Since We've Been Back

Since Tony and I have been back we've been pretty busy. We were so sad to leave Italy, but we came back to Abu Dhabi re-energized. We hadn't left the country in over seven months. We have decided that we need to start taking more vacations so we can get out of the desert more often!

When we got back we fell back into the swing of things: BBQ-ing with friends on Thursdays, poker on Fridays...Well Tony and I hosted poker after we got back which is nice because we are the only ones with a big table. Get this-I won the first game (It's the first time I won!) and Tony won the second game! Yup, the Mugs made a clean sweep. Since then, Tony has won a couple times; actually last week, Tony won the first and second game! With our winnings we went out and bought a Nintendo Wii. Oh my gosh it's SO much fun! We got a bunch of games to go with it, but the best game by far is the sports game. It has tennis, bowling, boxing, baseball, and golf. The night we got it our friend Matt came up to play with us. Here's Matt and Tony playing baseball:Tony and Matt started boxing standing up...then they got too tierd. The bad thing was our air conditioning was broke that week so we had three adults running around in tanktops and shorts, sweating our butts off by the end of the night. Let's just say we were all so sore we couldn't move for three days!

Yesterday we got together with our friend Mike to celebrate Memorial day. We bbq-ed upstairs. My new favorite thing to bbq is twice baked potatoes-they're so good on the bbq! Then, in honor of Memorial day, I made apple pie! It's the first one I've made here. I tried apple pie for the first time, and it's pretty yummy!

Our other big news is that we get to move upstairs next week! They are cleaning out the apartment and painting it right now! All we have to do is wait for them to clean out the pool table and extra furniture and then we are good to go! I love moving and I can't wait to have a balcony! There are some logistic problems in the apartment...but I'll get into those later. For right now I'm just excited! That's about all we're up to right now, I hope everyone back home is having a great holiday weekend!

More Italy

Well I guess since it's been three weeks since we returned from Italy I should finish up my posts!

We made up for our day of relaxation the fourth day by hiking...all day! We took a train to the southern most town in Cinque Terra, Riomaggorie. There's an easy hike...well more of a walk really...between this town and the one to the north, Manarola, called the Romantic Trail. This walk was how lovers from different towns could meet before the trains were constructed. We arrived in Manarola feeling fine after our twenty minute, paved walk and explored the town a little. It was absolutely beautiful. Manarola is a very small villiage known for one thing. One of the vineyard owners had a son that was very sick and he appealed to God to cure his son by erecting a very large cross on the hillside of his winery. Well, the son did get better. However, the cross fell at sometime and the father ended up getting very sick and he died. On his death bed he made his son promise to repair the cross and add to it to regain God's mercy. Well the son is full grown now and he is ill so he continually adds to the...um...nativity scene. The result it pretty bizarre. No word yet on how the son's illness is doing. It was so beautiful out that we decided to keep going. After going up a serious of steps, the trail took us through the vineyards above Manarola and on to the next town to the north, Corniglia. The hike (and yes, this one was a hike) to Coriglia was more difficult and Tony and I were starving and out of water. We had planned on having lunch in Corniglia so I was overjoyed when the town came into view...that is until I saw the zillion steps up the side of the mountain that were standing in between me and my lunch! Over lunch we debated whether to catch the train home or say "What the heck!" and hike the rest of the way to Vernazza. We hiked. On one hand the two hour hike was painful in that the first hour and a half was all uphill...on the other hand, it was the most beautiful part of the hike. Instead of being on a rocky coast like the previous hikes, this one was through trees and plants with amazing views of the ocean. Needless to say we didn't do much else that night-besides recover!

The next day was one of my favorites! We started the day by having smiling cappachinos and Tony bought his FAVORITE food in Italy-Focaccia bread (I'm going to try to make some pretty soon.). Then we went and grabed the camera, a couple beers, and sat on the rocks watching the waves...all day. We ended up with about 800 pictures of waves-but here's the jist of it:

...waves on this rock...
...waves on these rocks...

...and waves on the beach.

Well, while on the rocks there was something a little more amusing than the waves. These HUGE waves were breaking over the rocks onto the dock where the tourists were waiting for boats. The ground is soaking wet so you would think people would have a clue that they could get wet...no such luck! So Tony and I sat and watched tourists go look over the dock at the water and end up getting completely soaked...and then they would complain about it as if it were someone's fault besides their own!

We were bummed because we thought this was our last day in Cinque Terra. Our plane was leaving from Milan at noon on Friday and it's a long train ride so we thought it'd be a good idea to spend the last night in Milan, which we didn't want to do. We got up the next day and took the little train to Monterrosso,the most northern of the five villages, and bought train tickets to Milan. Then I discovered there was a fast train from Monterrosso to Milan at five the next morning...let's say I didn't really have to twist Tony's arm to stay an extra day.

We found a hotel room...and here's the downfall (which I'll explain later) you had to use the door key to turn on the lights. Well Tony and I had a great day in Monterosso being happy we weren't in Milan. We didn't want to unpack too much so unfortunatley we didn't take any pictures. We had to wake up by 4:30 the next monring so we could catch our 5:10 train. No problem. Except that when we woke up that morning, we couldn't find the card to turn on the light! It was pitch black outside and NONE of the lights worked without that card. So Tony and I ran around the room trying to change and pack the rest of our stuff by the light of his lighter and I was using the display light on my cell phone. We had 5 minutes to get to the train station and I couldn't find the cell phone! We figured they would find it and mail it to us later. It sucked, but if we missed our train we would miss our plane. When I got back to Abu Dhabi I emailed the hotel and they said they can't find it either...which I don't believe, but oh well.

The funny thing about the plane ride home was that a friend of ours in Abu Dhabi who lives in our building had left to visit his family in the States and on his way home was on the same flight as us from Milan to Abu Dhabi!

Well, that was the jist of Italy! We had such a wonderful time and can't wait to go back some day!

Third Day in Italy

Our internet was down part of this weekend which is why the third day of Italy post has been postponed so long. Let's see, where were we.

Well after breakfast on the third day Tony and I had to find a new place to stay since we were supposed to check out of the room we were in that morning and we wanted a better view. So after calling a couple places we found a woman who had a room with a terrace available. Wonderful! So we drag our bags down the "stairs of death" and start up the stairs towards the new room. After going up about 30 stairs we stopped to rest and Tony went ahead bagless to make sure we were even going the right way. We were...and there was about another 50 stairs to go...Not Wonderful! These weren't even normal stairs. The stairs were crumbling steps through alley ways with no hand rails. Well after a lot of huffing and puffing we made it-and it was SO worth it!

The apartment had a bedroom and bathroom downstairs (yay for our own bathroom!) and upstairs there was a couch, a dining room table, and a mini fridge. But the best part was when you walked out the door from upstairs there was the balcony. The balcony was huge and actually built into the mountain. We were directly below one of the town's pirate lookout towers. The views of the town and ocean were amazing.

So before getting too comfotable we walked down the zillion stairs and bought some fruit, salami, cheese, crackers, beer and a couple bottles of wine. Then, or course, we had to go back up the zillion stairs. But it was still so worth it! After a little bit of snacking, we decided to relax and spend the whole day on the balcony. I pulled out a book (surprize, surprize) and Tony pulled out all of the lenses for his camera and began to play. The only time we left the balcony was to grab some to-go dinner. Ok, ok "we" didn't go get dinner...Tony went a got dinner and brought back some delicious pesto pizza! Tony took some beautiful pictures of the sunset from the balcony. I know nothing about cameras, but Tony's has this feature with an extended shutter speed where it collects all the light for thirty seconds...or something like that. The result is amazing pictures like these. When Tony's took these it was pitch black outside!Well, after the sun went down we went inside to look at the pics we had taken the past couple days and as we were sitting there who do you think sauntered into our room? Yep! The black cat from the cemetary! Scarey huh? Well he walked around a bit and eventually came and sat with me on the couch and let me pet him while we finished looking at pictures! All in all, it was a great day of doing nothing. Don't worry-we made up for all that relaxing the next day!

Our First Hike in Italy

So to anyone whose read about our first day in Italy-it does get better! What's funny is that even though we had the most frustrating first day ever, we must have successfully switched into vacation mode because we never once got frustrated.

Well after our cappachinos on the moring of the second day, Tony was itching to use his camera so we decided to take a little hike. Anyone who remembers my posts about Germany and Austria will remember I have some obsession with European ducks-so we had to start the hike saying hello to my feathery friends! Next our hike took us to the first church which was built in the 1300's. The church was closed but the outside was absolutley beautiful. Here's the view from above the church. The turret you see is actually a pirate lookout. Turrets just like these are sprinkled along the whole coast of Cinque Terra because until the 1500's pirates would raid the villages stealing supplies and wenches. And here is one of the reasons we decided to take a hike. It was still a holiday weekend (and, as we learned later, one of the first weekends this spring where it didn't rain) and the town was just packed with tourists coming by train and boat so we decided to get out of town!Next we hit the second church that's further up. It has a beautiful cemetary with gorgeous views. The two churches both have clock towers that chime the hour every half hour. The funny thing was that the clocks were five minutes apart which means we got to hear the bells almost constantly which I loved! Hey-it's better than hearing the mosques in Abu Dhabi! The cemetary was really beautiful. It turns out that when Napoleon was in power he declared that cemetaries were a health risk so they had to be a certain distance from the towns which, in Cinque Terra, means they had to move uphill resulting in gorgeous views.

On our way out of the cemetary we saw this black cat running around-creepy right? So I snaped a picture...remember him, you'll see him again later!
As Tony and I went uphill we noticed there weren't many people to ask to take pictures of us. So we propped up the camera and broke out the remote and had fun taking pictures of ourselves-here's some of my favorites! On our hike we also ran into some fun critters! The lizards were kinda creepy because as you walked they would run back into the bushes. There were also tons of butterflies! This little guy was a bit of a diva because he kept posing for Tony!

Cinque Terra is famous for two things-it invented pesto, and it's lemons. The lemons there are HUGE, almost like footballs! Here's a couple other pictures from our hike. Afterwards, we went and sat on the rocks on the harbor for a little while. Tony wanted to play with his camera so he set it up the tripod on the rocks and got out the remote. He was so scared about knocking the camera into the water he was shaking....shaking so hard he droped the remote into the water...ooops! (The town you see in the background is Moterosso, the first village.)

So Tony and I aren't exactly seagull people, but Vernazzan seagulls are actually very pretty! Tony named them Hitchcock because they look kind of mean and it reminded us of the movie "The Birds."

Well obviously we weren't done playing with the camera yet so we stayed on the rocks for sunset. First we grabbed some grub and I found an "Italy" hat for Tony...you'll see it in almost all the other pictures. The guys in Abu Dhabi were teasing Tony for it-but I think it makes him look like a stud!!

After the sunset we decided to hit the town!

Well that's about it for our second day-stay tuned for more!