Rambling

Hey-O everyone! This blog is going to be short and random. Its random due to the fact that I've traveled so much lately.

I went to Ireland for Christmas and it was great. I still really want to see the rest of Ireland because I've only been to Dublin... I will one day. Just not this time around. We got to listen to folk music and drink Guinness that was as smooth as milk. Gen and I cooked a HUGE Christmas dinner. I now have a new appreciation for Mom when she cooks and we're all just sitting around - the frustration with people snacking ALL day and watching movies and when they strategically ask if you need any help after everything is practically done. Hopefully after that experience I'll be a better Christmas Day meal eater. :) We made two different kinds of stuffing, turkey, mashed potatoes, roasted potatoes, and a butternut squash dish... I wrote about that dish before. It was really good! One of the stuffings was store bought but everything else was homemade! I even made sausage rolls that morning. We couldn't find any biscuit dough so I used some pastry stuff. I didn't have to freeze it that way. Everyone still seemed to like it. The sausages in Ireland are like white! i had to assure everyone that yes it was cooked. haha!

Then I went to London to see and old friend. H, who used to play basketball at OCU, lives in Essex and plays pro basketball now. His real name is Haggai but everyone just calls him H. We stayed at his sister's place in Golder's Green - an area of London. We just hung out and didn't do a lot of touristy things.. We did got to Camden Town which are huge markets... my mom would have died! One night we even ended up at a bar where I had been with some of the people from my Copenhagen class when the school took us to London. Small world and SO random! Oh and H ordered us some food from a Israeli place... it was awesome! It was like a huge wrap with lamb and chicken meat. Man I wish I would have taken a picture of it. LOL.

After that I flew to meet my dad in Venice. We landed at about the same time so they let me stay in the baggage area to meet him. Talk about curbside service! As soon as he came to get his luggage I was there. We then dropped our bags off at the rail station and went exploring for a bit in Venice. He came out of the station and the entire city just lays in front of you. You can see some of the old buildings and the canal. Guess what?... teary eyed old dad! hahaha. We walked around a while and just kind of munched on stuff.

Then we hopped on the night train to Rome. We actually went a little earlier than we we planned so we got in about 9 or a little later. We decided to go eat around the corner from our hotel. It was SO good! Turns out dad likes wine. We got all appetizers and some of the house wine. It turned into a feast! We slept in pretty late because it was dad's first night and his body was still adjusting to the new time zone. We saw all the big attractions. Something we did that I hadn't done before was seeing the Sistine Chapel. Man it was gorgeous and a maze!

Well I better stop here. We have to go see Nuremberg. I'll finish later... XOXO