Anacapri

After a glorious 3 days in Positano, we took a 30 minute ferry ride to the island of Capri off of the Amalfi coast.  Capri is known for...it's rugged cliffs and mountains, two main sections of the island (Capri, super touristy, crowded, filled with shops and restaurants up high on the hill) and Anacapri (a more rural/less crowded area of the island), as well as being the former home to Tiberius and a couple of those Roman emperors.  (Tiberius was the emperor who was in power when Christ died, for some timing reference there.)  

Based on a great friend's recommendation, we stayed for 2 nights off the beaten path in Anacapri - it was still a cute town, easily walkable, lots of cute shops and restaurants, but much less crowded and more rustic and slower paced.  We liked it a lot and would recommend that for anyone headed that way.  We stayed at Villa Ceselle, took advantage of the pool and restaurant at their sister hotel Da Gelsomina, went to another "lido" (beach club) in Faro one day and swam and lounged, and just generally enjoyed the food, scenery, and limoncello.

Scenes from Lido del Faro on the beach!

Beautiful beach and rocks/cliffs/mountains.
I got stung by a jellyfish.  Beautiful water though!

The pool at Da Gelsomina that we swam at the day before.  Beautiful sunset. 

A real Italian Stallion.

View from the lookout point at the restautant at Da Gelsomina!  

Best pals.

Also best pals.

Views from the town of Capri high on the mountain!

Tourists.

Drew and Elise getting us some caprese sandwiches at the deli.  Drew has a napkin on his forehead under his hat because its so. damn. hot. outside.

The island was beautiful and we're glad we went and saw it!  If I had to rate them then Positano would still be #1 but we loved our two day sojourn for some more relaxation.

Still in Santorini now, heading to Mykonos tomorrow.  Will try to write more soon!

Positano

Greetings!  And apologies for not writing like I said I would.  We actually didn't bring the right converter for Italy and I couldn't charge my computer or upload any pictures and it was a DISASTER!!  But we're all good now.

We are currently writing to you LIVE from Santorini, Greece, where I just took this selfie of us on our hotel balcony, waiting for the sun to go down.  Evidently they have some of the best sunsets in the world on this island and we have a prime spot for it.

But enough about Greece.  I'm here to talk about ITALY!  Positano, more specifically.  It was awesome and magical and beautiful.  We were there for 3 days and I think of all the Italian cities we went to, this one was by far our favorite.  It was just too picturesque for words and the beaches and lounging were unparalleled.  Here are some highlights:

Yummy breakfast on our porch every morning.  Love.

A tourist walking down the mountain into town/on the beach.  

Another cute tourist lounging on the little beach we hiked to.

Testing the waters.  And that water was COLD.  Like icy.  You just had to jump in or you weren't getting in.

Dinner at Chez Black with Evan and Elise, who finally made it there!
This was "Spaghetti with Cuttlefish Ink" and they were VERY SERIOUS about this ink.  They made me put a bib on and everyone made fun of me because they said it looked like a pen had burst in my mouth after I took one bite.  Whoops.  It was delicious though.

Drew tried a "Rossini" - champagne and strawberries, and loved it.  New fave drink.

Elise and Evan at Music on the Rocks, a bumpin' rooftop bar.

Drew and I the next day at Le Sirenuse for cocktails.  Lovely setting, yummy drinks, and free apps!  Doesn't get better than that.

We took a boat one day to Arrienzo Beach.  They have these things called "lidos", which are basically beach clubs, where you pay like €8 for a chair, access to their beach, their showers, bathrooms, changing rooms, and restaurants for the day.  Worth it.

Swimming/freezing in the Med.

Taking the boat out to another beach.

Our favorite meal of the week - La Tagliata.   This was a family-owned restaurant way high up in the mountains that served you amazing family-style dishes and unlimited house wine all for €35!  It was a really nice restaurant with amazing views and staff and we actually felt wrong only paying them €35.  This was the first course, which comprised of about 10 different vegetable dishes.

And the pasta course, which included zucchini pasta tubes, "Mama's Pasta", pumpkin ravioli, and gnocchi with tomato sauce and mozzarella.  SO GOOD.

And the meat course!  We had sausages, pork chops, veal, beef, chicken, lamb, and rabbit.  Insane.

Young love.

Older love.  And my hair and lipstick make me look like I'm from 1987.  Ah well!

We truly loved our time here.  Magical people at our hotel and magical dining experiences and I clearly need to find a thesaurus to further explain our love for this city.

Off to find some Greek food.  Hopefully posting more on the rest of Italy later!

O'Solomon Farewell Tour

Greetings from Positano!  I didn't get to blog yesterday due to us running around like chickens with our heads cut off packing, BUT we decided to bring a few appliances that would allow me to occasionally upload some pics and blog it out on our trip.  So here I am!

As I've mentioned, we're beginning our long-planned and much-anticipated Farewell to Europe tour today in Positano on Italy's Amalfi coast.  There was an early flight + a private car we hired to navigate the treacherous winding roads (and he may or may not have had to stop 3 times for me to throw up on the side of the road, sorry Vincenzo) and we arrived at our fabulous hotel!  We have a spacious apartment and we are both currently sitting in robes on our balcony overlooking the cliffside buildings and ocean, having a glass of wine.  Relaxation has begun!

Here are a few pics of our day!

Airplane selfie!

Main beach wayyyyy down the hill from our hotel.  Filled with a wide variety of American co-eds.  Umm HELLO I can see this junk at South Padre Island!  I don't need these fools invading my vacay.
(Luckily they were on some sort of tour and their buses all pulled away today.  Yay!)

Capricciosa pizza, lemonade, and beer on the beach at La Pergola.

Another selfie.  And my hair is evidently brown now.  What the hell.

Gelato!!

My Stracciatela and Nutella combo cone.  Heaven.

These were the lemons at the MiniMarket by our hotel.  Though you can't really tell, they are literally the size of my head.  I didn't even know they could get that big!
(Amalfi is a huge lemon/orange growing region.  They have lemonade, lemon granitas, and limoncello all over the place!  I ain't complainin.)

Our balcony.  Drew's got his restaurant research station set up here as we watch the sun go down behind the cliffs.

Tomorrow, we're hiking to a beach nearby while we wait for our best pal Evan's arrival with his gf Elise tomorrow night, and then dinner and food and pasta and pizza and wine and gelato and pasta and wine!!!

Alright, gonna turn this off and disconnect for a bit.  Until tomorrow.  Or the next time I blog.

Ciao!

San Francisco

We officially have less than a month left here and time seems to be FLYING.  Part of me is anxious and panicked, as per usual, but a larger part of me is calm and almost numb.  Which I think is how I felt when I was leaving Dallas to move here.  Even though I don't necessarily want to leave, it's happening, and I think I'm ready for it to just finally get here and happen.  After our fun trip, of course.

Anyway, we went to San Francisco last weekend!  Longest trip for the shortest amount of time EVER, but I was so glad we went when it was all said and done.  (Though I did ask myself what the hell we were doing when Drew told me we had 4 hours left in our 11 hour flight when we really had 7 left.  Jerk.)  We somehow managed the long flights ok and made to SF by noon on Thursday.  Time travel is weird.  We stayed with friends one night and a variety of hotels the next three nights and basically did our own food tour of the city throughout our stay, as per usual.

Here are some pics!

We desperately wanted Dim Sum and this place was rumored to have some of the best pork buns around.  We were the only white people there, which means it's legit.  It said "Dim Sum Nice Food" on the window.

Steaming dumplings!

Pork buns.  Everything we ever could have wanted in life.

Later in the afternoon, we stopped by a place called Giordano's, a sandwich place from Pittsburgh.  Drew has been obsessed with this type of pastrami + cheese + fries + slaw sandwich ever since he saw a special on the Primanti Brothers in Pittsburgh and we had to try it.

It did NOT disappoint.  And now Drew doesn't have to make a special trip to Pittsburgh anytime soon.

And then for dinner we went to another one of our favorite pizza places in the world, Tony's Napoletana, and got the New Yorker.  Pepperoni, sausage, ricotta, mozzarella, and a bunch of other heavenly stuff that I can't describe.  SO. GOOD.

The wedding was in Oakland at 2pm the next day so we got an early pancake breakfast and made it to the church on time!

A blurry picture of the happy couple!

My Dublin gal pals, old and new.
(Tara, me, Autumn, Emily, Niamh, Janice)

Me and Missy!

Drew and Tom!

Another prom pic.

We've been to SF before, so we didn't necessarily have to do the tourist stuff.  So on Sunday, we went straight to the Ferry Building to walk around the food stalls and eventually settled on a chocolate shake.

Then we walked to Fisherman's Wharf to see the seals cause I'm a sucker.

There's a humongous seal on the edge of that dock that I thought was fake until he started moving his head and made barking noises.

A man and his robe, enjoying the view.
(We stayed at Le Meridian the last night and got a free room upgrade!  Holllaaa!)

We had a lovely view of the Bay and of Coit Tower.  Cool!

The wedding was such a great time!  I'm so glad we went.  The band was awesome and the food was pretty amazing and getting to see all of my pals from Dublin and various parts of the States now was so fun.  Tom and Missy are some of our best pals and seeing them get married was such a special treat.  The trip was over as quick as it started and we left Monday to arrive in Dublin on Tuesday afternoon.  Jet lag has been terrible but sleeping til noon today certainly helped - and Drew's done working now, so I'm showing him the ropes on how to reallllllllly take it easy during the day.  I think he'll get used to it in no time.

We already started packing for our trip, we have a "going away" happy hour for Drew with his coworkers tomorrow night, and we leave bright and early Saturday morning!  I'll try to check in again before we leave, and I'm already attempting to figure out how to blog on the trip.  For my 3 readers out there.

Alright, off to bed.  Goodnight!