{Travel} Christmas in Italy - Bergamo!

As we prepare to travel back home to the States, I wanted to share the last leg of our Italian Christmas journey with you. This time, we stopped off in the city of Bergamo, near Milan, for several days. My husband worked most of the week in a smaller, nearby city and taxied the brief commute back and forth each morning and evening. That left me time to rest, relax and browse the various Christmas markets that seemed to pop up on every street corner. I love the festive holiday feel!

From top, clockwise: Two nighttime streets of Bergamo, just outside our hotel—the photo on the right depicts part of the Christmas markets in the left of the image under the lights; yours truly on the balcony of our hotel room before conquering the day; pedestrians enjoying the sunny Bergamo afternoon in the town centre; one of the city's many gorgeous buildings.

Though we were in Bergamo longest, I have to admit we did the least in this destination—especially since the husband was working and I was moving a little slow due to exhaustion and delayed jet lag, I suppose. But it didn't stop us from taking in the local culture as much as we could, and now we have our fill of Italia until next time!

From top, clockwise: A photo of Bergamo's city centre, above which lies the Old Town (on the hill); my husband's surprise dinner when he ordered the sea bass; devouring his fish like a champ!; another beautiful building; Italian pasta. 

Well, I hope you enjoyed our tour of Italy as much as we did and I'm so glad I got to share photos with you all! Now we're headed back to Texas just in time to celebrate Christmas with our families—always a busy but happy and enjoyable time. Have a fantastic holiday!

{Travel} Christmas in Italy - Verona!

Continuing on our Christmas journey to Italia, we departed Milan and headed in the direction of Venice, stopping just short of there. Arriving in the charming town of Verona, Italy was a sweet surprise in itself. The husband and I both loved this place—it felt authentic and very, very Italian. Our hotel certainly made a difference, as well, since it was very nice, perfectly located and had one of the largest rooms we've ever had in a European hotel in all our travels to date! There was even a bellhop to lug our suitcases up to the room, which we fleetingly admired before heading out to explore the town.

Left to right, from top: Our hotel off a bustling street in Verona; sweet treats after dinner!; beautiful Italian buildings in the square; myself and the husband in our hotel lobby before heading out to dinner; daytime street shot in Verona.

Verona is, perhaps, most famous as the setting for Shakespeare's well-known romantic saga, Romeo & Juliet. In fact, there's a home supposedly known as "Juliet's Home" where the legendary balcony is located (you know, the one from which she cried, "Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo?"). There's also a statue of her and loads of love letters left behind by romantic-seeking individuals in search of their soul mate. The walls at the entrance to the home appear to be covered in gum and graffiti, but at closer glance it's merely thousands of signatures of folks who also wish to find their own slice of love.

Clockwise, from top: The sign marking the entrance to Juliet's home, already covered in signatures and markings; the husband and I with Juliet's statue; and him standing in front of the wall of "graffiti; a love letter left behind on the Christmas tree in the middle of the courtyard; a view of the balcony, attached to Juliet's home.

Left to right, from top: a piazza in Verona with a gorgeous fountain and Christmas lights; a bottle of wine we enjoyed at dinner one night, made locally; us next to the Adige River, which runs along nearly half of the city.

There are a few other amazing monuments that Verona is famous for, and I've taken a few notes from Wikipedia's entry on the city: Verona is famous for its Roman amphitheatre, the Arena found in the city's largest piazza, the Piazza Bra. Completed around 30 AD, it is the third largest in Italy after Rome's Colosseum and the arena at Capua. It measures 139 metres long and 110 metres wide, and could seat some 25,000 spectators in its 44 tiers of marble seats. Also: Sant'Anastasia is a huge and lofty church built from 1290–1481 by the Dominicans to hold the massive congregations attracted by their rousing fundamentalist sermons.

Left to right, from top: Myself in front of the Arena; a marble cathedral we stumbled upon while walking back to our hotel; nighttime shot of the streets of Verona; a candle we lit at the absolutely gorgeous Sant'Anastasia cathedral (right).

Next up: our last stop on our Italian tour, Bergamo!

{Travel} Christmas in Italy - Milan!

This year, my husband and I were blessed with the opportunity to visit Italy during Christmas time. He had to come over for a few days of work, so we both wiggled in a little extra vacation time and flew over early. It's been a full year since we vacationed—having returned from living in Scotland in August of 2010—and we took our first journey to Italia in June of 2010 for my birthday. It was wonderful in every way and we completely fell in love with the country and the culture.

Since then, we've been dying to go back and were thrilled when the opportunity came up! It was a last-minute trip (we had less than a week to find hotels, decided on a travel route, pack and square away the pets), but we made it work and 18 hours of travel time later we arrived in Milan. I'm writing this post from our hotel room in Bergamo, Italy but have managed to put together some photo boards and a post for each of our visits to the three cities—Milan, Verona and Bergamo—for your viewing pleasure!

Left to right, from top: the husband and I waiting on a taxi to the train station; typical transportation around Italia; the duomo in Milan's city centre; a Christmas market, including a large cheese booth, at the train station; our hotel in Milan; a street sign indicating the building's architect and date.

While Milan is certainly a tourist attraction on many accounts, it's not really the ideal place to soak in unrefined Italian culture and Tuscan countryside views. It's a hustling business centre and is the hub for many of Italy's famous high-end shopping meccas as well as the country's many corporate offices and headquarters. The husband and I realized this during our previous (and our first) visit to Milan. So upon returning this time, we mainly used it as our jumping off point—flying in and out of the city, stopping overnight for some rest, then hopping on a train out the next day. 

From top: Milan's Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, a sort of galleria-type (and very high end) shopping center that kick-started the entire galleria mall concept; spaghetti bolognese for dinner at a local cafe; that's me stopping for a quick photo on a street in Milan as we walked back to our hotel; sidewalk cafes continue in full force despite the cold, adding heaters to their setup... this is the main mode of tourist-driven dining in much of Italy.

Our next train stop is Verona, Italy!

A&M's Travel Highlights: Part 1

During our year abroad spent living in Scotland (August 2009-2010), the husband and I learned more about international travel, cultures, people and living then we ever thought possible. Even when we weren't traveling, every day held a new experience and fresh perspective. It's amazing what living abroad, even for a short time, can do for you. It's more than just a quick plane ride and a hotel stay... so much more. You learn to appreciate things you never even noticed before, you develop a deep and sincere appreciation for someone else's culture and you learn not to forget your passport on the way to the airport (yeah, that totally happened).

Lately, we've both been nostalgic about our time spent in Scotland. Some of the top questions we were frequently asked upon our return was if we missed it and would we have stayed. The first answer is a definite yes, the other is, well, we'll go with "unknown." We certainly thought about staying, it crossed our minds, as the question so often does when you spend any great deal of time in a certain location. We played out the scenario, what we would need to do for it to be possible and so on. Then we went home to Texas for a week-long visit six months into our stay and realized how badly we missed home. Thus it was only natural that at the end of our year across the pond we returned to the Lone Star State and began eating Mexican food and listening to country music like they'd gone out of style.

But parts of us miss the simple lifestyle we enjoyed there, the wonderful friends we made and the opportunity for travel. After a whirlwind holiday season back in Texas, we were exhausted and have burned up the road between Houston and Dallas more than I care to admit. Packing up our suitcases had become a familiar practice - we traveled every month in Scotland, then lived out of our bags for over four months when we returned home while waiting to buy our house. Not to mention, we took off to Dallas when we could as it was easier then without having to manage our four pets, who, at the time, were staying with our parents.

When we zipped up a suitcase to go home to Dallas for Christmas, I began to miss it. I missed looking up the weather report for Dublin or Prague or Rome and working out a wardrobe that would best fit in my bag. I missed charting some of the top tourist attractions and buying tickets to get into the Vatican or the Louvre. We had gotten so used to to packing it up and winging it through international airports, and we loved it so much. The spirit of adventure and the unknown. While it's not realistic for us to think we could have continually kept that up, or have lived overseas without becoming despairingly homesick, we still hold out hope to continue our adventures in the future. We hope to make it back to Hawaii (a favorite of mine and where we spent our honeymoon), take a cruise to the Greek islands, visit friends in Australia and perhaps revisit Prague in the summertime (it was amazing during winter).

With all that said, it's no surprise that we've been daydreaming about the amazing trips we took while abroad and I wanted to share the  highlights with all of you here on the blog in picture form. Of course, I've blogged about each and every one of these experiences in full, so I'll provide the appropriate links in the photo captions should you wish to read the whole story! I've also broken up the year into a three-part series, as it's way too many photos to post in one sitting, so stay tuned for the second and third posts in between regular post material in the coming week or so.

...without further ado, I begin our Travel Highlights series!

We begin in August 2009, when we very first arrived in Scotland.

Fresh off the plane in Aberdeen, located far north in Scotland.

The husband coming home from his first day at work across the pond.

The Nissa Micra we drove during our year there. Tiny!

The very first road trip we took to Huntly, with a stop in Dufftown (pictured here), the home of many famous whisky distilleries like Glenfiddich.

Meeting up with new friends for strange beers!

Our first trip to the beach in Aberdeen, which is the North Sea. It's icy cold.

One of the beautiful photos I took while I enjoyed dog walking during my first few weeks in Aberdeen.

Enjoying a stroll 'round Aberdeen and admiring their colorful landscaping before winter took it all away.

Our first true Scottish event! The Highland Games in Braemar.

For our anniversary, we ventured to Inverness and took a horse back ride above Urquhart castle on Loch Ness. 

Visiting one of our favorite castles, Dunnottar, which was nearby in Stonehaven. 

A crazy Halloween in Aberdeen - we were a cowgirl & cowboy!

Our first real trip, which we took to Dublin with fellow American friends.

The door to our flat and how we managed to get stuck inside.

An amazing trip to Paris - c'est la vie!

A Christmas wish come true! My mom and step-dad visited us in December 2009. Read about our two week-adventure from snow and castles to trains and fiddles here, here, here and here.

We spent New Years (Hogmanay) in Scotland's capitol city of Edinburgh. It was so cold your beer nearly froze and there were more than 80,000 people on the streets.

Well, folks, that's all for 2009! Part two will dive into the first half of 2010, and part three will round out our one-year adventure with some of our most standout trips and experiences to date. Keep an eye out for those in the coming week or two, in between regular posts. I look forward to traveling down memory lane with you again soon!

Viva Espania!!!

Our trip to Spain was, in a word, awesome.

It's the last trip we scheduled during our year abroad, so we kept it simple: have fun. No sight seeing, no traveling around to various cities, no jampacked itinerary.

Instead we stayed four nights in Malaga at a resort smack dab on the beach.

And when we weren't lounging in the pool...

Or by the beach...

We were at a friend's nearby villa partying the day away.

Now that's a vacation!!!

Much of Spain that we saw reminded me of Mexico, but a nicer, classier Mexico. We struggled through communicating with the stilted Spanish we could recall, which seemed to work well enough.

We also got to enjoy some taaaaasty food, like paella! I ordered the "mixed paella" at a little seaside cafe for lunch one day and it was so good. Thick yummy rice mixed with chicken wings, pork, fish, shrimp and calamari - it was fresh and I loved the slow-baked flavor.

After we enjoyed eating at Hard Rock cafe in Venice so much, we took a taxi into Marbella (about 30 min away from Malaga) to grab some dinner at the Hard Rock there. Loaded nachos, ribs and fries, get in my tummy!

I think the highlight of our trip, though, was watching the World Cup final around so many excited Spaniards as they cheered their country on to victory. The pub we were at literally exploded when the clock wound down and Spain was declared the World Cup campiones!!!

Mass street parties and craziness ensued post-World Cup!

Minus Paris CDG airport losing our bags on both flights, it was a fantastic super-fun trip. The perfect way to cap off our year!!

Don'tcha just love when life's a beach?

One last trip...

We are one day away from our final trip while living abroad. It won't be our final trip to the UK/Europe forever (we intend to take a return vacation to Italy and also Greece), but it marks the end of our adventures from Scotland.

And I'm actually a little sad about it.

I mean, I'm excited about the trip, don't get me wrong! We're headed to Malaga in Spain and I've been dreaming of the beaches there for weeks now.

This is our hotel, image courtesy of Expedia.com:

Looks pretty suave, right?

This trip involves no major sightseeing, no strenuous schedule and no hopping cities. Just a nice leisurely sun-soaked holiday in the sand. Does Spain have umbrella drinks?

I pulled out my tatty looking suitcase (it's taken a beating since we moved here), and the beach towels are washed and ready for their Spanish debut.

This trip marks the last time I depart the Aberdeen airport headed for an exotic destination, anxious to know what awaits. Now we're only about 30 days away from our flight to Texas.

My, how time flies.

I remember when we first arrived in Scotland and how freaking excited and nervous I was all at the same time. And I definitely remember listening in awe as our cab driver rattled on about the new Donald Trump golf course and resort that's destined to go in just outside of town. (I could've sworn the guy played William Wallace in Braveheart, if he'd looked a little more like Mel Gibson. He sounded just like him!)

I also remember nearly crying with excitement when our shipment from the US arrived and I could add a little bit of Texas to our home here.

Boy, we've come a long way.

There will be time to reflect later, when I've done the last load of laundry in the tiniest washer ever and when I've packed up all our things and returned the flat to it's "original" state. And most of all, when we walk out of our Scottish space and head home. Truly home.

But right now... there's one more adventure to be had! Let the fun begin!

Italian Adventure Part IV: MILAN!

The final leg of our Italian Adventure was Milan - the bustling metropolis of Italy.

Our journey began in Venice, however, since we took another train. This one wasn't all roses, unfortunately, as we discovered the Venice water buses and taxis were on strike that particular day. I, for one, cannot understand why the ONE AND ONLY mode of transportation available on the Venetian islands would simply stop operating! Are you kidding me? And try getting this information out of disgruntled folks who only speak Italian and think you're a crazy American with your overstuffed suitcases and lack of multilingual skills. Grumble.

But all was not lost. Mike and I managed to get from Giudecca Island across the canal onto Venice, and from there it was all pulling and huffing and puffing and four little wheels. Our suitcases are becoming more threadbare with each trip and I'm sure after we dragged them over at least five canal bridges (which are complete with stairs, by the way, not smooth arching surfaces) and more than a mile, they might be missing a few more fibers. One of Mike's wheels was also injured in the process. Man down!

We started out all happy-go-lucky to be on our way to Milan, but ended up soaking in sweat and swearing at the water buses for not being in service the day we leave! By the time we'd scrounged up some lunch food and sidled our suitcases into storage on the train, I was fit to be tied.

Nearly 2.5 hours later, we surged in on a roll of steam to the Milan train station and snagged a taxi to the front door of our hotel. (I was secretly happy this process didn't involve a boat!) The hotel turned out to be nice enough and we freshened up then went in search of dinner. Our first sighting was the very impressive and ridiculously hard-to-miss Duomo di Milano.

This Gothic cathedral is so amazingly detailed and ornate, it's no wonder it took five centuries to finish building! It's also the fourth largest church in the world. It's inception is recorded sometime around 1386, and the final gate wasn't completed until 1965. Can you believe it? To this day, apparently, there are still blocks of marble waiting to be carved into statues. We didn't spot any, but I was flabbergasted by the level of detail displayed on this church. From far away it looks massive and lavishly adorned. Up close, you can see every minute aspect of each carving, adding up in the hundreds if not thousands.

Adjacent to the cathedral's piazza is the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II. Rather than paraphrasing so much of its information, here's what Wikipedia has to say:

The Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II is a covered double arcade formed of two glass-vaulted arcades at right angles intersecting in an octagon; it is prominently sited on the northern side of the Piazza del Duomo in Milan, and connects to the Piazza della Scala. Named after Vittorio Emanuele II, the first king of united Italy, it was originally designed in 1861 and built by Giuseppe Mengoni between 1865 and 1877.

The street is covered over by an arching glass and cast iron roof, a popular design for nineteenth-century arcades, such as the Burlington Arcade, London, which was the prototype for larger glazed shopping arcades, beginning with the Saint-Hubert Gallery in Brussels (opened 1847) and the Passazh in St Petersburg, (opened 1848) and including the Galleria Umberto in Naples (opened 1890). 

 The central octagonal space is topped with a glass dome. The Milanese Galleria was larger in scale than its predecessors and was an important step in the evolution of the modern glazed and enclosed shopping mall, of which it was the direct progenitor. It has inspired the use of the term galleria for many other shopping arcades and malls. The use of the iron structure has inspired also the Eiffel Tower, in Paris.

We ate dinner at a small cafe just off the Galleria, then wandered back into the main piazza so we could admire the cathedral a little longer. We found a cart vendor right next to the church and grabbed a couple Birra Moretti's then settled onto the stone stairs to people watch. Sometimes the nights you most enjoy are the ones that require the least amount of planning, you know?

Our second day in Milan, and the final day of our trip, involved some shopping, lunch at Burger King (we'd given up on more pasta, okay!?) and a surprisingly good time at a self-dubbed English pub we ran across. I browsed through stores like Zara, H&M and Top Shop, and we snacked on coconut and strawberry gelato one last time.

Then we meandered over to the Castello Sforzesco, a castle that used to be home to Milan's ruling family but now holds several art collections and museums. The castle was constructed in the 14th century, with a great deal of maintenance done after destructive bombings during World War II.

There was a BMX and healthy living convention going on in the grounds outside the castle, so we browsed that then found a comfy seat on a park bench to rest our feet. I'm so glad we took the time every now and then to just relish where we were, in Italy, and having the trip of a lifetime. It's good to see things, to check off all the sites on your list and get out and about. But to us, it's just as important to slow down and enjoy the small things that make a vacation so special. Like a cool breeze on a hot Italian afternoon in a park in Milan with my husband.

I also wanted to see the statue of Leonardo da Vinci in Piazza della Scala, near Milan's La Scala Theatre.

 

We grabbed a quick dinner that night, intent on getting to the pub as soon as possible! It'd been a little frustrating that we could never find a "bar bar" to grab a drink during our Italian excursion. All you could ever get was a cafe, which involved being seated and waited on, not ordering a quick cocktail at the counter or standing around bar tables inside. So we were thrilled to find a pubby atmosphere to watch the World Cup England v USA football (aka soccer) game. We were definitely outnumbered by the English, but there were certainly some USA supporters joining us as well. We loaded up on whisky doubles and coke and made friends with several Americans packed in next to us. It wasn't 15 minutes before that grubby little pub, filled elbow to elbow, was hot, sweaty and humid. But we didn't care - everyone was having a good time and cheering their country on! There's just something awesome about being able to chant "U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-AAAAAAA!"

The game ended in a tie, a bit lackluster for us Americans who always want a winner and a loser, dang it! But we had a great time and it was a good experience for our last night. Even if it did take two showers to get all the sweat off.

And that, my friends, is the end of our Italian Adventure! We flew out the next afternoon, after a shrimp fettuccine lunch at a local wine bar. It was a bit odd to being going "home" to Scotland, we weren't exactly thrilled to leave Italy and arrive in cold and windy Aberdeen. But we knew that this trip only brought us closer to being truly home in Texas, and that all of this will be fond memories in the near future.

Only one more trip to go before our grand return to the States... the beaches in Malaga, Spain will be calling our name on July 8!

“For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.” 

~Robert Louis Stevenson