• Top on my list…be consistent with working out.
• Work on the house. This includes…
• Change out sink
• Replace carpet downstairs with wood floor
• Repaint the living room
• Get living room furniture
• Organize master bedroom closet
• Move money from savings into retirement fund, open an IRA

I think that’s it. These are pretty big goals, so hopefully we can accomplish them all.

We do plan on taking a couple small vacations this year. We want to go back to Mexico sometime in the spring or fall, and another smaller vacation.

Anyway, I’ll have to post an abbreviated version. Trying to retell the entire vacation is probably boring. Instead, I’d rather sort through all the pictures and share them.

I was able to go through the Rome set and cut out 2/3 of the unwanted pictures. The result…400 pictures to share. Between the two of us, we had 2 cameras. I haven’t even begun to look at the pictures from the other camera.

This is Rome – Days 1 and 2.

My thoughts, it’s unfortunate that the Tiber is so neglected. Not only can you see the ever-present graffiti on the wall, but the water was murky. I read somewhere that after one of the major floods, the Romans built a high wall and dam and forever neglected it. It’s too bad, but I’m sure 2000 years ago, it was probably beautiful.

Since I’m picking on Rome, the other atrocious thing was the traffic. I wouldn’t dare to drive around in Rome. Those drivers were insane. I think the only rule is not to hit a pedestrian.

Despite all of this though, the sites made up for it all. It was beautiful nonetheless. I have to say that we were captivated and “romanced” by the city. We headed back towards our neighborhood and found a local ristorante called Vito’s. I ordered the quintessential pasta carbonara, and Brian ordered veal marsala, we also split a pizza topped with prosciutto as a appetizer. The pizza was plenty of food. Here’s a dining tip, restaurants charge a cover fee, and the bread the place on the table also cost you money. Rick Steve’s gives a good overview on dining in Rome. The food was good, but the pasta was a little too al dente for my taste. I found this “quality” everywhere we went. Italian food in Rome is not what you expect, be prepared. I’m not saying it wasn’t good, it’s not like your local Buca di Beppo. Everything tasted fresh and handmade. The restaurants are run by families and are typically quiet.

That pretty much wraps up day 1.

Day 2… We had an early morning start. We caught breakfast at the hotel, and were picked up by Grayline Tours at 8:00am.

The first excursion of the trip was a Classical Rome tour. Our tour guide was great. The bus took us across town to the center of the classical sites. We got off the bus and on foot, they took us to our first stop, the Trajan column.

Next up was the famous Trevi fountain, where we got to take some pictures. Bernini is a genius. His work is found nearly all over Rome. We each threw a coin into the fountain. Of course the legend states that if you throw the coin using your right hand over your left shoulder, you will most certainly come back to Rome. Since it was early morning, the site was pretty quiet.

After we got our 15 minutes at the fountain, we headed up the the highlight of the tour. The Pantheon. Of course we saw other stuff in between, but you’ll have to see the pictures once I’m done going through all of them. The Pantheon epitomizes the engineering skills they had 2000 years ago. Not only that, but it’s the most well preserved site probably in the world. I actually got chills. It was grand and beautiful and perfect. Also, something I didn’t know, the oculus at the top is actually open, so when it rains, it actually rains into the building, but the Romans were smart enough to build in a drain inside the building.

We made a 20 minute “pit stop” at the gift store, after the Pantheon. These pit stops seems to be a scam since we certainly didn’t need 20 minutes at a gift store. But whatever. We headed out to the other side of the river to see St. Peter’s Basilica.

And since it was Wednesday morning, the Pope was actually there leading the mass. How cool is it that we saw the Pope. There was a large crowd, so we walked around. We didn’t spend too much time there, since we were going to come back on our own. So we waited around the bus.

The tour ended after 3 hours. At that point they dropped us off at the location of our choice. Since we had pretty much half a day left, we decided to have them drop off us at the Spanish steps.

We found a restaurant in between the many shops off located right off the steps and stopped for lunch first. I ordered pasta carbonara again while Brian got some other pasta dish.

I’m not sure what the purpose of this spot was, but I guess it was just a place for people to sit. We decided to go up the steps and explore an old church and take in the views. The crowd around the steps was pretty large. We even saw a few puppies and one that looked like Reesey. We couldn’t resist taking a picture.

After being sweaty from walking all day, we decided to walk back to our hotel. We crashed until dinner time.

I’ll have to finish up Day 2 later…

Flight to Rome. At the last minute the agent changed our flight for a better deal. So we got to fly Lufthansa for the first time. The plane ride was smooth. We tried to sleep the entire way there, but of course it was rather cramp and uncomfortable. The service on the plane was definitely great. They serve alcohol for FREE! I had a couple of cups of wine hoping that it would help me sleep, but of course that just gave me a headache. At least the movie selection was good. I fell asleep here and there, but it certainly wasn’t refreshing. 1/3 of the way there, I just sat there tracking the flight on the monitor…”only 4 hours to go”….

We finally landed in Frankfurt but had to board almost immediately. For some reason, being in Germany scared me. Maybe because everyone was 1 foot taller than I am?

Anyway, after 1.5 more hours on the second flight, we finally landed in Rome. We grabbed our baggage and found our driver. Unfortunately we had no change, so we couldn’t tip the driver :-(. The same thing happen with the Parking Spot driver. All we had with us were Euros on the way to the airport. :-(

Despite feeling like a jerk we finally arrived at the hotel. We stayed at the Visconti Palace Hotel which is somewhat modern compared to everything else in Rome. It was built in the 70s. The rooms were small, but I expected that. The one thing that mattered was that the bathroom was modern and clean, which it was. It even had a bidet, which grosses me out by the way.

We unpacked, changed, and decided to explore the neighborhood. First up was lunch. Since it was already quite late for lunch, we wanted something small. After walking up and down the streets we found a tiny pizzeria. You pretty much had to stand and eat. The pizza didn’t look very tempting, so Brian got a calzone stuffed with sausage and rice, and I got some weird fried thing. I rate it a 1 out 5. Actually it was rather gross. It was cold and flavorless. Ick. Here’s a picture of Brian trying to be nice. “Mmmmmm”. With the disappointing lunch, I was hoping we’d find something better for dinner.

With that said, I’ll have to finish day 1 later…

What do you all think? I certainly remember having to practice cursive in elementary school. Today, my writing skills consists of cursive mixed with prints but it’s as messy as it can be. Is typing on the keyboard causing my penmanship to fade? I remember in HS trying to write as neat as I can with the big curlz. I could care less today. I still use paper to take notes and whatnot, but I can see how writing wouldn’t be necessary 10-20 years from now. It’s strange to see that the need to handwrite something is starting to fade…

An ideal vacation for me is to experience the sights, the food, the culture, and of course relaxing the whole time. I’m not sure how any of that can be balanced especially if you throw in relaxation.

I’ve been putting together an itinerary, hour by hour itinerary. I’ve even gone to google maps to see what the scenary will look like if we walked from point A to point B. I am after a project manager :-p. Maybe I should stay home and enjoy the trip from my laptop ;-)

Brian on the other hand thinks it’s silly and refuses to acknowledge it. He thinks we should just play it by ear when we get there. We already have 50% of the activities planned. UGH. I don’t want to spend the trip trying to figure out what to do or where to go. If I just lay it out, we can always veto things when we get there.

I’ve got the first two days planned out. Last night I had asked him if we should plan having breakfast out on the third day because we have something at 2pm. But since breakfast is already included with the hotel, should we save the money and eat there? He looked at me as if I was insane. I get his point…

This will be an interesting trip :-)

It’s not bad at all, but I do prefer to come home and zone out in front of the tv or cooking for my husband or reading.

I’m currently reading Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain. Life as a chef is quite dysfunctional. I’m glad I don’t aspire to be one.

I have been trying to stick to my diet, but I’ll have a failure every now and then. I certainly can’t make good choices when we go out. So I need to bring my lunch in more often and cook at home more.

My birthday is in 2 weeks. I thought about doing a dinner with some friends, but I don’t think I’m going to keep it low key. The stress of trying to plan anything (although shouldn’t Brian be doing that?) is unnecessary.

Anyway, we just paid off our trip and now I get to go shopping for it. The weather will be nice a cool. Hopefully it won’t be too cold. We need another carryon bag and Brian and I vehemently disagree on what to buy. He wants the five star quality and I could care less. Bah. Maybe we should stop at one of the outlet stores and see what they have to offer.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got.

I went to an everlast shadowboxing class after work. I noticed my shoulder isn’t hurting has bad anymore. I hurt it while tripping and falling against a wall several weeks ago and was in incredible pain. Now it just feels sore. I need to do some shoulder workouts this week to strengthen it.

Anyway after shadowboxing I did 15 minutes of abs and then decided to stay for the dance class for 30 minutes.

So basically I burnt 800 calories yesterday, and ate 1400 calories.

Even though my family is here, I don’t think I will be breaking my diet since they all eat relatively healthy. But we’ll see about that…

My next goal is to get better about taking my vitamins.

Yesterday was a failure. Not only was it weigh in day, which I did not lose but gained, but I also didn’t work out. My excuse was I had to go pick up my car from the dealershp, and by the time I was near the gym it was already 6:30. I was close, but Brian talked me out of it because he was hungry. So instead we had pizza because I was too lazy to cook. Of course I woke up this morning with a bad tummy ache. I tried to do some video at home, but it was already 9:30 and I wasn’t feeling it. It’s hard to be motivated when it’s hot.

So today, I am back on track and will make up for it. I’m thinking of doing two classes today, Shadowboxing and some dance class. I might skip the dance class and do some weights.