Europe 2012: The Beginning & Zurich Day 1

In the fall of 2011 I had a MAJOR travel bug. I had previously traveled to Europe in 4th grade with my family and then again for an art and architecture tour in the summer of 2008. After having fully developed the travel bug in 2008, 3+ years of no international travel was eating me alive. I kept researching flights to Europe. I didn't really have any specific place that I was praying to go to except for somewhere on the continent. Luke had never been to Europe before so he was just excited about going and seeing anything. I looked at all the major airports for flight deals: Heathrow, Paris, Frankfurt, Rome. Nothing. I was irritated because I was looking at down times in the travel seasons. Right after Christmas/New Years. Why weren't there any great deals?!

Then.

BAM! 

Zurich, Switzerland.

Swiss Air.

We bought tickets in October with us leaving on New Years Eve 2011 and returning January 10th, 2012. It was round trip through Zurich. We ended up getting both of our tickets, plus taxes for less than $1,300!!! Now, if anyone has traveled in the past 5 years to Europe, especially from the West Coast, you know that is like crazy unheard of! The second I saw those tickets, I basically bought them before talking to Luke. Barely. I mean, I did talk to him. But he knew, I had decided. EUROPE HERE WE COME!!!

We decided to also purchase EuroRail tickets for our travel while in Europe. We created a loop of cities to stop in:

 Zurich - Paris - Strasbourg - Munich - Zurich

We had a blast and a nightmare finalizing what cities we wanted to go to and where we wanted to stay. Once you are in Europe, your possibilities are endless which makes it super fun and exciting but really overwhelming at the same time.

This is what our living room looked like the day before we left. Explosion of clothes. Travel is totally different in the summer months than in the winter months for obvious reasons. All your apparel is fluffier, thicker and takes up so much more space compared to summer type clothing. I had the giant suitcase on the right hand side of the picture and Luke had a carry on size. Men...I don't get it. That is just TOO small. :)

We flew from Portland to San Francisco and then SFO to Zurich. I honestly don't remember if we ate this meal in Portland or in SFO but it was our last "American" meal for 10 days.

The layover in San Fran was 4 hours long. It was brutal on the way there because we were so anxious and excited to get to Europe. It was brutal on the way home because we just wanted to be home. Luke and I were very excited when we saw our plane come in.

We took off on December 31st and a couple hours into our flight, we crossed a time zone and had champagne and chocolates brought to us to celebrate the New Year. It was definitely a NY's I won't forget. We landed around 5pm Zurich time on the 1st of January. We made our way to our hotel once we landed. We stayed at Easy Hotel Zurich which was very affordable, clean and simple. We knew our train was leaving for Paris the next morning around 6am so we didn't really care to have a more luxury hotel our first night. I would definitely stay at Easy Hotel again (they have multiple locations throughout Europe) when I need a clean and affordable place to lay my head at night. 

We napped for about an hour or two and then made our way out into the city. Having restaurants and stores close on holidays is very common in Europe so we knew our selection of places to go would be limited. We decided to cross the river and head toward the old town, Niederdorf. But before we actually went to the old town, our bus took us past the cosmopolitan street Bahnhofstrasse. This street is closed to motor vehicles except for the railcar. The picture below is on the Bahnhofstrasse and I was just in awe of all the hanging lights. We were so lucky to still see Zurich all lit up with their Christmas decorations (actually every city still had up their decor). I believe that Zurich has one of the biggest lighting displays in the world during Christmas. Streets upon streets have lights suspended from building to building just twinkling. Some actually have movement which is just magical. 

We continued over the river to the old town, Niederdorf. I took some pictures of the lights by the river but they turned out all blurry so no go on putting them on the blog. Niederdorf is pretty much how I imagined it. Cobblestone, skinny, windy streets that open into little squares. The streets are lined with little stores and restaurants and each square had its' own lit Christmas tree. AH-mazing!! Below is a picture of one of the streets in the old town. We also ended up getting a DELICIOUS meal from a street vendor. I quote Luke here "I know this sounds so cliche but this sandwich is probably the best sandwich I have ever had." Zurich for the win!! :) (Side note: Zurich is SO EXPENSIVE!!! Every restaurant easily started at like 25-30 Swiss Franc = 50-60 US dollars a person - hence we choose a street vendor). 

After eating and walking around a bit more, we decided to head back to our hotel, shower and call it a night. We had a super early morning ahead of us. Paris here we come!!! 

Travel Posts

Travel is a love affair of mine and I can't wait to go out and see more of the world, near and far. One of the best parts of traveling is experiencing a culture different from my own and seeing the beauty all around the world. Travel really opens up my heart, mind and soul to life outside of my little comfort zone. To me, travel helps me understand my significance and insignificance in this life. I love wandering around a foreign city with thousands of people walking past and not knowing a soul but still feeling connected. We are all humans. We all have the same basic needs. We all strive for love and happiness. There is no better feeling than being alone but being surrounded by life at the same time.

Cancun 2011

 I follow a few blogs that are solely travel based which I totally love. I can't imagine the overwhelming feeling these bloggers get when returning from a trip and having to upload all their photos, edit them and then create a post. Since I started this blog, I have been to Cancun, San Francisco, Europe, moved states, trips to Luke's family ranch and Chicago and I have yet to fully blog any of them. I am working on starting a travel series to finally post all of the fun pictures and experiences I have had! 

Price Ranch 2013

I am not totally sure how I am going to go about the series. I may try going in chronological order and then do several posts per trip to break it up. Sometimes I think I have to post everything in ONE post but I am learning that, that theory is totally false. I need to simplify my posts. Let things flow and write a few posts per trip. I may even just jump around a bit to keep myself from getting bored! Just hang in there with me! :)

Tomorrow, I will have my first travel post ready! I can't wait to share where I have been and hopefully connect with others about places they have been or want to go. This world is a big one so why not share all the beauty we can with each other?!

xoxo,

Meghan

Chicago: Background & Day 1 Travel

Here is a little background on why and how we were making our Chicago trip happen:

My brother, Ryan, moved to Chicago back in 2009 and has loved living in this city. I mean, it can't be hard to love a city when you live smack in the heart of it! (He is 2 blocks from Michigan Avenue and right across from the Trump International Tower). Once Luke and I got married in the summer of 2010 Ryan had been asking when we were going to come visit. We always wanted to visit but we didn't think it would take us years to make it here! 

Ryan's girlfriend, Michelle, moved out here in October of last year and we had been constantly talking about how Luke and I need to finally get out to Chicago. We needed to plan a trip and we thought "how fun would it be to just surprise Ryan?" Ryan had actually surprised Michelle with coordinating a few of her girlfriends to fly out to the Windy City for her birthday right after she moved. 

So, we planned a surprise trip to Chicago for May! It was perfect timing as our busy work season would be slowing down and Ryan's birthday is in May. We lucked out and got the cheapest flights out here that I had seen in a LONG time (I always kept my eye out for cheap airfare). We were busy planning how we would actually surprise him with showing up. Maybe meet him at a restaurant? Be hiding in his apartment when he got home from work? Pretend like we ran into him on the street? I was pretty excited to actually pull off this big of a surprise! 

Michelle, Luke and I kept it a secret for about 2 months and then....we had to spill the beans. Ryan got asked to go to a conference for work in NYC the same week we had planned to come! We knew we had to tell him so maybe he could coordinate that he would at least be back for the weekend we were in Chicago. All and all it worked out! His flight home from NYC got him into Chicago in time for dinner on Friday and then we had the whole weekend with him here.

Okay, so since the back story is now out of the way, let's get to the beginning of Day 1 of our trip.

Our flight was suppose to take off from SFO at 9:30am on Wednesday morning which meant we needed to leave Modesto between 5 and 5:30am. The drive should typically take around 1 hour and 45 minutes but you never know what traffic will be like in the bay area, especially during the morning commute. We had planned to park our car at an off site airport lot that is half the cost daily of the SFO long term parking. It was only 1.5 miles from SFO and they had a shuttle that came every 20 minutes. Now, it is very very typical for flights to be delayed arriving and departing from SFO due to all the bay area fog. Of course, our flight was perfectly on time which would have been great if we didn't hit some of the worst traffic on the San Mateo Bridge.

We had smooth sailing right up until the tolls at the bridge and then dead stopped. We knew something had to be wrong to stop all 3 lanes from moving at all. I think we sat on the bridge for over 30 or 40 minutes barely crawling at all. Well, there had been a pretty big accident in the right hand lane and by the time we got up to where it took place, they were still working on getting the injured into ambulances. I said a little prayer for all those involved and was like "COME ON WE NEED TO GET TO THE AIRPORT!!!!" 

We completely decided to forgo the cheaper parking lot and just park our car in the long term lot at SFO (faster and more consistent shuttles). Our flight was suppose to start boarding at 8:50am and at 8:25am we were just getting onto the parking lot shuttle to take us to the terminal. I was freaking out a little about missing our flight at this point. We had no idea how long checking my bag would take or how long security would be. I am usually the type to get to an airport at least an hour and a half early if not more. Thank goodness we were able to check our bag right away and I asked a lady at the beginning of the security checkpoint line if there was any way we could jump ahead of people since our flight was now boarding! She was nice and let us cut like half way through the line. By the time we got through the security (of course they had to search Luke's backpack) it was already 9:10. We FLEW through the terminal. Running so fast and I was getting sweaty. At one point a little boy saw us running and said to his dad "Where are they going?" and the dad looked at me with a smile and said "They are in a hurry!" haha I sort of laughed at that and just prayed that we would make it!

WE DID! We were like 3rd to last people on the flight. Apart from actually missing a flight and all the hassle that would create, I had called the airline during our shuttle ride to the terminal seeing about change fees for missing flights and I was informed that if we completely missed our flight and didn't opt to change flights before our original one took off, we would have to buy all new tickets. So we had three options: 1. pray we make out flight 2. decide we didn't want to risk it and pay the $150 change fee to get on a flight an hour later 3. risk it and pray we get on our flight, then miss it and pay $900 for new tickets. I was freaking out a little. Honestly, if we had missed our flights without already changing to a different flight, we would have just turned around and drove home.

Up next...Day 1 in Chicago :)

Yosemite

“The grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never dried all at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls. ” - John Muir

I really don't even know where to begin with detailing and describing our weekend trip to Yosemite. It was amazing. There are words and descriptions for our activities but to be able to sum up the feeling of witnessing and being a part of the beauty of Yosemite is almost impossible. But, I will try. And to warn you, this will be a long and photo dense post. 

Saturday we worked an event in Elk Grove and got home around 5pm. We packed in about 40 minutes and hit the road at 5:45pm hoping we didn't forget anything imperative. The directions had us going south on 99 until Merced and then heading east on a couple different highways. We basically live on the road now and 99S is a road we are all too familiar with so I was really excited to be eventually getting on a road that we haven't driven yet. It really heightened the sense of adventure and seeing and experiencing something completely new to me. We could tell as we were driving on CA 140 that the drive would have been beautiful to see in daylight. 

We stopped in Mariposa at Sugar Pine Cafe to grab a cup of coffee since we had been awake and going full speed since 4am that morning. As we were walking out of the cafe a waiter in his 20s commented to us to make sure we stayed awake while driving. Then we had a real quick conversation about being new to the area, going to Yosemite for my first time (Luke had been in summer when he was younger), all the snow that was suppose to be coming and just how beautiful it is. The small interaction with this waiter really made Luke and I even more excited about going to Yosemite and just almost felt like the area was welcoming us in. 

We arrived at Tenaya Lodge around 8:45pm. The lodge is about 4 miles from the entrance to Yosemite. The elevation is around 5000 feet and was covered in snow! The hotel was still completely covered in Christmas decorations which was phenomenal. 

We checked in and then made our way down to one of the restaurants to get a drink before we went to bed. Let me tell you...very weird interactions at this bar. There were about 6 people hanging out and talking super loud and let's just say...they do NOT like our current President. It was hard for Luke and I to even have our own conversation because we couldn't focus on anything besides these people. Very interesting. We decided to just head to bed after that, we had been up since 4am.

Overnight it snowed about 3 or 4 inches and the whole day was very overcast. We decided to do activities around our hotel since they had sledding, ice skating, snowshoeing, a bunch of different things to do. The next day was suppose to be sunny and clear and we thought that would be the better day to go see Yosemite. So we got up and had a great breakfast and then started our day in the snow! Here are a few pictures from our snowshoe nature hike:

After our hike we were hungry so we ate some lunch and then took a nap. I love vacations or getaways because you don't have to follow a schedule. You eat when hungry and you sleep when tired. So nice. After our nap we went sledding! There was an unregulated snow park about a mile from our lodge so we decided to go there to see what kind of runs it had. Well, it was definitely unregulated because a ton of them had a bunch of  icy jumps and went straight past trees. The first run I did...ran straight into a tree. haha At least it was feet first so I just put my feet out and slammed into the tree. I was worried I would break my legs or something but I was good. Then we continued down this long hill, dodging trees like crazy. I ran into a few more and got stuck in low lying branches. But it was beautiful. By the end of our sledding, we both had bruised butts and were ready to just lay down somewhere. Here is the one photo taken though:

After our day in the snow we went out to a steak dinner in a small town not too far from our lodge. We ended our night with drinking wine in our room, playing cards and watching TV movies. A very successful day of fun and relaxation.

The following morning we woke up with the sun, had breakfast, checked out and made our way to the Yosemite Valley. I was SO EXCITED! This is the part of the post where I don't know how to explain my day. Beautiful. Stunning. Eternal. Cozy. Active. Fulfilling. For this part I am just going to post pictures. But one note to make, a guy with a super nice camera at the vista point of Bridalveil Fall asked if we have been here before and we said no. His response. "You are so damn lucky today." We got a one of a kind day in the winter. Started a little overcast and then the sun broke and it was indescribable.

Tunnel View. El Capitan. Horsetail Fall. Clouds Rest. Half Dome. Sentinel Rock. Cathedral Rock. Bridalvail Fall.

Bridalvail Fall. You should hear the ice crashing. Amazing.

Lower and Upper Yosemite Falls.

Lower Yosemite Fall.

Sentinel Rock.

Half Dome.

Upper Yosemite Fall from Cooks Meadow.

Valley View.

Valley View.

Sunset on CA 140.

Sunset on 99N.

The weekend was beautiful in every way. God's beauty is astounding and all encompassing. Never have I felt His love more surrounding and apparent than this weekend.

Our Adventure To Do List

Moving from the beautiful Pacific NW to the Central Valley of CA has been a bit of an adjustment. We went from lots of green, trees, and crisp air to a lot of wheat fields, cows, dust, and flat lands. Each has it own beauty but without a doubt its a change. I never thought I would get so familiar with the fresh scent of cow manure. :) One thing I absolutely love about the Central Valley is the pretty constant sunshine. Okay, well one more thing is the great location it puts us in for easy travel to all different great parts of California. Luke and I have made a little "Day Off To Do List" to help us navigate all the wonderful sites to see around us!  

Yosemite National Park 

The entrance is only an hour away from our house.

Monterey Bay

About a 2 hour drive away.

San Francisco

Between 1.5 and 2 hours away depending on traffic.

**Side note, we went this past week to explore before filming a speech for work. Conclusion: Meghan in a bad mood all day. Must redo!

Lake Tahoe

2 to 3 hour drive from our house.

Napa/Sonoma CA.

1.5 to 2 hours away! WINE!! :)

I think we have a pretty good list going! I do know that Luke wants to make it up to the mountains sometime this winter for boarding. There are a few possible mountains to go to but I'll let him decide. Most likely I'll be hanging out in a lodge. :)

I also wouldn't mind doing some good ol' California history things. Gold Rush towns. I think it'd be fun since I am a history junkie!

One of the nice things about our new job is that we will be traveling a lot on weekends all over California. I don't expect to see much of any of the cities we go to since we will mostly be only seeing the inside of convention centers but we should be seeing a good chunk of other main California cities by default! And, Las Vegas two times for some large events. Maybe I will get a night or two to explore the Strip some more? Who knows!

Let me know if there are any other places that we absolutely need to add to our list?? Thanks!!