can't believe its been over a year now. sigh...
time to go back.

like carillon ringing only on Sunday

of COURSE i remember that!! we were so exhausted and we were practically out in traffic trying to get just the right shot. if only we'd known that first day that by day 20 we would not really care anymore about the 'perfect' shot and just do the garden gnome pose in every picture to prove we were there.

here's one for you. remember the day we were finally sick and tired of the cathedral bells? wasnt it our picnic lunch at the farmstay when we realized we were sitting directly under the little church belltower......a bell that chimed every quarter hour? how funny were we refusing to give up our heavenly reading spot, just hurriedly covering our ears every fifteen minutes for nearly two hours.

p.s. this is the Monet painting of the cathedral in Rouen that we visited on my birthday.

love, rach

what i'll remember most...

remember that night, standing under the windmill of the moulin rouge, so tired from our long day of walking all over the city...it was dark and and the neon lights were bright and reflecting everywhere and for some reason we could not stop taking pictures of each other in front of the moulin. i think we were trying to get just one good one of the both of us. one where we did not look like we had been beaten to death by the streets of paris, but to no avail. in every one of those pictures we both look near death --- ah but it was a romantic way to die…

a sign

this weekend when i was in world market i saw a little wooden sign that said 'dreaming of paris'. it was a little creepy since i had just the night before been dreaming of paris. ok, not so strange because i dream about it all the time. i'm homesick for it too! but homesick cant be the right word. it's actually more the opposite of homesick that i miss. i miss every day being a little bit scary.....feeling alive. it goes without saying but you know i'm just like you. it's so easy to become a 'hermit' and imagine how much easier it is when you don't have a car !

ok, i better stop thinking about it. it was good talking to you on the phone tonight by the way. i'm glad you were on your way to have some fun. if you want to have some serious fun though you need to come visit me. we could switch brain halves cause i'm tired of mine.

(random europe memory #187: remember in florence the cool internet/student art gallery place? where the guy gave you the student discount but thought you were a student in the city and thought you could help his friend 'practice his english' and we had to keep pretending we were actually living in florence for the student discount? ya that was funny)

love,
rach

thoughts...

i'm so glad you posted here rach because i havent liked it one bit either that this blog has been left alone for so long. i agree that we should keep it alive. i have been very homesick for paris. is it ok to be homesick for a place you've only spent a small amount of time?

i've been getting settled here in san diego and its all been very exciting up until this weekend. i've got everything unpacked and i've been nesting i guess. well i like to tell myself that anyway. i've been spending a lot of time alone in my new place and i'm watching myself slowly turn into a hermit. i know that i have this tendency, so i'm going to need to make myself get out of the house now and then because i do feel much better when i'm out and around people outside of work.

its funny. i still have everything from our trip, ticket stubs, postcards, receipts, notes etc, all of it stuffed into the same little flowered bag that traveled around europe with us. i haven’t touched any of it. i’ve been meaning to get everything out and go through it, maybe make a scrapbook. but I just cant bring myself to do it for some reason because its all just too sad. i know it will make me restless and i’ll want to be back on the road again. who am i kidding, i am restless to be back on the road again.

never too late

today i wanted to show someone pictures of our trip and thought....i'll just go to our blog! and how sad to see we never updated it. but i know why. we couldn't bring ourselves to do it...to admit that it was really over. every day i have flashbacks. it starts to rain here and i remember the grandma and her granddaughter on the train to the farmstay who called ahead to the station so that when we got off the train, there was an extra umbrella waiting for us with their family. or, i call UPS to schedule a pickup for my job and hear the exact same tone that we heard over and over again on every train station loudspeaker. i put on my worn out jeans that i had on every single day of our trip and think about looking at them every morning and saying 'gosh steph, i dont know about you but i think i'll wear these dirty stretched out jeans today. they look fabulous!'. i hear someone speaking broken english and think about the only friendly guy we met in venice who said (referring to his friend) "his english is not very good looking".

obviously i don't want to think of it as over. i'd like to say we are only in a holding pattern until we can go back. so, until then i dont know about you steph but we might as well still use this blog to keep track of our adventures together or otherwise since we live apart now. i don't want it to just sit here unused anymore!

this is not goodbye

its hard to believe that this day is actually here...our last day in paris. we have been trying to suck all the fun and beauty out of the city in a day. its all very sad, this has really become our favorite city. and we have spent enough time here now that we no longer need our map. we can walk by shops and say "oh theres the cheese lady" and "oh hey did you want to stop and say hi to our rude waiter?". it has really become a home away from home in only a few weeks. our only consolation is that we plan to come back here some day very soon. we have spent the past three days walking around the city, revisiting our favorite spots. the weather has been cold (we were forced to buy new jackets it was just horrible) (luckily they are very cute jackets) however it has been sunny most of the time. on our way home last night we heard some comotion around the corner. we realized that it was one of the demonstrations that have been going on here in paris since we left (we actually saw one right before leaving paris in october as well)...instead of getting up close and taking pictures like we did last time we decided to avoid giving dad a heart attack and turned around and went the other way. so we are safe...still...with less than 24 hours before we fly out tomorrow. we were thinking this would be our last blog entry but then we thought we would get home and still have things to say about our trip so we will probably post one more time from home. thank you all so much for keeping up with us on our big adventure. checking in and getting your comments was a life saver at times when we were really homesick. love you all and see you soon. love steph and rach

trains......

somehow this morning we find ourselves in paris. it was a long trip up from salerno starting yesterday morning around eight and arriving here this morning at about 8:30. so you see, we just spent 24 hours travelling on trains. it was nice to wake up in paris and walk to the hotel we stayed in before and even get our same room. now we are in our favorite neighborhood just enjoying the familiar sights (first order of business was eating nutella crepes). we feel like now we can relax and enjoy the rest of our stay in europe before heading home on friday. on sunday we took a train from salerno over to pompeii to explore the ruins. it was truly astonishing! we had no idea it was so well preserved. even after about three hours wandering around inside, we still hadnt seen even half of it. then we spent our last real night in italy stuffing ourselves with pasta. we even ordered one without knowing what it was and it turned out to be SO good. now we are off to wander around paris! love rach and steph

every day is a winding road...

hi again. we are still here in salerno enjoying the sun and beach. today when i woke up rachael told me happy birthday whether i liked it or not. we decided to take a trip to amalfi by bus. it was a beautiful drive along the coastline that we would have enjoyed had we both not gotten very motion sick. the road was so tight and curvy and the driver must have had it out for us. we both agreed that it was worth it though. the coastal towns all along the mountains are breathtaking. we stayed at amalfi for a few hours and decided it was a bit too touristy for our taste (everyone there was american) so we got lunch (pizza and vino) and rach surprised me with a card and a necklace that she made (one i had been borowing and love) then we took the long bus ride back to salerno. the sun was setting and it felt very surreal to be seeing all the beauty that we have only ever seen in pictures. unfortunately we got sick again on the way home and now we are trying to recover so we can get dinner at our favorite restaurant here. thank you everyone for the birthday wishes it really does mean a lot. cant wait to see you all and tell you all about our time here in europe. love steph and rach