10 Year Anniversary

I mentioned in an earlier blog post (from either the end of last year or beginning of this year) that Josh and I were celebrating our 10th wedding anniversary this year.

We have been talking for years about how we wanted to celebrate this milestone. Originally we thought we would go back to Maui (where we spent our honeymoon) to celebrate where everything kind of started. Then we started throwing around the idea of Walt Disney World. We both love Disney (if you hadn't guessed by now) and thought it would be super fun to take a trip there!

The problem we kept running into was timing. We didn't have enough money saved to go in February (when our anniversary is). So we thought about going in September to give us more time to save up. We were seriously planning on going in September until all of the hurricanes hit last year (2017). Realizing that we would be there during hurricane season, we figured it probably wasn't the best plan. So, we decided to shoot for our 11th wedding anniversary since we should be out of hurricane season by then.

Fast forward to this year. Josh was getting email alerts about cheap flights pretty often. And he'd joke with me about going somewhere like Paris or Italy. I honestly thought that was never going to happen for us. But then we started looking into how much a trip like that would cost. And with a cheap flight, we would actually be spending about the same amount of money to go to Europe as we would to go to Florida!

So, we started saving our money and soon had our trip planned!

All of that to say, we spent almost two weeks in August in Paris, London and Dublin!

I could literally write pages upon pages about everything we did and saw and experienced, but I'm going to sum everything up so it's not too long!

We started our trip in Paris! We spent two days in Disneyland Paris and 1.5 days exploring the city! We went to Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe and the Champs Elysees!

 In front of their Sleeping Beauty castle!

 The entrance to the park! It's so pretty!

 We ate at the Ratatouille restaurant!

 Inside Disney Studios

 Notre Dame!

 In front of the Arc de Triomphe

At a sidewalk cafe on the Champs Elysees

From there, we headed to Dublin! Dublin was a last minute addition. When we initially talked about the trip, we were thinking we would go to Paris and Italy. But quickly realized we needed a lot of time in Italy to go to all of the places we wanted to see. So then we decided on Paris and London (for two major reasons: Disneyland Paris and the WB Harry Potter Studio Tour)! As we started planning out where we were going to stay, we decided to throw in 2 days in Dublin (because flights and trains and a lot of the transportation over there is really inexpensive). We ended up having less than 48 hours in Dublin but I loved every minute of it! I wish we'd had more time but we got to do a lot of cool stuff! We went to The Temple Bar and other pubs in the Temple Bar district, we toured the Guinness plant, visited Christ's Church and St. Patrick's Cathedral, as well as Trinity College and St. Stephen's Green.

 The Temple Bar!

 Learning how to properly drink Guinness

 Former Guinness Advertisements

 Christ's Church

 St. Patrick's Cathedral

 A very old library inside Trinity College

 St. Stephen's Green

We then spent 3.5 days in London! We did a double decker bus tour, visited Westminster Abbey, saw a play (Aladdin) and did the Harry Potter Studio Tour!

 On the top of the double decker bus

 The dragons signify that you are entering the City of London

 Tower Bridge

 Westminster Abbey

Waiting to see Aladdin!

 At Platform 9 3/4 in the real Kings Cross Station

I let all those pictures speak for themselves. The tour was one of my most favorite parts of our whole trip!

It was a lot of fun but we were definitely both ready to come home! Paris was our least favorite place and we don't necessarily feel like we ever have to go there again. But we would love to go back to Dublin and London someday!

Rain, Green Grass, and Starbucks, Oh My!

This past month, we went on an epic road trip with some of our friends.

Anyone that has known me for awhile knows that Seattle has been my top place to visit for quite some time now. I have always been intrigued by it and the allure of lots of rainy days has always made it a must in my book.

So when a couple of our friends invited us to go on a road trip that would involve stops in Oregon and Washington, I knew this was finally my chance to make my dream come true.

We started off the first night of our trip camping near some awesome sand dunes in Oregon. We had a lot of fun exploring the dunes and taking lots of pictures and videos. It was so incredibly beautiful. We got to enjoy our dinner and s'mores around the campfire before it started to rain. And it rained all.night.long. Thankfully, our tent kept us dry and the sound of the rain actually made it quite easy to fall asleep and stay asleep.

On our way!

 The dunes

 My friend K.M. and I

 The boys being crazy

The next day, we drove up to Seattle. As this was my first time in both Oregon and Washington, I was pretty excited passing over the state lines. We were able to clean up and head out for a night on the town. We ate at this really awesome restaurant called Local 360 (I highly recommend it if you're in the area). My mom had told Josh that we needed to try the king salmon when we were in Seattle, and lucky for me, it was one of the specials of the day at the restaurant. And let me tell you, it was amazing! After our amazing dinner, we went up the Space Needle! I was super excited to do this, even though it's a pretty tourist-y thing to do. The views from the top were incredible. After that, we walked to a place called the Pie Bar, which is just what it sounds like. We lucked out and were able to get seats inside, which was hard as they were super busy (and the place is really small to begin with). We each ordered a different kind of pie and a beverage to go with it. We left there incredibly full and very happy. Every pie I got to try even a small taste of was delicious. And you can order it to go!

 Local 360

 View from the bottom

 And from the top

 Desserted Island pie with strawberry champagne

The next morning, we got ready and headed back into the city. We started our day trying to find the original Starbucks. We got the address wrong at first and ended up at a different Starbucks, but soon figured out it couldn't have been that location. So we walked down to the Public Market and finally found it! It was well worth the 30 minute long line just to get in the store. It was a very tiny location with no seating inside or outside, but they had some fun finds that you could only purchase there, and they treated everyone that walked into the store so well. I'm so glad we were willing to wait for experience that.

 First Starbucks!

 I had to get a mug to commemorate our visit

We continued to walk through the Market and stopped to watch the famous fish guys do their thing. As it was a Saturday, the Market was really busy but we were able to walk through the whole thing and check out all the cool stuff there. We wanted to eat a cheaper lunch, so some of us bought food from street vendors and others of us had chowders from Pike Place Chowder (which was incredible). We continued our day after that by walking around the city some more and ended up taking a ferry over to Bainbridge Island. As it went from pouring before we got on the ferry to being extremely warm when we got off the ferry, we didn't stay on the island too long. We walked down to the waterfront and hopped on the next ferry to take us back. After that, we walked to a bakery I had looked up before our trip that was supposed to have incredible cupcakes and macarons...and it did not disappoint. We then headed back to our hotel, as we had done a lot of walking that day, and ordered pizza for dinner. We ate our goodies from Yellow Leaf for dessert and went to bed semi-early, as we had more driving to do.

 These guys are hilarious

 On the ferry

The macarons we bought at Yellow Leaf

The next morning, we packed up and headed for Oregon. Before arriving in Portland, we stopped at the Multnomah Falls. It was so beautiful there. We were able to get some great pictures of the falls and enjoyed our little pit stop there. We then headed into Portland and grabbed some lunch from some of the food trucks downtown. It was incredible how different it felt to go from Seattle to Portland. After lunch, we headed to Distillery Row and bought passports to go tasting at the different distilleries. The passport allowed for each person to taste at six different distilleries, and you didn't have to visit each of them in the same day. As six would have been a lot to do, we decided to only try four. We had a lot of fun and it was really nice that the ones we choose to go to were all within walking distance of each other. After that, we headed to our hotel to check in and get freshened up before dinner. We went to Deschutes for dinner and it was amazing. After dinner, we walked around downtown Portland a bit. We tried to go to a fun ice cream place for dessert, but the line was super long.

Our whole group in front of the falls

On the bridge

One of the cocktails they made us at one of the distilleries

The next day, we headed back to downtown Portland and walked along the waterfront while one of our friends that went with us (who is a professional photographer) did a quick photo session with a couple he knew. After that, we headed to Voodoo Donut and each ordered two amazing donuts. We then walked around downtown for awhile and headed into Powell's Books. It was a little overwhelming, as it has multiple stories and tons and tons of books, but it was definitely my kind of place. After doing some more walking around, we decided to head to Por Que No for lunch. I wish I could say that I enjoyed it, but I didn't. I think part of it was because I wasn't feeling the best at that point (I think the heat and all the walking was really getting to me), but I also think I'm a little spoiled where I live to have some really good Mexican food. And to me, this was more mediocre. Since I wasn't feeling the best and everyone else was tired of walking, we headed back to the hotel to take naps and rest a little. It was much needed and I felt so much better after. Later that evening, we headed over to Salt and Straw and got ice cream (this is the place we tried to go the first night). They had some crazy flavors (like Pear and Blue Cheese) but even the weird sounding ones that I tried were good. I ended up getting a scoop of Birthday Cake and Blackberries, and Strawberry with Cilantro Lime Cheesecake. So good! After that, we headed back to the hotel and ended up getting some dinner a little while later (nothing exciting for dinner). 

 We had to wait in a little bit of a line to get into Voodoo

And the next day we headed home!

Overall, I can definitely say that Seattle is my kind of place. Portland was fun to visit, but it wasn't really my most favorite place. There definitely seemed to be some other interesting places to eat that we didn't get to try, but I felt like we got to see most of the popular sights there.

I am so glad we were able to take this trip and experience these fun places with good friends. And now I can check Seattle off my Bucket List!