This weekend we decided to head up to Tahoe for a little R&R (we’ve become pretty used to the whole vacation thing and are having a hard time adjusting to the real world). Stephanie’s BF just happened to be working up there on Friday, so she hopped in the car with us and we all had a great Friday/Saturday together. We had a delicious dinner at Tep’s Villa Roma, then woke up early on Saturday, (I actually woke up to a note on Adam’s car that said “sorry I hit you last night! Call me!” from our neighbor…oops! Big, huge, dent in the side of his car…at least there was a note!) we had some breakfast and headed out to Fallen Leaf Lake. Where is Fallen Leaf Lake? It is right next to Lake Tahoe and it is actually the lake where The Bodyguard was filmed. I had never been, it is AMAZING there. We stumbled upon an awesome hike which happened to be the same exact hike Mom and Dad did a couple weeks back when they were in Tahoe. It was beautiful. I posted a ton of pics, so enjoy.

After our long hike we had some lunch, and then headed to the movies that evening before DC and Adam departed. Saw Couples Retreat, meh, a mediocre movie, but the popcorn was good.

K and I walked to sushi for dinner, it had been too long! We tried getting through the Bodyguard but were too exhausted (still on our new schedule) and were passed out by 11! We had planned on heading home early Sunday morning but got sucked in by another gorgeous day in Tahoe! We went to bagels for breakfast, yum! Went to the creek that mom and dad recommended to see the salmon spawning. There were thousands of them! Very cool, except a lot of dead ones, so sad. If you didn’t know, salmon basically mate and then die. Crappy life, eh?

Then we decided to take a short drive towards Fallen Leaf Lake again and stumbled upon a trail that took us to the lake. What a treat. A fairly short walk and a fabulous view! I even managed to get Kevin to go to Ross with me to pick up some things for the house. What a fabulous day!!!

We grabbed some burritos and headed home to finish the Bodyguard. We cleaned up the house and were finally on the road by 4pm. I never realized how beautiful Tahoe is in the fall. The colors are just breathtaking and I’m so glad we decided to take a trip up before the snow comes! The pics are on flickr…enjoy!

I feel like I didn’t get nearly enough done yesterday despite the 6am head start on the day. I did, however, get to see two of my favorite kiddies, Sydney (my 6 year old BFF) and Owen (just 2 weeks old when I left, now a strapping 6 weeks old!). Now I just have a few more to catch up with and I’ll feel better! (Saw their moms too, wasn’t too shabby either!)

Went and saw Nana two times yesterday, she is in much better spirits now that we’re home. She slept all night for the first time and seems to have more pep in her step, well, her therapy assisted step that is.

Hope you enjoy this itty bitty blog. Maybe I’ll never log back into FaceBook and just update my “status” via the blog from here on out! Lucky YOU.

The flight was rather un-eventful…a bit of “rollercoaster like” turbulence a few hours in (ick!) but otherwise smooth sailing!

Sharon and Sandy were there right as we hit the curb (THANK YOU!) and away we went. We were home by 3:45 yesterday afternoon, a mere 17 or so hours after leaving our hotel room in Dublin. Piece of cake!

Our furry friends were a bit happy to see us (it took them the entire night to calm down and they haven’t stopped following us yet!), maybe as happy as we were to see them! Angela, Gordon, Sydney….job well done! The dogs were happy and healthy and the house was standing, what more could we want!!! THANK YOU!

Nana was a bit happy to see me too! I went and visited her before picking up some takeout for dinner and she cried! She didn’t know I was coming…it was sweet. She seems to be doing pretty well, all things considered!

We were both exhausted by 9ish last night and were out by 9:30! Only problem, we were both wide eyed at 5:45 this morning! We’ve been up since six and are now heading out to take the dogs for a walk! Even had breakfast already! Kevin, cereal, me, chowmein! YUM! I LOVE BEING HOME!

We’ll get this blog finished up in the proper way soon enough, we did love Ireland and will get it together, we promise!

Until then, it is good to be home!!!

We have had a great time here in Ireland and will blog all about it soon, but not now.

We finished up our trip with a very interesting dinner/dance/live music event. Now we’re back in our room, packed up and ready to go!

Sean scheduled the taxi for 6:30am…3 hours and 20 minutes before we depart…hope there is good shopping at the airport!

Then we’ve got an 11 hour flight and a 2 hour drive (if traffic cooperates) and we will be H-O-M-E!

Signing off, for the last time in Europe, the Howes wish you all very sweet dreams.

K&N

Kev

Our flight was around noon out of FCO which is about 30 minutes west of Rome, so we booked ourselves a taxi last night and were thrilled when it arrived this morning, just a tad bit late, but totally forgivable considering our taxi was a silver Mercedes. Score!

Well, let me just tell you, having an Italian guy driving you around in a flashy Merc SOUNDS nice, but no, no, no. This is some scary shit! I was good through the city, heck, most of those scooters would bouce right off of our car, right? But then we got to the freeway. Not so bad at first. Crusing speed seemed normal, comfortable, acceptable…and then it began. There was apparantly a quarter mile between us and the car ahead of us which meant our driver was going balls to the walls, pedal to the metal, wharp speed ahead! No joke, we easily reached 100 mph on the freeway, with cars all around us! I was extremely pissed. This couldn’t be safe! Right? Right! Luckily at that point we were only 6 miles from the airport exit which meant we would be there in 2 minutes, so I didn’t have to take much more of this.

After arriving at the airport I was pissed at our driver, feeling the effects of the cold we are both fighting, tired, hungry and just D-O-N-E. Not a great start to the day, but it has turned out to be a pretty great day none the less.

We touched down in Dublin around 3:00pm their time, and just as I decided that I was not willing to wait 2 hours for the next train so I was just going to rent a car and drive on the wrong side of the road (how hard could it be?) I talked to Sean who was our night in shining armour! He and Tara were near Dublin and were going to just swing by the airport and pick us up. THANK YOU! That left us just the perfect amount of time to grab our bags, find a bar, eat a sandwich and a beer and then get out to the curb. Couldn’t have planned it better if we had tried.

We drove the 1.5 hours west and arrived in Clara. As Sean says, if you blink, you’ll miss it, and he isn’t kidding! This place is itty-bitty and totally adorable. It is almost exactly in the middle of Ireland too, which means we drove half way across Ireland in less than two hours! That just blows my mind! You can’t get out of California from most cities in that amount of time!

We “checked-in” to our “hotel”. By “checked-in” I mean we figured out (with Sean’s help) that the key was in the door to the apartment that we are staying in for the next two nights, which is next door to Sean and Tara and below the house where the owners live! By “hotel” I mean a pretty large two bedroom apartment that was decorated in the 1930′s and not much has changed since! It is like staying in someone’s house, or guest house. There is nothing that resembles a hotel or a rented room at all. It is crazy, check out the pics.

We ditched our bags, freshened up and headed to Tillamore for some dinner, beer and soccer. The Bridge House was a welcome sight. It looked like a place back home, more so than anything we’ve been in lately. And, the fact that everyone speaks English again, woo hoo! We could read the menus and they had familiar items like chicken strips, french fries, burgers, steaks, mashed potatoes, mmmm. We stuffed ourselves royaly and enjoyed every bite of it. Kevin even had his first Irish Guiness. Delicious! We watched a rather uneventful soccer game while we ate, final score 0-0. Come on Ireland! We’re finally here! Show us what you’ve got!

We strolled around the town, picked up some delicious candy bars for desesrt and headed back to the Clara House to turn in for the night.

Tomorrow we’re off to Gallway to check out the Irish coast.

I am exhausted, must sleep, need energy to fight this cold. Nite nite!

Second thing I must address, Kevin, thank you for posting the photo of me in the movie theater that has my entire bra hanging out of the back of my shirt. For the rest of you, it was HOT in there and apparently when I ripped off my hoodie I neglected to adjust my tank-top before posing for the photo. You would think that my counterpart would have notified me about the wardrobe malfunction, but no such luck. A month of no girlfriends around has taught me that husbands aren’t quite as observantn when it comes to A. wardrobe malfunctions B. bad hair or C. food in teeth. I love him regardless, but honey, a heads up every once in a while would be great!

Now, our last day in Roma. We set our alarm for 8:00 and managed to crawl out of bed at 9:00, an hour of snoozing, not bad. We headed out with the intention of doing all of the things we failed at so miserably yesterday, plus the things we had originally planned on doing today, yikes! The odds were a bit against us from the get go today. The metro was going to be on strike! Only from 11:00-3:00, and at least they give you warning, but regardless, the pending strike packed the metro like we have never see it before. There were thousands of people being shoved into the trains and they were packed in so tight that there was just no room for anyone else so we were stuck on the platform to wait for the next train. Thankful there was a smidge more room on this one, so we went for it.

We hopped on the metro and headed down towards the circo maximus stop. This put us out in a totally new part of town, adventure here we come! We were in search of the ghetto. Not just any ghetto. The Jewish ghetto! Yup, I’m not kidding, that is what they call it here! Apparently that is the place to buy gold in Rome (Nana has requested some earrings, but it isn’t looking good). First thing is first, La Bocca Something was on the way to the ghetto, so we did some searching and found the famous mouth. The line was long, so we skipped the meeting and just took a few pics of him from the outside of the church. Good enough! Now onward to the ghetto! You’d think finding a place called the “Jewish Ghetto” would be easy, but not so much. We walked down random streets, past a Synagogue, through an alley, and we finally made it into the ghetto. Did we find gold? Not so much. We worked our way through the area and without even trying we stumbled upon our next destination, Compo De Fiori. This is a big marketplace where all of the locals do their shopping. We cruised through the market and decided to not buy anything (our bags are heavy enough!) and instead head towrads the castle that was closed yesterday.

While walking to the castle we realized that it was now well past noon and we were both ready to eat. Now, if you read yesterdays blog you may have noticed that there was no dinner mentioned in the blog. That was not an error, we ate lunch yesterday, and that was it. So, at this point we haven’t eaten in 24 hours and were pretty darn hungry. We stopped into a cafe on the way and had a really strange waiter. Long story short he literally took a 2 euro coin out of Kevin’s hand for his “additional tip”. What an asshole. It was one of those situations where you don’t fully understand what is happening or know what to do while it is happening, kind of a “is this guy serious?” and you wish you could go back and ninja chop his ass for even attempting to act the way he did…but there was no ninja chopping today…and the guy guilted us into the additional tip. Ass.

We continued our journey across the river and to the castle, oh, by the way, the weather was amazing!!! The castle was open and up we went! There were some paintings, sculptures, books, and other random works of art. Some even had their “theft” date and “return” date! Pretty cool! The castle kind of wound up and around and eventually we just popped out on the top. What a view! You could see all the way to the mountains, I didn’t even know there were mountains out there! You can check out the many photos, enjoy!

After the castle we took a short detour to Geliati. This is, we have determined, the best Gelato in Italy. The place is always packed and never disappoints. We grabbed a couple of cones and then headed to the crypts. I’m not sure if a photo will come up if you google the Carpuccian Crypts in Rome or not. I wasn’t allowed to take any photos, so I’m hoping I will be able to find some online somewhere. These crypts weren’t like anything we had expected. There were literally thousands of bones, human bones, decorating this portion of the church. They were stacked from floor to ceiling and arranged on the wallas and ceilings to make various shapes. I kind of walked through with my eyes half open. It was hard to grasp the fact that these were real bones and not the stuff you see decorating houses around Halloween. I’m not so sure I like thinking about it now even. Ick.

After the crypts it was back on the metro and back to our room. Packing time. Ick again. We pulled everything out, organized, and actually got it all back in order fairly quickly. We lounged around our room for a few hours before heading out for our final evening. I had done some research online and found that Crispi 19 is the #1 recommended restaurant in Rome according to TripAdvisor.com. We headed out for our last metro ride and arrived at the next stop and to the restaurant 30 minutes early. No problem. We were seated right away and had a fabulous meal. 3 courses, each delicious and fresh. What a perfect last meal in Rome.

After dinner we headed to the Trevi fountain for one last glance. I just love that fountain. There were hundreds of people crowded around, most of which were teens. There must be something happening in Rome this week because there have been swarms of kids everywhere we go! Once we got our fountain fix we headed back home. Kevin couldn’t resist one last gillato (I resisted just fine, I’m still not feeling totally better and now feel like I’m fighting a cold too, boo!). He said it was delicious. I took his word for it.

We walked back to our room and here we are. Our last day in Rome was a good one. I love Italy, but am totally ready to experience Ireland. Sean and Tara, look out, here we come!

Nite.

With much reluctancy we made our way into a metro stop and decided to head to lunch at the pizza by the slice place we found on Saturday. From it would be a quick walk to Museo St. Angelo. Pizza, as expected was great. We ordered a couple of our favorites from Saturday and a few new flavors as well. We were thuroughly stuffed before we headed out for the castel.

The castle wasn’t too far of a walk, maybe another .75 miles at the most. We found the main road that led to the castle and followed straight down. As we slowly rounded the castle I saw the enterance sign. Walking up to it I mentioned to Nic that I thought it was weird that no one was up top looking out over Rome. This castle is supposed to have beautiful views of St. Peters and downton Rome. As we got closer to the enterance I realized why no one was up top. The castle is closed on Mondays!!!! Ha, 0/2 today.

Okay, now what? We had tried to make it to 2 museums and hand’t had any luck. Yeah, pizza was good but this was pretty lame. We decided we’d suck it up and take the metro back to the crpyt as it was now after 2:30 and it’d take us at least 45 minutes to get there. We sucked it up just as the skys opened up with rain. Luckily I had noticed that it was raining a bit before we left our hotel room. The rain had subsided before we left our room but we took our jackets just in case. We were glad we did.

The walk/subway back to the crypt was easy enough. We finally realized we needed to move towards the back of the subway because everyone piles into the middle and it’s hot and crowded. We came to our exit and popped off the subway and up a few flights of stairs. The crypt was open again so we headed up the stairs to the enterance. At the top Nic asked that we wait a second because she wasn’t feeling too well. I said okay and we waited outside the enterance for a minute. Not too long after that she says “I need to go to the room, I really don’t feel well, my stomach hurts bad”……okay then! Off to the room we go, only a meter from the enterance to the crpt. Make that 0/3.

A quick metro ride back to the hotel and Nic crawled into bed, not feeling well at all. I asked her to give me any clothes that she needed to have washed so I could head out to the laundromat.

The Laundromat was an experience all in itself. 2 loads of laundry cost $9 to wash and $9 to dry. I put the soap into the laudnry drum, like we do at home, like I did in Tuscany, and was told that I did it wrong and that I needed to buy new soap. The attendent was obviously irritated with me because I didn’t know what I was doing. I told him that’s how I did it last time and he just shook his head at me. HA! Sorry buddy but it all goes into ths ame place eventually. I thought I was going to break the machine with how irritated he was.

He made me buy a 2nd bag of soap and put it into the top of the large washer, the other half of the bag of soap went into the small washer. I closed the lid, payed 10 Euro for the wash cylce which was easier since the machine doesn’t give change. That’s one thing i don’t get in Europe. We have found that a lot of the machines, either vending, metro or laundry don’t give change. But at the same time stores don’t like to give you coins. They like to give you a 5 Euro bill. It’s this weird battle between everyone. Have coins or you have to overpay. Give a store a large bill and they don’t want it. At one point on this trip I actually had a store tell me I couldn’t but water because all I had was a 50 Euro bill and they didn’t want to or couldn’t make change.

Sooooo, anyway. I finished laundry and headed back to check on Nic. She still wasn’t feeling well so she napped till around 7:15. At that point we decided to head out for a bit and went to see The Informant at a local theater. I posted a picture on the previous blog. This was a small, 2 screen theater tucked back in a small ally. The screen and theater were very small but still clean and nice. We were able to enjoy the movie in English with Italian subtitles. After the movie we headed back to our room for some rest. Considering we missed everything we wanted to do today we have a big, final day in Rome.

Ciao Bella.