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

10k

Am I the only one who makes fitness goals and gets super excited about them for max 3 days and then just gives up?! I have "trained" for a 5k, a 10k, a marathon (only got to 6 miles but better than nothing!), done boot camps. You name it, I have probably at least attempted one day of it.

Well, I decided after being unemployed for a little over month now, I should do something to occupy my time better. I mean becoming more fit and healthy is probably the best way to start this new chapter in our lives. Right?

Since I technically have run up to 6 miles in one outing before, I think that a 10k isn't totally unattainable. And , a big enough challenge to really push myself but feel accomplished at the end. I found the Hal Higdon 10k Novice Training Guide online. I have used his training guides for previous attempts and I did find them helpful. My issue isn't that the training guides are unrealistic, it's that I have a dedication and will power problem to get my butt off the couch and my feet into some running shoes. And then, even if I do get those clothes on, I have to actually leave the house. :) 

I also downloaded the runtastic app for the iPhone to help me track my work outs. I am pretty sure I am wayyyyyy behind on this fitness app bandwagon but I do really like runtastic. It helps map your runs/walks with GPS and gives you to-the-second updates on distances, speeds, and times. I find this to be my favorite part because I am usually not on already mapped distance trails or anything; just wandering through neighborhoods. That makes knowing how far I am going difficult at times. Most of Hal Higdon's guides are distance based, not time based, unless it's a cross training day.

So, now I just need to pick the race I want to do and sign up for it! That is the final piece of this new commitment! Putting money on it! No one likes to waste money and obviously being unemployed makes wasting money a complete atrocity! I am looking at any races in September. I should be ready to run a 10k by then.

So here I go! Week 1! 

Giggling

Luke is up in Portland working most of this week. Last night I was bored and started looking on Pinterest to kill the time. I ending up spending almost 2 hours just dying laughing. I found the humor board and kept ghetto screenshoting the pictures and texting them to a few friends and got some of the most hilarious responses. So I will leave you with all the things that made me giggle so hard that I was crying...

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 :)