Bella Roma Day 1

So, its a YES on the I'll be blogging from Italy!

We had an early flight yesterday morning and woke up at the dreadful hour of 4:30. Thankfully we got to drink lots of coffee in the SAS lounge at the airport before we left. The aircraft we were suppose to be on was taken out of service a few months ago because of a couple crashes that had happened. SAS (Scandinavian Airlines) is leasing out planes and crews from other airlines until they can get a full fleet again. Because of this they gave everyone on the plane free food and drinks. That was a nice treat.

We arrived in Rome about 12:30 where we had a man holding up our names on a sign waiting for us. Originally Myra was going to be out of town when we got here so we arranged for a driver to pick us up at the airport to take us to the Embassy to get Myra's keys, then back to Myra's house. (Myra works at the Embassy) But as it turned out, she wasn't out of town after all, but we kept the car anyways. It was a beautiful fancy black Mercedes and the driver was quite nice.

We got to Myra's building and couldn't believe the door that we had to go through. I'll get a picture of it later, but it is HUGE! I had forgotten how grandiose everything is in Rome. Her flat is really big as well and the ceilings are 24 feet. WOW!

Michael looking out of the huge window

Eating Area

We got settled in while Myra went back to work and actully had to take a little 30 minute nap because we were both exhausted from waking up so early. Then we went walking around for about 2 hours to see nothing in particular and stayed North of the city where all the "attractions" are located. I took zero pictures on our walk, can you believe it? We came back and met Myra back at her place and we all walked L'Enotec Antica, which is Myras favorite Enoteca. An enoteca is pretty much a wine bar. It was a nice walk that took about 15 minutes and walked us right down the Spanish Steps.

Apparently Myra is quite popular in this place as all the waiters knew her. They gave us a table in the back which was nice and we drank wine and ate cheese and bread. It was a nice way to spend our first night in Rome.

The Enoteca Wall

Having fun

Myra ordered an Apple Cake and I made her stop eating it so I could take a picture.
It still looks pretty yummy though some of it is missing!

After we were all done we asked our amazing waiter for the bill and instead he brought us three glasses of Limoncello,which is a lemon liquor that tastes divine, on the house. When we asked him for the brand of Limoncello he not only wrote it down for me, he brought the bottle to the table and poured the rest of the bottle in our three glasses. Nice guy huh?

All of us with our second free glasses of Limoncello and the waiter that gave it to us.

As we were leaving, Myra had to say hello to a couple of her other bartender friends and as soon as one of them saw her, he poured a glass of what I think was Prosecco, then upon him seeing her with guests, poured Michael and I each a glass as well. So we made it out of there purchasing two glasses of wine each and getting three more glasses each on the house. Not too bad. It quickly became our favorite Enoteca in all of Rome, and I'll go ahead publicize them. If you find yourself in Rome looking for a great Enoteca....try L'Enotec Antica!!

Myras Buddy

Myra and Michael at the Bar

The Bar

We finally got out of there about 10:30 and caught a cab home. We chatted for a bit and then we crashed. I couldn't believe that Michael and I managed to stay up so late with only a 30 minute nap in the afternoon!

Paris Randomness and Depature

Our last morning in Paris came quickly. We had enough time to get up and enjoy another yummy breakfast at the hotel before checking out and making our way back to the airport.

Breakfast Dining Area

Breakfast consisted of a basket of fresh bread and croissants, cheeses and meats for the bread, hard boiled eggs, and other odds and ends. They brought each of us the cutest little individual glass jars of coffee and each a giant coffee cup!

View from our Hotel Room

View From Hotel Room

Our way to the airport was pretty uneventful. We got to the airport got checked in and went to the SAS lounge. I think Paris is one of the worst airports if not THE worst airport I've ever seen, so getting to use the lounge was a very spacial treat. When we were flying over Denmark I happened to look out about the time I knew we were landing soon and as I was looking I could harldy believe my eyes! I saw some buildings called, "Høje Gladsaxe" which were down the street from where we lived the first time we were here. I knew Lyngby was just North of it and then all of a sudden I saw the green roof of the Lyngby Town Hall and the Christmas Tree. As fast as I could I took a few pictures. When I was flipping through them after we passed I was happy to see I actually got our flat in one of the pictures along with all of "our" other landmarks of Lyngby! To give some idea of the scale of this picture, right above the word Lynbgy there is a white C shaped building. That is where our gym is and a mere 2 minute walk from our flat.


We got back home about 2pm and unfortunately, because Michael and his group are in crunch time, he had to call into a meeting at 3pm. So he literally went right back to work. At least he was able to call into the meeting from home. He was so grateful for the one day break.


We have what we call the "Pate Picture". When we were in Tokyo Michael took the camera and pulled me close and snapped a picture of us with the Emperors Palace grounds behind us.

Since then we take that picture everywhere we go with a backdrop that we like best from that city. Somehow we ended up with two from Paris. (Actually 3 if you count the Christmas Tree Anniversary Picture)

Pate Picture with Notre Dame

Pate Picture with The Eiffel Tower

I did some comparison shots of Michael in December 2002 in Paris and Michael December 2008 in Paris! He has grown a neck and lost all his hair.





I'm sure in our lives we will make it back to Paris again, or I certainly hope so. How can a city be SOOOO beautiful??? Since we have only been in December perhaps we might go see what all the fuss is about with "Paris in the Springtime". I can only imagine it is amazing. Paris was the first international city (besides copenhagen) that Michael and I have re-visited together. I have done Moscow twice and him Tokyo. It was a nice change to really be able to enjoy the city in a different way.

So where to next???
Did somebody say Bella Roma??

In Dublin's Fair City, Where Girls are so Pretty...

That was the fastest trip ever. We aren't use to only going somewhere for 2 nights, but it was a lot of fun, we never got bored and we stayed busy...that is, if you can call drinking, keeping you busy. When in Rome right? :)

We flew business class over to Dublin so were spoiled from the start with the SAS lounge and the nice seats, food and drinks on the plane. We got in about 6:00pm and went straight to the hotel. We did something a little different on this trip than we usually do. We stayed close to the airport at the SAS Radisson on a package deal. We had 2 days of free transportation to and around Dublin, a one day pass per person on a hop on hop off bus, a free meal in their nice restaurant, free breakfasts, and a business class room. Since it was pretty last minute we decided to give it a try and it worked out great. The first night we got in and at dinner at "Potters" I had a fantastic slab of thick, juicy beef with wonderful potatoes and Michael had a huge piece of grilled salmon with vegetables. He tends to order fish in a restaurant that he thinks will have good fish since he never gets any at home. :) After that we watched some TV and went to bed.

Saturday we got up early, ate breakfast and headed into Dublin. We got on the hop on hop off bus. We have always kinda made fun of the hop on hop off buses, but it was free and we didn't have many days in Dublin so seemed like the easiest way to get from point A to point B and see lots of stuff. It wasn't so bad after all. The guide was really funny, we saw a lot of places from the bus we might not have seen, and since it was a 24 hour pass that took us to all the top tourist spots it worked out great. We got on and rode for about 30 minutes as we knew our first stop we would get off at was the Guinness Brewery. I had reserved our tickets before arriving in Dublin and I am so glad we did. It was only about 10AM but the line for the tickets was pretty long already. Since I had reserved ours we went straight to the Customer Service Desk where there was no one got our tickets and started the tour (which was self guided). This was our third brewery tour so we didn't spend much time on the beginning of the tour where you learn about how beer is made. You can only learn about it so many times before it gets kinda boring. The rest of the tour was interesting and really well done, but we rushed through the entire thing. We spend a little time in the room with the history of the advertising and about the actual Guinness Company and finally made it to the Gravity Bar to claim our free Pints of Guinness. We were both a little nervous about this as the only other time we had had Guinness we weren't fans at all. To our delight, it was heavenly! The stuff we had before was the Guinness Extra Stout and was really hard to get down. The regular Guinness Draught, was by far 10000000 times better :)

After the brewery we got back on the bus and drove around for about another 40 minutes until we got to the Jameson Distillery. We grabbed lunch at a pub before going to that tour.

This tour was great. It was a guided tour, the tour guide was funny and I was one of 6 people that she got to do a Whiskey Tasting of 5 types of whiskeys. Everyone else only got one glass. After it was all done, I got a little certificate saying I am a "Certified Whiskey Taster". Michael is a whiskey man and I'm now a certified whiskey taster so we couldn't leave without a bottle. We went for some pretty good stuff. The bottle had some "pomp" to it, because it was one of their better and rare bottles that they make. Our bottle got registered by its number in a big fancy book. So if you go here, we will tell you our bottle number and you can go see our name. It gets put in the book by a calligrapher, so it will look pretty.



From there we hopped back on the bus and got off by the river front and wondered to an area called "Temple Bar" It is a cute area of nothing but restaurants and pubs. We ate dinner at a place called "Mexico to Rome", took our classic picture we always take, walked back to the bus to take us back to the hotel and headed back up that way. We dropped all our stuff off in the room then went downstairs to the hotel pub for another smooth wonderful pint of the black stuff. Mmmm Guinness. (We are big fans now)

Our Classic Picture

Sunday we spent walking around Dublin for about 6 hours. We had thought about going to the coast to a little fishing town, but decided that we weren't sure how much time it would take so opted to head back to Dublin. We didn't really do anything but walk and walk and walk. We found Dublin to be a pretty small city as it didn't take very long to walk from here to there and back again. We stumbled upon a few cool things, had some coffee, ate some lunch and went back to the hotel to grab our stuff and head to the airport to come home.

Gulliver made of Sand

The Tart with a Cart as she is known by the Irish. AKA Miss Molly Malone

Tourist Center

Me with a Church connected to the Dublin Castle. (which really looked more like a palace or big mansion)

Michael in front of a Pub

Cool Yellow Door

Michael acting like an orangutan

A Church

In short, Dublin to me, is a city of pubs and colored doors. It was fun to have a short weekend trip for just 2 nights even if it meant sacrificing knowing the city as well as we know many others. My tip for Dublin, Don't miss the Brewery or the Distillery. They were by far the highlight of the trip!

All of our pictures are in this album below.

Dublin August 2007

Danish 4th, Coldness & Turkey

Obviously, Denmark does not celebrate the Fourth of July, so we had to make do with making it the Fourth of July in our own special way. This was our third Fourth of July to spend outside of the US and in Denmark. It was also the only holiday we had twice the first time we lived here, so in a sense, we are pros at spending the most patriotic holiday away from "home." Originally Michael hadn't planned on going to work on the 4th but since we planned a last minute trip to Turkey that we wouldn't be returning from until the 3rd it was better that he went to work. We also had wanted to have some of his buds from TI over (especially the one who spent time in the US) for some burgers/beer and fun, but again , we got back at midnight on July 3rd so it just didn't work out for us.. Perhaps next year!!! Danes, go ahead and mark your calenders, next July 4th, you are busy! The 4th for us was like any normal day, we got breakfast from the bakery, Michael went to work, we went to the gym and came home and did the best we could to make it feel like the holiday. So we made burgers and corn on the cob and I wondered to 4 different stores looking for American beer. I found Miller , but was on a quest to find Budwiser. Finally , I found some, sitting in 7-11 for the insane price of 18 Kroner a bottle!! YIKES! (The amazing Danish beer costs 7 kroner a bottle) Needless to say, I only bought 2 bottles.

4th of July Dinner

Burgers & Beer

The All Important Red, White and Blue Dessert

Remember a couple of weeks ago when I was complaining about the heat? Well, now I'm gonna complain about the cold. The day before we left for Istanbul the high was 58 degrees! 58!! People were in jackets and scarves. A couple weeks before we left the weather had been cooler and not as sunny and since we got back, I'm starting to feel like it is about... September or October. It has not gotten above 65 and it has been raining and raining and raining..... and raining and raining even more... It's actually a little depressing because I know the longest day of the year has come and gone and now we are slowing making our way back to the cold dark winter. I'm sure there are plenty of beautiful sunny days left, but right now, its a little sad!! Please sun... COME BACK!!! For those of you that know Michael well, you know that he doesn't get cold easily. This is him going to work this morning....

Yup, long sleeve sweater

Oh wait, thats not enough, he had to put a sweatshirt on top of the sweater!!!

Now more of Turkey! Thanks to Michael being a Gold Member (which is the highest level) on SAS airlines, we now get to use the lounge when we fly SAS and their partners. We can't go back now... it was fabulous. Michaels aunt nicknamed us "The Fancies" last year on the family cruise and sitting in the SAS lounge made us feel that we were living up to that name. Free drinks (beer, wine, whiskey....and many other hard liquors as well, but we stuck with the wine...) and lots of free food, comfortable chairs and a nice area to just "chill" before catching our flight onwards to Munich.

Michael in the Lounge

Our first day in Istanbul we went to "Topkapi Palace" which was the former residence of the Sultans back in the day. These are a few pictures from inside the Palace and the Sultans Harem.

Afterwards we went and ate lunch overlooking the Bosphorus which is a strait that separates Asia and Europe.

Michael looking Cool

Me looking tired...or like the sun is in my eyes, I'm not sure which

More from Istanbul to come!!!