More Cupertino.

It took a little while, but Mitch and I eventually got into a routine.  I would fly out to California on Friday afternoon, stay for a week, and then leave the next Saturday morning.  

Aside from Memorial Day weekend with Sarah and Darren, it was really just business as usual.  (We lived outside of San Francisco when we were first married, so we kind of felt like we'd already been there, done that.)

Here's a quick summary:

We had a new rental car every other week.  Actually, this one is funny.  My (delayed) flight left from Salt Lake Friday night and flew to Los Angeles.  Then, that (delayed) flight flew to San Francisco.  Except, it was supposed to get in a like... 10:00 at night and instead we didn't get in until like... 1:00 am.  And then, by the time I'd (waited in the really long line and) picked up the rental car, it was like... 2:00 am.  And by the time I (made it through the construction, detours, and stupid GPS and) got to Mitch's house, it was like... 3:00 in the morning.  Which felt like 4:00 in the morning to me.  It was awful.  (And I had been up really late the night before too, but I can't remember why.)  But we did have a good laugh about me pulling up in this Mustang outside Mitch's apartment at 3:00 in the morning.  Actually, it's still not that funny.  And, I didn't even like the Mustang.  (I always took direct flights into Oakland after that.)

Here's the rest of the summary:

Oooh.  When Mitch got back from Europe (more about that later), he brought me red Toms.  Cute, huh.

That week we had the blue rental car.  This picture doesn't do it justice.  It was blue.  Well, like blue green.  I couldn't get the color right on my phone.  But it was ugly.  Now, every time I see a car that color I assume that it must be a rental car.  Because nobody would buy a car that color.

One night we walked along this trail in Los Gatos...

It was really pretty.

Another night I convinced Mitch to get his first pair of Toms.  (Which he has worn all of about three times.  But he has still been wearing sandals.  Maybe more once it's colder?)

Can we talk about our favorite mall there?  (There was one in Cupertino, but our favorite mall was one about 10 minutes away in San Jose.)  They had every store you can think of and then a bunch more.  They had a Nordstrom.  And right across the street was Santana Row.  And they had a Container Store.  And a Paper Source!  I was in heaven.  

Next is a picture of the grassy area right outside Mitch's apartment.  While we're on the subject, let's talk about Mitch's apartment.  It was about twelve steps from his office.  He loved that.  (And it was right around the corner from a Target, Chipotle, and Panera, so I loved it.)  Across from his apartment complex, was this nice grassy amphitheater thing (and the pool).  One night, Mitch had a meeting so I walked to Chipotle and ate dinner on the steps.  It was wonderful.  This picture probably doesn't mean much to everyone else, but I'll remember it.  Actually, I wish I'd spent more time out here and more time walking places.  Everything was so close that I could have.  (Except that we were paying for a rental car, so I felt like we should use it.)

And last is a picture from a hike we did one Saturday.  It felt like hiking the Y because it was a lot of going uphill (while Mitch tried to push me to go faster).  Go us.

Ha.  Looking back I see how random all of my pictures from this summer are.  Well, to be fair, these are all the random pictures that don't fit into their own blog posts.  

Next up, Europe and Asia.  I kid you not.

The Brothers

After we/I got back from Mitch's, my two youngest brothers moved in with me for the summer.

I only had about 24 hours notice that they were coming--and Mitch was obviously still in California-- so luckily I had Sarah to help me get ready for them.  Neither of us had any actual experience with things like transporting mattresses, but we made it work.  We're beasts.

And then, once they got here, we proceeded to have lots of fun.

1.  Tyler at Veteran's Memorial Pool.  (Have you ever been here?  It was my new favorite thing over the summer.)  This was a picture message I sent to Sarah trying to convince her to join us.
2.  Our first Family Home Evening together.  We wrote our sister, Tracy, a poem for her birthday.  It was awesome.  We laughed for an hour straight.
3.  Tyler made friends at a youth activity and after that, Brandon and I spent a lot of quality time together.  I think this was his first time at Red Robin.
4.  Swimming at our clubhouse pool.

Sometime in... June-ish, Tyler got a job with Sarah at In-N-Out.

(I should explain Brandon's sunglasses.  One time I left Tyler and Brandon at the mall while I was at Emily's midwife appointment around the corner.  They both bought sunglasses in my absence.  I never left them alone again.)

This next picture is a little out of order.  It's from the night they arrived.  On the way home from the airport, Sarah and I explained the "House Rules."  One of the rules was:  If a cat is laying on your bed, you have to sleep on the floor.  (Or if a cat wants your chair, you have to give it up.)  Sarah and I gave Tyler and Brandon a whole lecture about how it was their (the cats) house first and so they got priority. We made it through the whole lecture--and seemingly convinced the boys it was a real rule--before we cracked and started laughing.

Nevertheless, this is what Tyler found when he got home:

We had to send the picture to Sarah.

And this one is from... the 4th of July?  Turns out the brothers like ice cream as much as I do.

Don't worry, they're still here.

Summer 2012 -- Memorial Day weekend

A week after we got back from our romantic European getaway, Mitch got his own apartment and moved out.

I guess the signs were there all along.  An MBA program.  An interview.  An offer.  And just like that, he was gone.  Back to California.

Well.  Basically.

...

Don't worry, he just had an internship in California for the summer.  We discussed (extensively) the idea of me quitting my job and coming out to California with him so that I could lay by the pool all day and have dinner ready when he got home (or something like that), but ultimately decided it was smarter for me to keep my job, stay in Utah, and just fly back and forth a lot.

But I like Mitch and missed him after like five seconds.  So, the first weekend he was gone, I went out to visit him.  To surprise him.  (Mitch loves surprises.)

This is going to be a long story, so if you just want to skip to the pictures, go ahead and scroll down.

If you're up for reading the whole-ish story, this is how it went down:

A bunch of us were planning on hiking the Grand Canyon (again!) Memorial Day weekend.  We'd been talking about it for a couple of months.  Some of us had been doing practice hikes, some of us drove all the way out to Tooele to borrow radios from our uncle, we'd talked about who was bringing what snacks, etc.  We'd even booked a room at the rim and everything.  And Mitch knew it.

What Mitch didn't know was that my mom had been having problems with her knees.  She usually has problems with them when she hikes the Grand Canyon, but she's tough and she keeps going until she makes it out.  (Really though, that's kind of the only option when you're mid-Canyon.)  She doesn't usually (as far as I know) have problems with her knees during her practice hikes though.  And this time she did.  We all really wanted to still go, but after lots of debating, we agreed it would be best to skip the trip than to go and have problems.  But Mitch didn't know that.

Can you see where this is going?  Sneaky, huh.

So, I convinced my sister, Sarah, and her boyfriend-almost-fiance (at the time), Darren, to drive out to Cupertino with me to surprise Mitch.  We all had the time off from work anyway (since we'd been planning on the Grand Canyon), so we might as well go somewhere.  Plus, I really wanted to see Mitch.

We left Thursday night and drove to Reno.  We spent the night there and then drove the rest of the way to California on Friday (via the Reno Temple).  Mitch happened to leave work early (and we hadn't hurried to get there), so we got there after he was done with work.  He was Very Surprised to see us and we wished that we had video taped (or photographed) his reaction.

We'd kind of planned on going to the city that night, but by then we were all pretty exhausted, so instead we just went to dinner and hung out.  That's about all we were up for.

The next day we did Everything.  Santa Cruz and San Francisco in approximately ten hours.  That's kind of a lot.  See, Sarah and Darren didn't have much time with us in California, but they still wanted to see everything, so we had to make a trip that could have taken a week fit into one day.  Gotta love it.


Sarah and Darren drove back on Sunday, but I stayed until Monday and flew back.  (For those counting, this was flight number eight for me just since the end of April.)  That gave Mitch and I a little extra time together.

And now the pictures, all at once:

1.  Sarah and Darren at breakfast in Reno.

2.  The Reno Temple.  Gotta catch 'em all.

3.  Oreo stacking with Darren on the way to Santa Cruz.

4.  Passing Dublin on the way to Cupertino.

5.  M and I at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk.

6.  Best picture ever.  Zoom in on this one.  Ha!

7.  Sarah and Darren at Pier 39 in San Francisco. 

8.  Google bikes with Mitch.

9.  Google campus fun.  

Istanbul??

And then we went to Istanbul.  You know, in Turkey.

First of all, I would like to say, I was against going to Istanbul from the start.  Mitch was the one that wanted to go there.  (He's always the more adventurous one.)  I tried to talk him into seeing more of Italy or some of Spain instead, but he insisted he'd always wanted to go to Istanbul.  (Funny, he'd never mentioned it before...)  And, since I got to choose London and Paris and we both wanted to go to Switzerland, Mitch chose Rome and Istanbul as his two cities. 

So.

We went to Istanbul.  (Who goes to Istanbul???)

And we loved it.

Both of us.  

It was maybe our favorite city of our whole trip.

It was just so different than the rest of the cities/countries that we saw.  So... Turkish. 

We flew in on Wednesday night and I'll be honest, I was a little (okay, a lot) nervous about the flight there and going through customs, getting to our hotel, etc.  Turkish Airlines?  And buses from the airplane to the terminals/customs?  And the words on their signs don't look like our words.  And it was late at night.  And we couldn't really tell where we were going (/we didn't exactly know where we were going).  My imagination can be very active.

Well, 1.  Turkish Airlines is fantastic.  2.  The buses from the runway got us there.  3.  They actually speak tons of English.  4.  Somehow we got to our hotel.  5.  And it was okay even though it was a Turkish hotel.  (I wanted to stay in an American hotel and Mitch wanted to stay in the Turkish one with good reviews.)  Our hotel even left Turkish Delight on our bed for us!  (Mitch liked it.  I liked the idea of it, but I didn't want to try it.  Don't worry, I eventually did on our last day when the guy at the baklava store made me.  I thought it was just okay.)

The first morning there, we went to Topkapi Palace.  On our way there, we passed a store with two cats.  I like cats.  And one let me pet it.  (The other was asleep inside.)  Then, as we were walking, we passed a kitten and a mama cat!  And then, at Topkapi Palace, there were more cats.

And that's when I decided I liked Istanbul.

Topkapi Palace was neat.  I really liked their treasure vaults.  They have a lot of really, really old jewels.

Interesting fact:  Part of Istanbul is in Europe and part of Istanbul is in Asia.  We were staying on the Europe side and from Topkapi Palace, you can see the Asian side across the Bosphorus. 

I loved the architecture and colorful tiles.

Those are all parts of the palace.  

After that, we went to the Hagia Sophia.  It's a mosque turned museum.

This picture is actually from a different day, but it is the best one we have outside Hagia Sophia.

This picture is actually from a different day, but it is the best one we have outside Hagia Sophia.

After that we went to the Egyptian Spice Bazaar.  I don't have any pictures of that, but it's essentially a big area with a bunch of shops and vendors selling all kinds of things (and a lot of spices).  My favorite vendor was the guy with the fresh squeezed orange juice.  Also, on the way to the Spice Bazaar, there are a lot more cats.  (I stopped counting when I got to twenty-five.  In ONE day!)

That night, after the Spice Bazaar, we ate at a Turkish restaurant.  We don't exactly know what we ordered, but we asked what their best dish was and ordered it for two.  It ended up being the best thing we ate our entire trip.  The best.  Hands down.  (And!  The middle part was on fire when they brought it out!)

It was delicious.  Absolutely delicious.

The next morning, Mitch and I went to a hamam.  A hamam is a Turkish bath house.  We don't have any pictures of that either (obviously).  Basically, at the bath house you sit in a really, really, really, really hot room and you sweat more than you've ever sweat before in your life and it's so hot that you can barely breathe.  (At least, that's how I felt.)  You really can't do more than sit/lay on the marble because it's so hot.  You have to sit for like... forty minutes or something and it feels like... twelve hours.  (At least, it did to me.)  I guess the idea is that you sweat out all of your impurities or something.  Mitch liked it!    

Then, when you think you're about to die, the Turkish bath guys come in, lather you up a bunch, and wash you off with cool water that feels like heaven.  There's a little bit of a massage in there, but not like a normal massage.  It's more of a bath.  That's a really basic summary of the bath house.  After the bath, you sit in a sauna like room that feels actually really cool after coming out of the bath house part.  It was... an experience.  (Also, now Mitch and I have a point of reference for things.  If I go up to the attic and say, "Our attic is as hot as the hamam," Mitch knows how hot it really is in our attic.)

After the hamam, we went back to the hotel to shower and change.  (Funny that I felt like I needed to shower after the hamam.)  Then we went to the Basilica Cistern.

 It's hard to get pictures underground, but this is one of Medusa's heads.

And after the Basilica, we went to the Blue Mosque.

 Like I said, everything in Istanbul is completely different than the rest of Europe.

And after the Mosque, we went to the Grand Bazaar.  Except, on the way there, we had to stop to see a bunch more cats.  I started taking pictures of them.  They're just everywhere!

On the way back to the hotel, we stopped in one of the parks to let me pet a bunch of the kitties.

It was the most interesting thing to me!  There were just cats everywhere.  And they were (mostly) friendly!  I ended up Googling it later and I guess a long, long time ago, Istanbul had a problem with mice, so they got cats.  And the mice problem was dealt with, but then they had a cat problem.  But I guess that the people in Istanbul just tolerate the cats.  Supposedly it's a partially a Muslim thing.  I read that there's a saying that's something like, "If you've killed a cat, you need to build a mosque to be forgiven by God."  People even leave little piles of food and things of water out for them.  And they pet them.  I loved it.

Anyway, so I pet a bunch of the park cats (bless Mitch's heart for waiting so patiently) and then I found--

 KITTENS!

So, then Mitch had to wait longer.  He got his shoes shined while he waited.

Best city ever.

The next day we basically just woke up, bought more baklava, and went to the airport.  If we had known how much we would like Istanbul, we definitely would had stayed longer.  We should go back.

From Istanbul we flew back to New York and then back to Salt Lake City.  The international flight wasn't quite as nice, but we made it.  And that was the end of that trip.

The End. 

Rome!

After Switzerland, we flew to Rome.  

One thing I really liked about our little fights throughout Europe was that the flight attendants all spoke no less than three languages each. 

The first day that we got there we mostly just oriented ourselves with the city.  (And I'll be honest, we may have taken a nap because our flight that morning was so stupid early.)  That night we went to dinner and then went on a self-guided walking tour.  It's funny how busy Rome is (at least that part) at night.  There were people out walking and shopping and eating until about 10:00.  And it was a Monday night!  (Probably for FHE.)

Anyway, that night we saw the Spanish Steps, the Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon, Campo di Fiori, and the Piazza di Popolo.  We loved all the piazzas.  And the gelato.  (We decided early on that we would need to eat gelato every day.)

On Tuesday, we went to the Vatican City.  Our first stop was St. Peter's Basilica.

(I had to wait forever to be able to take a picture of St. Peter.  Everybody kept wanting to touch his foot and I didn't want them in my picture.)

This was probably the hottest day of our trip (and it wasn't even that hot) and we kept talking about how we were really glad that we didn't have to wait outside of the Basilica in July.  There's hardly any shade, plus it probably would have been more busy.

After the Basilica, we went to the Vatican Museum.  (And there was NO line!  We'd heard that sometimes the line will go all the way down the street!)

View of Rome from the Vatican Museum.

We have a lot more pictures from the Vatican Museum, but, these were some of our favorites.  And, a lot of the statues at the Vatican are nudes.  It seemed weird to take lots of pictures of nude statues.

Speaking of pictures, up until this point, I'd mostly been the one taking the pictures.  Mitch is obviously more of a photographer than I am, so you'd think he'd be the one taking the pictures, but he's also wayyy more of a photography perfectionist than I am.  (Surprise, surprise.)  So.  If he'd been taking pictures, we probably would have seen a lot less because we'd still be taking pictures of the first thing.  Case in point:  As you exit the Vatican Museum, there's a spiral staircase.  That Mitch loved.  I think we have like... fifty pictures just of the staircase from different angles.  And we were there for like... ten minutes.

Mitch makes me laugh.  Raise your hand if you can picture Mitch taking fifty pictures of this staircase.  ...  Mhmm.

After that we (ate more gelato and) ended up wandering around more.  Rome is fun to wander because there's stuff to see basically anywhere you go.  We ended up passing Trevi Fountain again, so we stopped to get our picture taken again.  (The first time we were there we had our picture taken by an amateur.  This time we asked someone with a nice camera to take it.  I've learned that--for the most part--if you ask people that are also carrying nice cameras to take your picture, they'll do a decent job.  In comparison, people that are taking their own pictures with their phones generally don't have much in the way of photography skills, even if they look friendly enough to ask and even if they are willing to take your picture.  Funny thing-- if I ask you to take our picture in front of the Trevi Fountain, we actually do want to be able to see at least some of the fountain in the picture.)

On our last day in Rome, Mitch and I went to the Colosseum and the Forum.

We love the Colosseum.

A lot.  And, we did the video/audio tour, so we actually learned a lot about the Colosseum.  It's pretty interesting.

After the Colosseum, we walked down the street to the Forum and a funny thing happened.  (Haha.  Get it?  A funny thing happened on the way to the Forum?)  Just kidding.

It was weird seeing all of these things and knowing the history of all of them.  

After both of those things, we hurried to the train station (by way of another gelato place and a bookstore) to catch a train back to the airport.  We'd originally planned on spending more time in Rome, but in the end, we added Lauterbrunnen to our trip and decided we'll go back to Italy sometime.  There's so much more there that we want to see!

Anyway.  This next picture says it all--

I swear, anytime we got on a train (or plane), Mitch was asleep in about seven seconds.  (I like to watch everything we're passing.  Mitch likes to sleep.)