2013 will always be remembered as a year when I traveled the world...well, a portion of the world at least. We didn't set out to do so much traveling this year, it just kind of happened. And, I'm so glad it did!
LAS VEGAS
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| Little White Chapel |
January was full of snow storms, so going to Las Vegas that month was perfect timing! Our friends Jake and Betsy were renewing their wedding vows after 5 years. The weekend was a riot, complete with the Little White Wedding Chapel. It took all of me to not laugh out loud (there were people there doing it for-real) at the pastel plush carpet, the drive-thru marriage option and Elvis, who doubled as a musician and priest to re-marry Betsy and Jake. I always say this when I go to Vegas and it rang true during this trip... Vegas IS the WEIRDEST place ever. We had fun though!
NEW ORLEANS
Truss had a work trip in New Orleans in May and since neither of us had been, it was a great excuse to go for a long weekend! Our hotel,
The Omni, was fantastic and in a great location! We had a very lavish dinner at Antoine's the first night. It was seriously the most ornate restaurant I have ever been to - lots of gold and lots of color! I was really inspired by all the lanterns and shutters on the architecture there. I think I commented on the shutters about a million times during our walk through the Garden District. We visited a great Lantern store called
Bevolo and I fell in love with these ladderback chairs with rush seat. They are darker and not as red as they look in the picture - I love that they are new and sturdy, yet have a little wear to make them look older. I'm putting them on my wish list!
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| The Carousel Bar inside Hotel Monteleone. It actually moved slowly in a circle! |
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| The cemeteries were so incredible! |
Acadian ladder back chairs
In between these trips, Truss and I celebrated our first anniversary. Wow, a year flew by! Truss surprised me with a digital SLR, that I've been wanting for awhile. Apparently he was sick of me talking about it a lot! (You'll see below why my talking about it increased after our trip to New Orleans!) We went out to dinner at Il Centro and he surprised me by having the waiter bring over the camera all wrapped up!
AND, EUROPE...
When I say we didn't plan these trips, I really mean this one! The back story:
In early May, Truss heard about a "5 trips in 5 days" contest a local radio station was putting on. Basically, they were giving away trips and all you had to do was text in the word "Trips" to a certain phone number and confirm your birth date. Then, during a certain week they would call the last four digits of your phone number and you had nine minutes to call in and claim your prize.Truss and I both entered to increase our odds. I don't listen to the station, so really had forgotten all about it and didn't know a ton of details about the trips. Truss went to New Orleans several days before me for work and had a conference the first day. Because he wasn't able to listen to the station, he had some co-workers (who also entered the contest) listen for the last four digits of our phone numbers.
I received a frantic phone call from Truss around 9 a.m., just as I was getting into work. He had rushed out of his conference to tell me his coworkers had called and texted him to let him know they called the last four digits of my phone number. At that time, I didn't realize I only had 9 minutes to call in! So, I nervously called the station and said I was calling about the trip to London. They asked me to confirm my number and birth date and proceeded to put me on air with the DJ. I really didn't know all the details and didn't want to be "That Person" that won and doesn't even listen to the station, so I kind of faked excitement and tried to get off the phone (and on-air) as fast as I could! So, in the end, we won a 5 day trip to London and tickets to a music festival (Glastonbury). The kicker was that the trip was a little over a month away! The promotions guy got in touch with me the day I got to New Orleans and wanted to make sure we had our passports and they were up to date. Luckily we did! After a lot of back and forth and me stressing about not having all the details of the trip, we finally got everything booked. Ran into a couple of glitches along the way - the festival had sold out and they couldn't get us tickets. It would have been a great festival - Mumford, Lumineers, Rolling Stones - however it was camping out in a field for four days, which, as most people know, isn't really my 'scene.' They tried to move us to another festival in August, but we had already arranged PTO with our jobs. So, we asked if they could get us over to London, put us up for a few days anyway without the festival (in the end, we weren't heart broken over the festival because really, who wants to spend all your time at a festival when it's your first trip to Europe!) So, the station was great and booked us to leave on the date planned and extended it for us to come back a week later. So, they really didn't pay for the entire trip, but the flight out and two nights in London was definitely worth it!
We went to London for two days, Brussels for two days, Paris for two days and back to fly out of London. I loved each city for different reasons:
London - reminded me a little bit of NYC with all the different burroughs. I loved Kensington Gardens & Hyde Park! London was a great first city to visit in Europe - it wasn't such a culture shock and kind of eased us into the other cities. We had transportation down pat once we got to Brussels!
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| Buckingham Palace |
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| Kensington Park |
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| Tower Bridge |
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| Wimbledon - as close as we got |
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| Trains were incredibly easy! |
Brussels - it was so old and not as congested as the other cities. We were able to do more free experiences than the other cities and didn't have to wait in so many lines!
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| Atomium, built for the World's Fair- we went up in it |
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| Loved the beer in Belgium |
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| Beautiful Cathedral of St. Michael |
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| Manneken Pis "little man pee" - a famous Brussels landmark | | | | | |
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| Grand Place |
Paris - my favorite! Loved everything about it. I wish I had practiced my French a little bit more, but was able to get by on a little bit. We didn't get to go to a ton of landmarks due to the long lines, but we ended up seeing quite a bit. Two days in each city wasn't nearly long enough, but definitely gave us a taste!
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| Loved all the street side cafes |
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| Eiffel Tower |
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| Very reasonable wine in a bag! |
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| Architecture was amazing! |
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| The louvre |
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| My one piece of evidence of Fashion Week, which was occurring while we were there! |
