and we would be ok. :) After exploring the grounds, we decided to head back and we spent the rest of the day lounging and reading by the water. We had an early bedtime that night because we had an even earlier flight back to San Antonio the next day. 

 

 

It was a wonderful time spent with family and close friends and there were definitely some great memories made. :) 

I rushed this post a little bit; I wanted to get all caught up becauuuuuse Chris and I are heading to Canada tomorrow! His grandparents live on Vancouver Island and we are all heading up there for the holidays. I am pretty pumped; the weather is going to be cold and rainy but that is the stuff I love. I can’t wait to explore some of the sights there, and hopefully I will be posting some blogs while I am there. I’m not sure if I’ll have time, but I will try.

I hope everyone has a safe and happy holiday!

-Beth