Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Spring! And Dave.

I think Spring is finally showing its face in New York.  There are actual birds chirping and flowers growing.  And some sunshine!


I am retiring my puffy coat, washing it and storing it under the bed, and I hope to not see it again until November!  I really grew to resent that thing.  

Walking around the city has been pretty great the past two days, the RealFeel temperature has been about 55° which is a HUGE improvement!  We still have a ways to go to true warmth, but at least now it seems possible.

Spring always makes me think of college.  It was my favorite time on campus, especially with the azaleas blooming.  What I wouldn't give to be walking on the quad right now!




Of course I can't go back to college days, but in springtime I always have a major itch to listen to music from that era.  Which means Dave.  All DMB, all the time.  

Dave Matthews Band

I could also really go for the Pi Phi Crawfish Boil in Faunsdale, AL, always the best party of the year.  Sadly (maybe a good thing), I don't have any of those Zaps (party pics) scanned in, but here is the inside of the bar!  Such a good time.


Oh look I just found one on Facebook!  I'm not in this one, heh...


A party pic with me in it just to be fair...



Friday, March 15, 2013

Switzerland - 10 Years Later

Stephen and I started dating in October 2002, and he has an aunt who at the time lived in Geneva, Switzerland, with her husband and daughter.  After we had been dating a couple months, Stephen brought up the idea that we should travel to Switzerland to visit her and go skiing.  I remember thinking, yeah ok, let's see if this actually ever happens, because it just sounded too good to be true.  But in March 2003 we hopped on a plane from Dallas to Geneva!  My very first time in Europe.  We had the best time ever, one of our several "trips of a lifetime", and while we had been exclusively dating for a few months, I credit this trip as the time I fell in love with my husband-to-be. 

I love, love Switzerland.  To this day it is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been.  Our first stop was Crans-Montana, a ski resort town in the southwest part of the country and right in the heart of the Swiss Alps.  We stayed at a ski chalet owned by his aunt's colleague and it was FABULOUS.  A large, muti-bedroomed place with a wrap-around balcony that we could have never afforded on our own.  Thanks, Aunt Jo!

Us standing on the balcony of the chalet (look how baby-faced we are!):


Sunrise from the balcony, I'm pretty sure this was within the first 24 hours when I was very jet-lagged:

I was not a good jet lag traveler, I would try to fall asleep at night at the appropriate time but with difficulty, and then would wake up at odd hours and try to take naps later in the day.  Naps are a horrible idea for the jet-lagged!  We would fall asleep for a "nap" and then wake up 8 hours later back on Dallas time!  We only got half-days of skiing those first couple days.

Stephen sitting on a ski slope lodge patio, beer break!  

For lunch we would order the most delicious salami baguette sandwiches that came with this mix of butter/mayo/mustard that I can't really describe or recreate, but it was the best thing under the sun with a beer, and we still talk about them to this day.


At this point in my life I had only been skiing one time, in New Mexico at 16 years old with my church youth group.  That's much different from the Swiss Alps, and I wasn't very good even on those small New Mexico mountains.  It's difficult learning to ski as an adult!  Stephen had skied several times and was much better than me.  At one point he skied ahead of me a bit and I came to a slope that I knew I couldn't get down, so I ended up taking off my skis and sliding down on my butt, tears in my eyes because I just knew he would think I was a total idiot and break up with me.  Ha.  I eventually figured it out and credit the Alps (and Stephen) with teaching me how to ski.  But not before I fell over and over again.  At one point it took me so long to get back up again that Stephen had time to get the camera out of his backpack and take a picture of me.  


Before I got there I knew the Swiss Alps were obviously big and majestic, they're the Alps!  But I wasn't prepared for just how big and how majestic they really are.  You can see the mountain tops around you for miles, and it sure made me feel very small.




Roger Moore, one of the James Bonds, owns a chalet here (the red house in the background).  

After a few days in Crans-Montana we boarded a train to Zermatt, leaving the French-speaking side of Switzerland for the German-speaking side.  This train ride was one of my favorite parts of the whole trip.  It only lasted a couple hours I think but gave us spectacular views of the valleys.

Waiting at the train station, the site of the worst cheeseburger I've ever had in my life:

I guess it was the only thing I could read off the menu in this tiny food window, and it was previously frozen and defrosted in their microwave.  Only it wasn't really defrosted and still frozen in the middle.  And just tasted all around bad.


On the train:

Because it was March, some of the snow had already started to melt and pour through the streams and valleys into the towns below.  On the train ride we were constantly near water and it was all aqua-blue.  Evian coming down from the mountains!




Bridges over a gorge:

In Zermatt:

Zermatt is so pretty, perfect and clean, that it is almost hard to believe it's a real place and not a Disney sound stage.




Skiing in Zermatt gives you great views of the famous peak, the Matterhorn.


The Matterhorn is beautiful, but also one of the deadliest peaks in the Alps, so climbers beware!






The lift behind me in the picture below is a t-bar lift.  Instead of sitting in a chair that carries you up and over a slope, two people sit on either side of an upside-down T and it drags you up with your skis on the snow the whole time.  This thing is my nemesis.  I couldn't do it in New Mexico so I should have known better.  It carried us up and down small hills in the snow, but going down one of these small hills my skis started going faster than my body on the t-bar, and for the life of me I couldn't slow them down.  Stephen was shouting my name because I was becoming more and more parallel with the ground and he couldn't grab me, and eventually I was so off balance that I had to let go.  Stephen went down with the ship and let go, too.  The problem became that I was a new skier and the slope I had just dropped myself onto was a double black.  How we made it down that thing I have no idea!

Yes, I know it looks easy, apparently it wasn't:

My camera ran out of battery before the end of our trip so I really didn't get too many pictures of Zermatt, which is a shame because it is heaven on earth.  And no pictures of Geneva!  Geneva is such a gorgeous city right on the lake.  The day we arrived in Geneva, we were walking around the city with police in full riot gear - the US had just invaded Iraq and the G8 was coming to town in the near future and all morning there had been protests.  Most of the stores and hotels had boarded up their windows, although from what we could tell it had been a very peaceful protest.  That night, the final night of our trip, we had dinner with his aunt and her family at the Hotel President Wilson at Spices (I think that was the name of the restaurant).  That meal is in the top 5 meals of my life!  (The meal at Le Cinq at the Four Seasons George V in Paris is on that list, too.  Amazing.)

One day we will have to go back, I fell in love with both Stephen and the Alps on that trip, and still am in love today!

Skiing is something that Stephen and I have done together ever since that first ski trip to Switzerland, and we try to go every year.  We are lucky that North America has so many premier ski resorts, our favorites are in Colorado or Whistler, BC!

Here are a few pictures from our most recent trip to Breckenridge, Colorado...

The drive up from Denver:



Stephen with our constant ski buddies, Byron and Amanda:


 International Snow Sculpture Competition:




Stephen has told me that when he was younger he used to think that he would marry an athlete, which obviously didn't happen.  But we can ski together and run together and really, what else do you need?  He's pretty happy with that!

Thursday, March 14, 2013

I Need Vitamin D

I am not a reality tv fan.  The idiots on tv stress me out and I just cannot believe what comes out of their mouths and their general life choices, I find no joy in it!  However...


When I first moved to London in the middle of winter, I was flipping through the 10 basic channels our original corporate flat tv had and I came across the second season of Real Housewives of Orange County.  It was so dreary outside in London, rainy and cold and very few hours of daylight (if any), and all of a sudden sunny southern California weather was streaming through my tv!  It was only the second season of RHOC, so not too much ridiculous drama had built up yet and I could handle it.  I would literally watch it every day just to remember what bright sunny warmth was like.


So this is today:


Really?  Come on!  It's March 14.  I just came in from walking outside where I had to a) wear my puffy jacket with the furry hood and b) use my hands to keep the hood on my head because it's so windy and it kept being blown down.  I don't think I will ever get used to this northern living.

I saw this Norwegian Cruise Line ship sailing down the Hudson River, on its way to the Caribbean, and from where I was standing I could hear the party music ("Moves Like Jagger").  Sigh.



And... I discovered reruns of RHOC on tv again today.  And I'm watching it.  This is is getting desperate.  I am in a major sunshine withdrawal and RHOC is my needle.  

Please send help.