Ciao, Roma!

So it is currently siesta time here in Rome, and while Eric is enjoying his afternoon nap, I thought I'd take a moment to update our wonderful readers about our time in Rome thus far.

We arrived around 7 Tuesday evening, but it was nearly 9 before we got into town and found our hotel, the Best Western Globus. We're staying a bit outside of town, near the University, and coincidentally, about 3 blocks from medical school. Our area is completely different from the typical tourist stops, which we really like. There's always lots of students walking around and hanging out at the local gelaterias etc. We're still only 5 minutes from the metro though, so it works out well!

We took a bus tour yesterday and saw a lot of the smaller fountains, statues, etc. that we may not have seen otherwise. We also hopped off a few times and tried out a local snack bar, and went to go see the Trevi fountain (which I Loooooved -- I think every city needs a humongous fountain running with free cold water for the masses and amazing sculptures to look at while you're cooling off!), the Pantheon (which is WAY bigger and fancier than I imagined it would be!) and Piazza Navona, where we got our first gelato. Mmmm.

This morning we slept a little late, then took the metro to the Spanish Steps, and visited the chiesa (church) at the top. We also explored the area some, which is hoppin' with designer stores like Gucci, Prada, and Burberry. Pretty sweet!

I've been trying to use what little Italian I know as much as possible. That's been fun! We've also been enjoying some delicious Italian meals -- the continental breakfast at our hotel is AMAZING and offers free cappuccino (oh, yeah!) as well as all sorts of pastries. We've also had some wonderful spaghetti, pizza neopolatino, and some italian doughnuts. Yum!

Tonight we're planning on going to the Colosseum, and hopefully we can pry ourselves out of bed in the morning to visit the Vatican! We have reservations at the Galeria Borghese tomorrow evening. And of course somewhere in there I still have to have some real tiramisu. :-)

Until next time, Ciao di Roma!

The Yates go global!

I can't believe it's finally here!

After preparing non-stop all week (not to mention the last 10 months!), tomorrow we will fly away on our day-long journey (literally, 24-hours) to Europe. Woo hoo! Here's a little taste of our schedule for the next 2-1/2 weeks:

Tuesday, July 13 - Arrive in Rome in time for le cena (dinner), get settled, and hopefully sleep off the jet lag.

Wednesday-Sunday, July 14-18 - Enjoy all Rome has to offer; eat lots of spaghetti and gelato.

Sunday-Thursday, July 18-22 - Bologna, Italy, with side trips to Florence, Venice, and possibly Pisa or Rimini.

Thursday-Friday, July 22-23 - Milan, Italy. Maybe we'll meet Georgio himself!

Friday, July 23 - take a scenic train ride through Switzerland to Paris, with a four hour stop in Spiez for lunch. We're pretty excited about seeing the Alps!

Friday - Wednesday, July 23-28 - Nous explorons a Paris! And celebrate our 2nd anniversary. :-)

Wednesday-Thursday, July 28-29 - Home we go. Hopefully we'll come back well-cultured and civilized... or at least with a tan!

t-3

3 days left and I'm about to go nuts.

Last night I had recurring dreams about our flights going wrong.

The airline didn't want to take my passport. Apparently I don't look American enough.

I couldn't find the right gate and Eric and I had to watch them close the door to our plane. All other flights were booked. We had to reschedule for two days later.

We were late and the plane was already leaving, so we jumped out onto the runway to chase the plane down and it started raining on us.

Then they wouldn't let us back in the airport because we were too wet.

And this is just what I remember...

It's going to be a long 3 days.

Ah, Summer

So, it's been a while. :-)

June brought visitors from across the country (or at least half of it), involved two trips to Arkansas, and lots of 11 hour workdays for yours truly. Needless to say, blogging took a back seat, as did many other things. I was doing good to do Bible Study and laundry.

We did have a pretty fabulous time though. We got soaked after climbing to the top of Grandfather Mountain...

And got to be a part of our friends' wedding, catch up with old buddies, and enjoy a very long, but fun road trip.

We are now down to 9 1/2 days until we leave for Europe, a fact about which we are both EXTREMELY excited! In a way I feel a bit guilty about gallivanting off on a two and a half week vacation... Other than family vacations and our honeymoon, I don't think either of us have ever just gone on a vacation for the sake of just doing something fun -- it's always been work and mission trips of some sort. It's definitely going to be a different experience just doing what we want when we want to for fun. I'll save trip details for later, though.

We're also taking a mini-trip tomorrow to Richmond, VA, to see our friend Skyler play baseball on Richmond's minor league team, the Flying Squirrels. On top of that, our Sunday School class is going to see Winston-Salem's own fine minor league team, the Winston-Salem Dash (Yes, the Dash. What that's supposed to mean, no one is really sure...) next Friday, so that brings our total up to two baseball games in one week. That's more than I've been to in the last two years.

As for my cooking adventures, I decided tonight that it was time to get back to trying new recipes. This is what we ended up with.

Yeah.

So here's the tale of The Great Asparagus Catastrophe.

Last week I found a can of asparagus at the grocery store. Now I just discovered asparagus a couple of months ago. It's not my favorite vegetable in the world (I mean, really, can anything beat carrots??), but it definitely has been put on my list of things I can absolutely tolerate. So I thought to myself "Hmm. Asparagus isn't so bad. I bet it would be even better if I used it in some sort of casserole. You'd hardly be able to taste it then!" And I bought it. Mistake #1.

I then proceeded to search online for recipes using asparagus. I found one for Spring Turkey and Asparagus Pot Pie on pillsbury.com, usually a decently reliable source, and it called for - gasp! - exactly one can of asparagus. My lucky day, right? Not so much.

So I follow the recipe, and I notice as the sauce is cooking that it smells a little funny. But sometimes things change once they're fully cooked, so I ignored the smell. Plus, I hadn't added the magic asparagus yet, so anything was possible. Mistake #2.

I opened the can of asparagus. It pretty much made manure smell good. Why I proceeded from this point I'm not sure, but I was getting a pretty good idea that this was not going to turn out well. But maybe, just maybe, I thought, it would all turn out okay when put together and cooked. I mean, it had good online reviews. That had to mean something. Mistake #3.

Yeah, so you can guess the end of the story. Eric and I each took one bite and had to keep ourselves from gagging. Once we recovered from the trauma, pizza was ordered, and we even got free Cinna Stix thrown in, so it ended up being a pretty delicious meal. :-)

Maybe when we're in France I can take cooking lessons at Le Cordon Bleu. Or I'll just hire a chef....