istanbul

Jelena and I went to Istanbul, Turkey for a weekend in November. We had a great time and managed to see everything we wanted in a short amount of time.

 

We flew into the airport which is on the Asian side of Istanbul. We were both very excited to be in Asia for the first time. Getting me into the country proved to be slightly more than difficult, but I finally got the necessary visa and met up with Jelena at baggage claim.

 

 

This is a horrible picture of us going across the bridge from Asia to Europe:

 

On Friday night, we had dinner and took went to the Turkish bath at our hotel.

 

The weather was amazing. On Saturday we first walked along the water on our way to the palace.

 

Hagia Sophia (mosque)

 

Topkapi Palace

 

 

Look at the smog in this picture. I've never seen anything like this before.

 

We spent a lot of time at the spice market. Everyone was really nice. We tried and bought some teas to bring home.

 

Jelena and some yummy baklava

 

 

After the spice market we walked through the tiny and packed streets towards the Grand Bazaar.

 

In the Grand Bazaar we shopped for scarves and gold. Shopping at the stores and talking to the people was really fun.

 

After the Grand Bazaar, we went into the New Mosque. We had to take off our shoes and cover our hair in order to enter. It was an interesting experience and the mosque was beautiful inside.

 

We drank some fresh pomegranate juice from one of the many guys making fresh squeezed juice on the street.

Our last stop of the day was the Blue Mosque. We also went inside this mosque.

 

 

On Sunday morning, we left early. I was pleasantly surprised by the Arby's at the airport. This is the first Arby's I've seen in Europe. Curly fries for breakfast? Sure, why not?!

 

 

Istanbul was great. It was much different from the other European cities I've visited which made it so intriguing. Also, the people we met were some of the nicest I've met while traveling which also made our experience so great.

 

champagne

In early November, three girlfriends and I went on the ultimate girls weekend (in my opinion). We rented a car for the weekend (see the sexy Nissan picture below), and I drove (was nice after not driving for such a long time!) for our little weekend getaway. We left on Friday night after work and the drive to Reims, France took about 5 hours, so we got in really late Friday night/early Saturday morning.

 

 

Saturday morning, we woke up and walked the 20 minutes or so into the heart of the champagne region.

 

Our first tour was at Taittinger champagne "maison". Our guide's English had a heavy French accent, so between the 4 of us (me being the only native English speaker), we got the gist of the champagne making process. The caves were really neat to see as well. 

 

 

But we all know the reason I went to champagne for the weekend was not to discuss champagne-making and tour caves, it was for the tasting! 

 

Claudia, Jelena, Jenna & Daniela

 

After a successful first tour and tasting at Taittinger (we concluded champagne tastes better in the champagne region of France), we walked to lunch with a random stop at this beautiful basilica on the way.

 

For the afternoon, we had a tour booked at Pommery.

 

The tour of the caves was much the same as the first one, but our guide's English was much more understandable this time, so we caught on a little more.

 

Champagne bottles as old as 1874:

 

 

With two tours under our belt and three glasses of champagne in our bellies, we were now considering ourselves champagne experts and changed our strategy to skip the tours and go directly to the tasting. Our next stop was Demoiselle. Here we enjoyed a glass of bubbly on the outdoor patio.

 

 

 

Our final stop and tasting of the day was at Veuve Clicquot.

 

After our exciting day, we walked back to the hotel and were enjoying girl talk and relaxing in PJ's so much that we decided to call it a night and got pizza and cheap wine for dinner and ate it in our room.

 

 

The next morning we toured the city a bit more. We walked through the beautiful cathedral and had brunch at a really cute café.

While we were at breakfast, everyone wrote a postcard (or 2). Of the 5 postcards we were mailing (some were being sent to the US and we only had EU stamps), they were written in 5 different languages. I obviously contributed the English one, but pretty cool!

 

After brunch, we drove around to a couple of our favorite maisons and made some large purchases for our own champagne inventory/upcoming new year's eve parties.

 

Then we drove back to Zurich. Daniela didn't think this trip was do-able in one weekend, but as shown, and as I've recommended to several other since we went, this is the perfect weekend getaway!

hut hiking engelberg

My friend Matt and I decided to go hiking one weekend in October. It had already started snowing in the mountains, so we knew we could only go as high as 2000m. We found a "hut" where you can stay overnight and decided it sounded like a fun thing to try so took the train Saturday to Engelberg and started our hike to the hut from there.

 

 

The weather was perfect - very sunny. The snow at the tops of the mountains made for beautiful views throughout the hike.

 

 

When Matt called to make our reservation at the "hut", she said it was a "snowless" hike. This was not completely accurate. Since I still haven't bought hiking boots and usually hike in my trail running shoes, the last stretch of the trail covered in snow was a little tricky, but I managed!

 

Here is our "hut". It is basically a mountain cabin that they've turned into a hostel. There are huts located throughout Switzerland. This one had recently been renovated and was really nice. They served us a three course dinner too! The hut has food and supplies helicoptered in approximately once a month. There were 3 employees that live there and run the hut. It was an interesting experience. I would definitely do it again.

 

My cold beer on the deck after our hike:

 

Watching the beautiful sunset:

 

The next morning we woke up early and hiked back a slightly different trail.