Thursday, August 18, 2011

Okay, it's official...

We suck as bloggers.

April 20th was our last blog, so we certainly don't win any big points for frequency. Our hope, however, is that we can make up for our lack of quantity with an extraordinarily high level of quality. You be the judge. Rather than attempt to catch up the last 4 months all at once, we'll be releasing updates in bits and pieces. Stay tuned.

  • -May

    • May kicked off with a road trip down to Strasbourg, France. Located in the Alsace region, Strasbourg sits right on the current border with Germany, and combines the best of French and German cuisine and culture. But even better than the half-timbered buildings and flammekuchen were our hosts! Our friends Pete and Whitney are (sadly, it's "were" now that they've moved to San Diego) Olmsted Scholars in Strasbourg, and even though Pete was working feverishly on completing his thesis, they took us in, showed us the town, and let us play with their adorable daughter Susannah. Whitney even took Jen and I on a run around the town, while Pete did his part by helping me polish off the Belgian beers I brought down. They're so unselfish! We even decided to take a day and go to EuropaPark, which was an incredible decision. The Rebers even popped by as they made their way through town, and it was great to meet them before they made it up to Brussels to stay with us.
















  • For the second half of May we headed off to St. Petersburg, Russia to visit Josh and Niki. Not only are they both extremely easy to hang out with and very welcoming, but Josh also happens to share the (dubious) honor of being the only other Gonzaga University alumnus in the history of the Olmsted program! The two of them pulled out all the stops and showed us all around St. Petersburg (or Leningrad, or Petrograd, depending on which decade you're there). We lost ourselves in the immense collection of the Hermitage museum, marveled at the intricate mosaics inside the Church on Spilled Blood, stood in awe of the massive scale of St. Isaac's Cathedral, wandered through the fairy tale gardens and fountains of Peterhof, and basked in the golden glow of the Amber Room at Catherine Palace. It was incredible. And it was a good thing Josh was there with his flawless Russian, because Slavic languages are definitely not my strong suit and Russian guys didn't seem all that friendly. Awesome, awesome trip.




























2 comments:

The Greens said...

Yes! An update! Hopefully I didn't guilt you into it too much last weekend... :)

Great to see you guys last weekend in June Lake, excited to catch up on more of your adventures!

Tyler

Nina said...

I'll take the QUALITATIVE updates over the quantitative, so I only have to "salivate" and turn blue with envy over all of your awesome travel experiences once in a while ;). But seriously... the photos look amazing!!! I am keeping track of all of these, so we can catch up on some of these areas once N has gotten a bit bigger and S's "easy" semesters start and our French skills are up to par to survive ... :) Hope we can show you guys around town here sometime soon too!