My Favorite Fish is a Snapfish

Let me take you back to 2002. 

This was the year my high school friends and I took one of a handful of road trips to Chicago. I filled a couple 24-exposure disposable cameras, developed the negatives after I forgot what they featured, and then slipped the prints into a plastic 3-ring photo album with a palm tree cover. 

Ah, memories. So easy in the days of disposable cameras.

And that, friends and family, was how the trip was documented. Simple. Timely. Concise.

Fast forward to 2009. Brendan and I took more than a thousand photos during our stay in Bali. Part of the reason being we saw a lot of cool stuff. The other reason being we had a limitless supply of "film." While I pride myself on a highly organized file system for my .jpgs and I post regularly to Picasa and Facebook, the beloved honeymoon photos mostly sat undeveloped and unappreciated for almost two years. Until my friend Karen shared how she uses Snapfish.com to create photo books of her travels.

Real photos trump electronic photos. 

Eureka! By using Snapfish to organize and design photo layouts, I created a hard copy memento of all our favorite honeymoon memories. The project was a bit of work on the front end, but WAY easier to show to family and friends. Especially since their eyes usually glaze over around photo #572 of our honeymoon collection. 

I'm looking forward to repeating the project after our Italy trip! 

Of course, I'll be more than happy to walk you through all 1,000+ shots upon request. ;) 

Arrivederci!

Friday Night Roman Holiday

Well, it only took a pending trip to Italy for me to convince Brendan to sit through Roman Holiday. My supporting reasons included: 

• It's good for you. 
• I want to be able to see things in Rome and say, "Remember when Audrey and Gregory were here in the movie?!" 
• It'll be fun to reenact the "mouth of truth" scene at the Bocca della Verita.
• Because it's romantic. Deal with it. 

I also softened him up with dinner at our favorite neighborhood wine bar and an evening walk to the lake.

But it was a success! Both of us stayed awake through the movie and Brendan even admitted "it was ok". To add to the fun, whenever Princess Anne and Joe Bradly ventured anywhere remotely recognizable, I squealed its name.  

Like...

"COLISEUM!!" or "TREVI FOUNTAIN!!" 

So that was enjoyable. 

It's still a little unreal that we'll actually be visiting these places that I've only seen in movies. Not only will the black and white images from tonight's movie soon be brought into living technicolor, we'll be able to walk the same streets as Audrey, taste gelato at the foot of the same Spanish Steps, and see Rome how she and others have experienced it for generations. 

Reporter: Which of the cities visited did Your Highness enjoy the most?  

Princess Anne: ...Rome! By all means, Rome. I will cherish my visit here as long as I live.

Arrivederci!

Love, Eat, Pray

A fun coincidence of this trip is that it’ll match us with two-thirds of the places visited in the crazy-popular book Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. If you haven’t read the book, you’ve probably heard of the movie released last year starring Julia Roberts.

 Sporting sarongs in Bali, September 2009

The book is a memoir of the author’s journey- literally and figuratively- to find herself as she’s going through a divorce. She takes a year to experience life’s pleasures (in Italy), meditate (in India), and find love (in Bali).

By pure coincidence- I swear!, we honeymooned in Bali before even hearing about the book, and decided soon after that our next adventure would be in Italy.

No plans to visit India yet, but the Taj Mahal is definitely on my bucket list!

Reading Eat, Pray, Love has inspired me to savor the pleasures of Italy. I’m looking forward to enjoying the food, the language, the people, the history… and will pack outfits with a little give around the waist. :)

Can you recommend any other books based in Italy?

Arrivederci!

Awaiting Italy

As much as I enjoy reading my friends' blogs, I've never really been inspired to start one of my own. But as it turns out, I actually have something incredibly exciting brewing in my life: 

From September 14-25, Brendan and I are embarking on an adventure... to Italy! 

Ever since studying abroad in college, I've been bit by a serious travel bug. And I can't wait to feed it again. 

I've always thought the traveling experience includes more than just the piece bookended by airplane rides: it's the planning, the debating, the coordinating, the booking... and most importantly, the few weeks of pure anticipation before the trip begins. 

So I thought blogging might inspire me to "journal" before, during and after the trip.

Here's a quick breakdown of our itinerary: 

Sept. 14-15: Travel to Rome

Sept. 15-17: Rome

Sept. 18-19: Florence

Sept. 20-21: Vernazza

Sept. 22: Florence

Sept. 23-24: Venice

Sept. 25: Return to Seattle 

Arrivederci! 

 So, you could call me a bit of a planner.