Goals Update: September

I think this may be the first time I am really, really looking forward to fall and fall weather.  Not sure why particularly this year as opposed to other years.  So the fact that tomorrow will be October is totally crazy.  It's officially the downhill slide to the holidays (yippee!!).

1. Complete at least 2 items from my 101 IN 1,001 LIST each month - Well, September was really the month of accomplishing things off my 101 list.  Five in total - this one, this one, this one, this one, and this one.  It was a busy month.

2. GET IN SHAPE - Hahaha... I hope my gym was happy to receive their free money this month since I didn't step foot in the gym at all in September.  I plan to get back into a routine in October.

3. EAT BETTER -  Better.  I'm not sure if vacation hurt or helped.  I am definitely eating smaller portions and some of that is due to the little snacking, lighter meals while on vacation.  Hurt maybe because I didn't eat the best food while we were gone.  Delicious, yes.  Healthy, maybe not so much.  I'm back to the regularly scheduled program this week.

I have to admit, it will be nice to not have to travel as much the rest of the year.  One quick overnight trip in October and a 3-day trip in November and that's it for work travel for the rest of 2013.  

Outfit post and new hair style?

Last week during random blog trails, I stumbled onto an old post on Love Maegan about DIY overnight curly hair.  While I knew it wouldn't turn out exactly like hers - come on, I do NOT have that much hair - I wanted to at least give it a shot.

So late last night, I washed my hair, dried it almost completely, and set it in the little knots for bed.  The knots were pretty tight.  I would probably do them looser next time.

In the morning, I got ready and then pulled out all the knots and finger combed them like Maegan did in her tutorial.  It looked a little crazy - very much like I imagine naturally curly hair is like - which achieved what Maegan said the intent was.

 See, crazy.  You know I love you internet, that I am putting this picture up.

After some messing with it in the car and a few hours to let it settle at work, here is what it looks like now.

So, overall, not bad.  I would probably do fewer knots with more hair in them next time and probably looser twisting, but I don't mind the craziness of it now that it's relaxed a bit.

Oh, here's the finished outfit for today.

Random Monday post

As you can imagine, I picked up quite a few things while on vacation to hang on my walls at my apartment.  So yesterday, while I was cleaning, I decided to just head to Michael's and get the necessary frames I needed.  I was already tired (after just one week) of having all of them laying all over the dining room table.

Here are things things I bought that needed a home:

- a small canvas painting from a Paris street artist
- an 8x10 print of the Sagrada Familia
- a set of 6 vintage pinup prints from Picasso
- two postcards of paintings I liked at the D'Orsay
- the bag from my purchase at Laduree

The canvas painting was definitely going in my hallway (sorry I don't have a picture of that).  I thought I could put the Laduree bag in the bathroom (that didn't end up working) and I had no idea what I was going to do with 6 Picasso prints.

After putting them all in frames, I found good spots for them.  I snuck pictures of a few of them, though they aren't the best photos.

The small canvas, the two postcards and two of the Picasso prints made it into my hallway collage.

I moved the canvas painting my mom got for me into the bathroom - the tile makes it really difficult to hang things.  I'm not sure it's perfect, but it's good there for now.

Then, I put the framed Laduree bag in the hallway.

I ended up putting two of the Picasso prints in the dining room (because I had two in black frames, two in silver and two in white).

Then I finished by putting the Sagrada print and the two remaining Picasso prints in the kitchen.  It's nice to have some artwork in that kitchen so it has a little more life.

So, almost a year and a half into living there - it is actually starting to feel a bit more like it's complete.  At least artwork wise. :)

#77 - See a Broadway play (in NYC)

Wow, September has been shaping up to be the month I accomplish things from my 101 list. :)

I had to go to NYC on Thursday until Saturday for work and my boss was traveling with me.  I had originally planned to go on Thursday afternoon since I didn't start working until Friday morning, but my boss really likes NYC and said we should go earlier on Thursday.  Who I am to argue with the woman in charge?

So we arrived around lunch time and walked around a bit.  Our hotel was right around Times Square, so we had plenty of people watching to do.  We decided to see a play while we were there - First Date.

We picked it because it seemed cute and light hearted.

And I know have a crush on Zachary Levi.  It was really cute and funny - and a great first experience with Broadway in NYC.

#29 - Go to Paris

So yeah.  I went to Paris.

Done and Done. 

It was just as beautiful as I hoped it would be (even in the rain) and I loved it!

#83 - Climb the Eiffel Tower

Okay, so while I technically didn't climb it... I saw it, so that is counting.  I'm revising this goal to seeing it because I really didn't WANT to climb it.

I enjoyed just looking at it.

So pretty.

And a quick video...

#39 - Visit 5 new museums

While on vacation, we saw a bunch of museums, and missed plenty!

We saw four technical museums (meaning Museum was actually in the name) and I'm counting the 5th one to meet my goal because we had to pay to get in, there was an audio tour, and a gift shop.  All things that mean "museum" to me, right?

Well, it's my blog and my list, so I'm counting it.

#39 on the list is completed.

There's are the 5 museums we saw on vacation.  Updates on them can be found on travel adventure posts, here, here and here.

Picasso Museum - Barcelona
Miro Museum - Barcelona
Palace Guell - Barcelona
Louvre Museum - Paris
D'Orsay Museum - Paris

Venus De Milo - Louvre

Paris Adventures (Part 2)

*Read about the start of our trip and our four days in Barcelona HERE and the first part of our trip in Paris HERE.

Day 8 (9/16)
Another day of drizzly rain.  We walked down to the Louvre, which was really only a few blocks from our hotel.  The Louvre is HUGE.  The building used to be the Royal Palace before Versailles.  While majority of the artwork is not my particular favorite (lots of religious art), the sculptures were pretty cool and you have to be there.  As someone that enjoys art, I really liked it.  It just took a LONG time to get through.

Afterwards, we walked down to the street to Angelina's - a tea room well known for their pastries.  It was delicious.  I had a simple club sandwich and we picked up some desserts to eat when we got home that night.

After we dropped our things off, we walked over to Notre Dame to do that tour.  I forgot to mention that we did buy a two day Paris pass, which got us past lines at many places (like the Louvre and the D'Orsay Museum...totally worth it).

Grammy - I said a quick prayer at St. Therese for you.

After Notre Dame, we crossed the Sienne to find St. Etienne Du Mont Church which I had found on a list of things to see.  But it was closed. :(

We were pretty tired from all the walking and the Louvre, so we grabbed some crepes from a local cafe and ate in our room to dry off and rest our sore legs.

Day 9 (9/17)
We woke up and were taking our time getting ready.  Unfortunately, we got out days mixed up and ended up having to scramble to take the metro to make our Paris Catacombs tour on time.  We made in (only 5 minutes late)!  The catacombs was pretty cool.  It's an interesting story.

One of two sculptures in the Catacombs

After the tour, we went to the Museum D'Orsay.  We skipped the long line to get in and took our time going through.  It is definitely smaller than the Louvre, but it features the types of art I really like.  Impressionists, post-impressionists, etc.  The rooms were a lot tighter than at the Louvre which made it frustrating to try to look at paintings while people were crowding around the well-known ones.  Typical museum.

Afterwards, we decided (in the rain) to take the metro over to the Champs-Elysees and head to dinner at a restaurant recommended to us - Le Relais de L'Entrecote.  We made a pit stop at Laduree, a famous pastry shop to pick up some macarons for later.   Anyways, back to L'Entrecote.  We were told that they don't take reservations and there would be a line, so we go there about 20 minutes before it opened and waited in line to get in.  We were like 7th in line, so we were sure we would get in first.  Their premise is pretty simple.  Everyone sits.  There is no menu.  You get a house salad, steak (cooked rare, medium or well) and fries.  You get two servings of the steak and fries, which is really just half your steak first and then the other half later.  Then you can choose a dessert from their menu.  The food was good.  The steak came with this green sauce which was delicious.  It was interesting to eat in a place like this.

Day 10 (9/18)
On our last day in Paris, we were pretty tired and pretty tired of being wet.  We decided to buy tickets to take the hop-on, hop-off buses and just ride around the neighborhoods and get off when we wanted.  We took the tour to the Luxembourg Gardens and walked around a little bit.  Then we got back on and rode around until we were hungry.  We hopped off to have lunch at Le Deux Magots and then got back on the bus.

After riding three routes of buses, in the rain - we were pretty much done for the day.  We took one final lap past the Moulin Rouge, which I wanted to see.  Gotta say, I was overall underwhelmed.  In the daylight at least, it looks pretty run down.  Also it's on a street in the artsy district that is loaded with girls clubs and sex shops.  Vaguely reminiscent of my neighborhood I guess. :)

We headed back early, picked up some crepes for dinner and packed up for our trip home in the morning.

I had so much fun on this trip - seeing so much and spending time with my mom and dad.  Honestly, I was feeling pretty tired and frustrated with the inability to really communicate with people, so I didn't do any shopping in Paris.  Something I will have to rectify with another trip. :)

Paris Adventures (Part 1)

*Read about the start of our trip and our four days in Barcelona HERE.

Day 5 (9/13)
We left Barcelona in the morning and arrived in Paris around lunch time.  Sidenote, the security in Europe is NOT like in the US.  I would travel in Europe anytime.

When we got to Paris it was raining....  which would be the daily weather for majority of the time we were there.  We got to our hotel, the Westin Paris Vendome which was a really cool and beautiful hotel - maybe just a little bit loud....  thin walls and doors.

After we unpacked and got settled, we decided to just push through the drizzly rain and walk down the street towards the Louvre and the Sienne.  Then, we walked down the Champs-Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe.

We stopped at Cafe Du Colannade for dinner before we had our ghost/mystery tour.  Our tour guide, Michele, was nice and funny.  Mom was fascinated by his glass pipe that he smoked most of the time we were walking and I liked that he was wearing fangs.  Totally in character.  The tour was interesting and nice to walk around a bit of Paris at night.  Did you know that the real story of the demon barber, Sweeney Todd, is actually from Paris?  After the tour, we wandered past the Louvre at night.





Day 6 (9/14)
Another day of drizzling rain.  We were pretty tired from the day before so we decided to sleep in, which ended up being around 10:30am.  Even with the rain, we pushed through and walked up to the Basilica Sacre Coeur.  Maybe the second most famous cathedral in Paris.  It was beautiful (even in the rain) and was sitting high up on the hill above the city. After our tour, we wandered upon a little square with restaurants and a ton of local artists selling their goods.  Both my mom and I bought paintings from two different artists and we sat at one of the cafes for lunch.

After lunch, we wandered over to the Parc Monceau, down past the cemetery and over to the Tower Eiffel.  The rain just would not let up and both of us were tired and sore and wet and cold.  We headed back to the hotel early.  My mom commented while looking at the map that we had walked FAR that day and we ordered room service and watched BBC reality game shows.

Day 7 (9/15)
Finally, a day with NO RAIN.  And it could not have come at a better time since we had our day trip out to Versailles Palace.  (Our tour guide also let us stop at the Arc de Triomphe while it was nice out.)  This was probably my favorite part of the trip.  The palace was incredible and we didn't even see most of it.  The tour we were on got us VIP access to the private apartments which are not open to the general public.  That was pretty cool.  It also got us in right away past the lines so that we could see the famous Hall of Mirrors without many people in it.  After that, we headed up to the gardens.  We went on a day that they were having the fountain shows which was awesome.

 

When we got back to Paris, we decided to take advantage of the nice weather while we head it and headed down to the Eiffel Tower to see it lit at night.  Hands down the coolest thing ever.  I know it's super tourist, but I loved it.  We saw it twinkle once while we were walking there and then waited around to see it again.  It twinkles for 5 minutes every hour.  After that, we stopped to eat at this cafe on the Sienne and got to see it twinkle one more time before we headed back to the hotel.

Stay tuned for Part 2.

Barcelona Adventures

Since these posts will be pretty picture heavy, I am going to break them up.  Probably into three parts.  The first.... our four days in Barcelona.

I took a few notes while we were traveling and I have done by best to link up to all the places I could.  A lot of the locations have some great history behind them that my simple notes wouldn't do justice to.

*These could be long, you've been warned.  I am only posting a few photos - all 390-something are on my facebook page. :)

Day 1 (9/8-9/9)
Mom and I headed on our way to NYC for our first layout in the late morning.  We were all situated on our Delta flight over to Barcelona by the middle of the afternoon and were preparing to arrive around 9:30am on Monday morning in Barcelona.

Immediately when we got there, we put out stuff into the rooms (at the Hotel Bagues on La Rambla) and then headed off to the Sagrada Familia.  It is probably the biggest attraction in Barcelona and we wanted to keep going so that we wouldn't be tempted to take a nap (jet lag).

*Nice photo bomb by the crying woman statue - selfie fail

This place is really incredible.  Take a read through the website if you aren't familiar with it, but Gaudi planned it to take over a century to complete.  They are STILL working on it and anticipate a completion in 2026.

After the tour, we took the metro back to the hotel, which was right on La Rambla a busy and popular street.  We stopped at one of the outdoor cafes to have a snack and some of the biggest sangria I've ever seen.

Finally, we headed back to the room to rest for a bit and get changed for dinner.  My parents had a reception to go to the meeting my dad was attending so I went to dinner with the kids of one of his upcoming Presidents.  We went to a local restaurant called Los Caracoles.  It was delicious.

Day 2 (9/10)
On day two, we woke up headed over to the Museu Picasso with the family I went to dinner with the night before.  It was a really cute little museum with a lot of works from Picasso during his schooling and early years - before the popular stuff.  It was fascinating to see his growth and transition to the style he is classically known for.  This may have been my favorite thing we did.

After the museum, my dad went back to the hotel to do some work and the rest of us heading over to Parc Guell.  It was quite a hike up the hill, but great views and really nice weather.  The mosaics were really cool, but there were A LOT of people there.  My mom and I almost witnessed a fight because some guy wouldn't stop sitting in front of the famous lizard mosaic until he approved the photo.  This did not make another woman very happy.

We took the metro up to the park and back, so we decided to get off on a stop before ours to see the Casa Batllo which is another house by Gaudi.  Antoni Gaudi, an architect, had a lot of work in Barcelona.  He worked closely on various projects with Guell. If you are looking for some internet searching, google them both. :)

After the house, we walked back to our hotel and headed off to dinner with a few of the Canadians that work with my dad.  We went to Sensi Bistro Tapas, which was a cute little tapas place in a nearby neighborhood.  The waiter was a super hairy 25 year old in school and he offered to just order for the 7 of us.  It was delicious!

Day 3 (9/11)
We woke up early to meet a tour group and take a day trip down to Sitges and the Freixenet Cava Winery.  We went with Darcy and his wife Carla. On the tour, we walked down into their cava caves which hold over 4 million bottles of cava!  The caves are so big that we could walk through the original part, but take a little train through the new portion.  After the tour, (which was really interesting about the history) we got to taste their Cordon Negro Brut.  Delicious!  We also tried a glass of their Reserva Real.

After the tour, the bus took us over to the coastal town, Sitges to walk around and get lunch.   We ate lunch at a little wine bar called Kva (no website, sorry!).  It was a little rainy so we didn't end up staying very long in Sitges.

When we got back, the guys went up to pack and Carla, my mom and I went to the Miro museum.  This is definitely NOT my favorite style of artwork, but it was fun to see.  Afterwards, we were trying to kill time before meeting the guys for dinner, so we wandered around down the hill which ended up being were the Olympic Park is from the 1992 Summer Olympics.  From there, we wandered past the MNAC (Museum of National Art of Cataluyna), saw the Magic Fountain (apparently very colorful at night) and then had some paella at La Gavina.

Day 4 (9/12)
This was our last day here and it was just mom and I, as everyone else had left for home.  We decided to tackle all the other things in my list that we hadn't done yet.  First, we walked down to the Santa Maria De La Mar Cathedral.  It was beautiful - as most other Gothic cathedrals are.  Afterwards, we made our appointment to take a tour of the Palau Musica Catalana, the Opera theater.  It was beautifully done with lots of artistic features.  I love looking at all these older building that still are in use.

 Opera House

After our tour, we stopped to have some lunch at a Catalan style tapas bar on La Rambla and then walked over the Palau Guell.  A mansion house built for Guell by his pal Guadi.  It was so cool and so weird at the same time.  It was very dark and typical Gothic. It has a chapel in it and a huge organ.  So strange.

Chimneys on the rooftop

Since we had to pack and were pretty tired, we stopped and had a jamon sandwich at this cafe Vienna down the street from our hotel.  This sandwich was written up in the NY Times back in 2006, and it was simple but delicious.

And now that this is a marathon post, we head off to Paris in the morning... :)