Tulips and canals

This past weekend, I took the ponte and headed up to Amsterdam for two major events: the Keukenhof and Queen's Day.

The Keukenhof is this park with, what must be acres, of flowers that are all in bloom... right now!  It was a stormy day, but the rain miraculously stopped while we were walking around looking at the flowers.  There were more varieties of tulips than I ever imagined even existed!  It was really beautiful!  We then headed into Amsterdam to experience Queen's Day on the canals.  My dutch buddy, Freddy, secured my place on a party barge and we sailed around the canals while wearing orange and dancing to music from our own DJ. Such a great afternoon...and yes, I think orange suits me :-)

And this trip finished my blitz April -- Thailand, Sweden, London, and Amsterdam -- four amazing places in 5 weeks. Man, no wonder I am tired.  I am now going to spend some time enjoying Rome and remembering why I love this city.  I am on the edge of buying a motorino and rented one yesterday to test my skills in the Rome traffic, and I think it went alright -- I survived and so did the bike.
So...stay tuned ;-)

From Thailand to Sweden...

...this past month has been a whirlwind to say the least!  To start, I took my much anticipated (and needed) vacation to Thailand with Alex!  It was his spring break and so we decided to meet in Bangkok and party it up for a week on the beautiful beach shores of Koh Samui.

Thailand proved to be remarkable.  Bangkok was crowded, overwhelming, but had soooo much to offer.  We forged the 35 degree humid weather and saw the Grand Palace and then wandered around enjoying all that the city had to offer, I even had some little fish eat the calouses off my feet (gross, but gotta try it once right?).  We then set off for the start of a reeeaaaalll vacation, some quality time on Koh Samui.  It was incredibly relaxing and amazingly quiet -- apparently it was too hot for people to even make it to the islands. We rode scooters, snorkled in crystal clear and warm water, got massages every day (ok that was just me) and got our chang on.

Overall it was a solid week of relaxation and quality time with my little bro. It obviously went by too fast and I can not wait to figure out when to go back next....

Riding in a tuk tuk

The view from our beach bungalow...

 Then this past weekend, I went to my second favorite place, Sweden, for Easter break.  I went to visit Johanna in her home town, Karlstad.  I got the total Swedish experience and was treated like part of the family by Johanna's amazing and welcoming family.  I am slowly increasing my Swedish vocabulary -- the word for this weekend -- jättebra!!

Palermo!

This past weekend I took a quick trip to Palermo with Ale.  We headed off straight from work and took a quick flight down to Sicily. We were lucky (totally unlucky actually) that there was a rare storm hitting Sicily this weekend.  So, anticipating tons of rain and being stuck inside our hotels turkish spa, we were pleasantly surprised when it barely rained at all!

About 3 years ago, I went to Sicily with my brother.We had some major adventures (cars driving down the wrong side of the road, pizza chefs hanging out on the street instead of cooking, no finding any people anywhere), so I was curious to compare my experience after having lived in Italy for over a year.

We were able to see everything there was to see in Palermo by keeping a tight, yet relaxed schedule- ate incredible food-- canoli, arancina, foccacia, some not so great spleen sandwich, went to the beach -- just to look, saw a symphony concert and still spent some quality time at the spa.  Not a bad way to spend the weekend :-)

Last scene of Godfather III....anyone?!

Carnevale di Venezia!

Carnevale...in Venice!  Amazing. I have been wanting to go to Venice for awhile and what better time to go than at Carnevale...which is exactly what I did this last weekend.  Carnevale proved to be less raucous than expected but was amazingly fun nonetheless. We started the weekend off with spritz (yes, actually better in Venice-- the olive they add is a nice touch), continued it with some baccala', prosecco, random contemplations about the foundation of Venice (all wood poles...amazing) and costume watching, and  finished it in the freezing cold with plenty of vin brule'...and ya, I guess that about sums it up :-)