On an Evening in Roma

Over Memorial Day weekend I went to Rome with my good friends Kim, Brian, and their 4-year old son Jack. Rome was another place on my list that I have always wanted to see, so in April when Lufthansa was having a sale on flights within Europe, we combined that with a holiday weekend and booked it. We stayed at a place we booked through Vacation Rentals by Owner, which is a site that regular people use to put their house/apartment/whatever up for vacationers in cities all over the world. Our place was great. It was just down the street from the Colosseum, away from the noise of the main street, and included a private patio.

The Italian gentleman, Andreas, we rented the apartment from recommended restaurants, certain self-paced tours of sites, and also where the grocery store and other necessities were. Since we were starving, we went to the closest recommended restaurant to our hotel and it was awesome. It was a small place with seats outside and it was packed with Italians and tourists alike. The place across the street was empty. The prices were super cheap and the house wine was amazing. We liked this place so much that we went back for our last night. The best part was that the local Italians seemed to love it as much and they were regulars, judging by their interaction with the staff and owner.

On Saturday, we headed for the Spanish Steps. We hadn't had coffee or anything to eat yet, so in tremendous faux pas, we found a McDonald's and got coffee and croissants. We wandered over to a piazza that Andreas recommended, where you could climb to a high point and get a view of the city. After that, we had lunch and then walked to the Vatican, for which we had reserved tickets online.

Spanish Steps

View of Rome

First of all, the Vatican is huge. You walk in and you see signs pointing toward the Sistine Chapel, which is all I wanted to see, you walk down some halls, past beautiful artwork, and some awesome ceiling art, but you still aren't there. So you follow more signs and you think that it's got to be close. But it's not. More hallways, more art, more signs. Finally, you arrive to a huge, dim room full of tourists who wanted to see the same thing. And you look up.

Not the Sistine Chapel, but very beautiful.

Even though there are signs saying no photography and guards, too few for the large crowd, shouting 'no photographs', there are still people taking pictures. So, I turned off my flash, held the camera at my chest and pointed up for a few shots. It's hard to see (especially since I didn't bring my glasses) with the dim light, but it was absolutely amazing and beautiful. The crowds got to me, though, so I didn't stay long.

The Sistine Chapel

Me, in from the Vatican and not on fire!

Since we had been walking all day, literally from the Vatican to our apartment near the Colosseum, Brian and I went to the grocery store to get stuff for dinner. We bought super cheap wine, which turned out to be really good, and had pasta with sausage and zucchini on the patio that evening. It was wonderful.

The walk to Piazza Navona

Rome is filled with lots of statues with butts and phallic symbols. Funny.

On Sunday our only goal was to see the Colosseum and we figured 10 was pretty early, but were surprised to find the line already with a wait of 45 minutes. So instead of waiting, we joined one of the English tours they were trying to get people to join outside and I'm glad we did. Had we just paid for entry, we wouldn't have heard any of the stories of the entertainment that the Colosseum intended. Around 700,000 people died in matches and thousands of different kinds of animals from all over the world that the Romans could reach. The guide said that they had "comedy" shows in between the battles. The comedies were things like a dog versus a porcupine or a woman versus a midget.

Inside the Colosseum, this was the arena floor, which you can see they've reconstructed there on the right. The gladiators entered from beneath and the floor had trap doors to remove the dead animals or the gladiators. The gladiators were mostly criminals who were serving a sentence and they lived across the street, where they learned to fight. Being a gladiator, if you survived, was sort of like being a Hollywood star in today's world.

Since Jack wasn't having a lot of fun and Brian was bored too, they left Kim and I to walk around on our own after lunch. We strolled the city, saw Trevi fountain, and got a gelatto and coffee. That evening we went back to the same restaurant we tried the first night. Kim and I got an awesome spicy pasta and mussels dish and some delicious red house wine.

Trevi Fountain

It was a great trip, with great weather, and some great friends. I'm happy to have been able to see Rome with them.

Would You Go With Me

Two weekends in a row in May, I went on trips. On May 21st, my friend Kim and I headed to Bruges, Belgium, a small city in West Flanders sometimes called the Venice of the north. It's one of the cutest cities I've ever visited. It's very small, but has so many cute roads and what I think is beautiful architecture. After very annoying traffic all the way up, Kim and rushed to dinner to have what ever tourist visiting near the North Sea should have......mussels. And when in Belgium, beer. Kim was even a trooper and had beer, save for the last dinner.



The next day, we were grateful for the bright ball in the sky, which Germany seems to lack from October through May. We strolled through the city and took a canal boat ride to see some of what you can't by foot. We took a tour of De Halve Maan, the only working brewery left in the city, and had mussels for lunch. With beer. There were no museums or plans or large groups to satisfy. We just did what we wanted, which some might argue wasn't much, and had a lot of fun.


At the end of canal ride, our canal boat driver asked us if we could recall the story of Romeo and Juliet. As he did so, we approached a house with an open window, out of which a blond was looking. It turns out, she's the Juliet of Bruges and she's not a bad looking broad.

I'm Gonna Take You Home

I was able to go home....for the entire month of April. 1 week in Ohio and 3 in Maryland. Some might call it a boondoggle, but I call it comforting.

In Ohio, I got to spend some much needed time family time with Mom and Dad, and I even got to see Chad, the now MBA graduate, for a bit. I did a lot of relaxing, despite the fact that I was wide awake between 4 and 5 for the first week. Mom and I went to Wilmington to visit Great Aunt Rosey and Great Uncle Kenny. I showed up bearing gifts, which I later learned Kenny seemed to devour before Rosey had the chance to notice. (Don't worry, Rosey, you'll get your own soon.) We also got to visit Grandpa, who smiled at me, and that was enough. Dad and I drove some golfballs one afternoon. Okay, Dad drove golfballs, I just swung the club and was lucky if they went far enough that I didn't get to retrieve them to try again. We also got to see the Blue Jackets lose one last time for the season.

Kenny, me, and Rosey at the Veteran's Memorial in Wilmington

After a relaxing week in Ohio, I went to Maryland for work and, of course, fun. As usual, I ate my way through the city at places like Abbey Burger Bistro and Woodberry Kitchen. I got to see a group of good friends and pictures of a good friend's so-called "wife" and "child." I also took in the wonderful weather at some iconic Baltimore sights with my best friend. We also saw the O's lose one of the first games of the season.

Johnny America

French Navy

Yesterday, 7 friends and I headed to the Champagne region of France. It's been on my list of places to visit for a while now. I can even remember the year I spent in Austria wanting to go. So I made the arrangements and took care of most of the logistics for the trip.

My friends, David and Rita, who are stationed in Mons, Belgium and who speak fluent French helped us so much with this trip. They suggested visiting a smaller champagne house, away from the bustle of either Reims or Epernay, and then visiting a larger one for the underground tour. So we took the suggestion and we were lucky enough that they wanted to join us as well.

We all met at the champagne house Gobillard in a small town near Epernay, where we probably could have tasted as much as we wanted, all at no cost. They figure that the more you drink, the more you buy. It was really good and I liked that it was a small place. I bought 4 bottles and David and Rita, who are leaving in July, stocked up because they recently found out you could ship alcohol home to MD in your household goods and MD only taxes you 40 cent/gallon. That's nothing!

David was so sweet to make reservations for lunch for all of us at a 1 star Michelin restaurant in Epernay. The food was AMAZING. We ordered off of the 3-course menu, which was only 17 euro. I had snails in a cream sauce over an artichoke, then salmon lasagna, then a cheese plate for dessert, all with a glass of champagne. (Thank you David and Rita!!)

After lunch we said our goodbyes to David and Rita, then headed to a large champagne house, Mercier, for a tour of their underground tunnels where they age the champagne. The tour consisted of a movie, a snails-paced elevator with animatronics, and then the laser-guided train through the underground tunnels.
We went for the 3-glass tasting instead of the 1, but none of us liked the champagne at all. Good thing we had some at Gobillard.
By the end of the tour and tastings, we were exhausted. It had been a long day. We checked into the hotel, which was the nicest, cheapest place I'd ever stayed--60 euro for a 4-person room, and then we went to the grocery store for French wine and champagne. We had no idea what wines we were buying, so my criteria were 1.) French, 2.) under 6 euro, and 3.) that I like the label. I bought a bottle of decent champagne and a couple other cheap ones too and a bottle of creme de cassis for kir royales.
As always, I laughed a ton and I'm glad I was able to accomplish something on my list. I'm just grateful I have the ability to do these things and with some really wonderful people. I'm a lucky woman.

Gone Going

This month I've been to many countries. Notice that I didn't say I had spent a lot of time in many countries, because that would be a false statement.

Last weekend Will asked if I wanted to ride along to Belgium to get beer, because he had made an appointment to pick up his two cases of 12 from the Trappist monastery in Westvleteren. It's a 5-hour drive from here and he didn't want to go alone, since Amy was out of town, so I got the experience without the hassle of trying to call and get through to make an appointment. We left early Saturday morning and ended up driving from Germany, about 30 minutes through France, and back into Belgium. We stopped at two large beer stores on the way there. Lucky for me (but only because of this trip), Amy and Will are leaving at the end of June to move back to Maryland, so I got to stock up on some beer using the roominess in his Land Rover.

The first store we stopped at was like a Toys R Us for adults. The first thing you see after you drop off your empty crates and bottles for the refund is a bar. A bar in a beer store!! Now THAT is heaven. There were so many rows of crates of beer, many of them I had never heard of, that it was overwhelming. I knew what I wanted to get, but I exceeded my expectations and could have gone for more if I didn't think it would have been rude to take up that much room.


5 crates of beer and 4 large bottles of special Christmas beer that was leftover from the season, plus 6 glasses, a bar towel, a tray, and some Belgian chocolate. Any guesses to the damage done? You might judge me.


After playing Tetris in the car, we headed to the monastery. You have to call on certain days (noted on thier website) for a chance to make an appointment to pick up a specified number (usually 2 and sometimes 3) of crates of a type of their beer (the blonde, 8, or 12). It has been voted the best beer in the world, the 12 that is, but I think it might only hold the vote because it's so difficult to come by. Two crates of the 12 is 30 euro each, plus a bottle and crate deposit, which came to 100 euro. However, one crate of the 12 in the U.S. can be sold for about $400. Now, that's technically against the waiver that you sign when you pick up your beer that says you will not resell your beer, blah, blah, blah. At the monastery is the only place you can buy or taste the beer, legally, but the last time I checked, a Trappist order of police didn't exist.

The cafe where you can have a glass of each of their beers, a coffee, or a light snack, as well as make a purchase of their cheese, or a sampler pack of their beer and glasses.

I tried the 12 a few weeks ago at Amy and Will's house and I had tried the blond at the Belgium beer festival last September, so on this trip I also go to experience the process as a tag-along. I'm glad I got to go and I might try for an appointment for the 12 sometime, but it's not high on my list of things to do. The St. Bernardus 12 tastes quite similar and it's much, much easier to find at a price that's easier on the purse strings too.

The point where the check your license plate to match the order and give you your beer.Empty cases and bottles customers returned.

We were going to stay in a small town near the monastery, but once we got there and saw the room, even the draw of the hotel bar with 100 Belgian beers couldn't get us to stay. So we drove home that evening, stopping for Belgian frites (fries) along the way, and somehow adding another country to our trip--the Netherlands.