Lisbon

We just returned from yet another trip... Lisbon (or Lisboa), the capital city in Portugal. What a fun weekend! I am a bit embarrassed to admit that we didn't see much of Lisbon itself due to the short duration of our trip, but what we did see (the great nightlife!!) we enjoyed...

We arrived Friday night and met two of our friends who had been there for a day already. We enjoyed dinner in the area of town known as the Docas or the Docks- which is a waterfront area lined with bars and restaurants. We enjoyed some traditional Portuguese food (like tomatoe rice with prawns, steak, seafood, etc.) and then four more of our friends arrived and met us out for a night of drinks and fun. We started out at the Buddha bar, which is a popular bar with cool cocktails and ended the night in a waterfront bar drinking beers and talking to the patrons. Before I knew it, JP had gone over the edge, was ridiculously flirting with all passing women and making his presence known to all hen do's around (those are the European version of bachelorette parties) so when it hit 3:45 I put him in a cab and took him home to the hotel... :) It was a fun night out with our friends.

After dinner before the drinking really started...

On Saturday we embarked on a side trip with a couple of our friends who were able to drag themselves from bed before 1pm to a little town called Sintra. http://www.indigoguide.com/portugal/sintra.htm

It was a forty minute train ride from the city with a lot of gorgeous hills, greenery, castles, palaces and cute restaurants. We wandered the town and spent a lot of time exploring the Moorish Castle remains at the very top of a high hill. It was a fun way to spend the day.

This pic is in the castle - it was so cool to explore the grounds!

We returned to Lisbon to rest up for our second night out. On the suggestion of our hotel, we booked a table at the really cool restaurant called Cafe Luso : http://www.cafeluso.pt/ and had a great dinner while taking in some Fado music, the regional music of Portugal. It was great, the food was fabulous and the performers were incredible. After our dinner it was already 1am, just time to hit a few bars in Portugal. We headed up the street in the neighborhood of Barrio Alto where the streets are blocked to cars and the streets are lined with bars and discotechas... everyone is spilled out on the street drinking and having fun. It was a pretty cool scene. We stayed out for most the night again and headed home after enjoying some capirinas made by a very talented and friendly bartender.

Here is a pic of the street scene in Barrio Alto- very busy and this was at around 2am!

This is our second trip to Portugal, and I gotta say the country is great. The people are friendly and warm, most of them even speak English, the weather is great, the sights are really pretty. I would recommend a little trip over there if you are ever looking for European cities to visit.

This week will see JP & I head off in various directions work wise. My work week mirrors my old days- night events most nights this week. We are hosting 20 Swedish EY peeps in our office on this week and yours truly is responsible for their "learning agenda" and social events. That includes a river cruise on the Thames and dinner at a very traditional English restaurant. That is one thing JP and I haven't done much of - eat actual traditional English food. Should be interesting.

Welcoming the newest member of our GEP family...

On an unrelated note to my other post- I wanted to give a little "shout out" to the newest member of our GEP group here in London... little Alexandra. She was born a few weeks ago on May 23 and I promised to post pictures. She is a little gem and mom and baby are doing just great... here she is just 6 days old with JP... making her officially the smallest and youngest baby either one of us have held!

Going home

We just returned from our return trip home and had an incredible time. We recently reached the halfway mark of our stay in London, so the timing of the trip was perfect. We spent a few days in Phoenix visiting my family and then spent about a week in OC catching up with friends, work and getting in some much needed sun. The hightlights: Meeting many new babies who were born while we've been away, seeing the Angels beat the Devil Rays during Wednesday's game, catching up with friends during happy hours, going to the beach, learning two of our close friends are pregnant and watching our soon to be London friends Susie & Glenn say "I Do."

Here is the happy couple... Susie just got accepted into the Global Exchange Program and they will be joining us in London in September!

Overall, the trip went fast and before we knew it we were heading back here. I know you may not believe me, but the trip home made me officially homesick! I haven't had much homesickness while we've been here, but I think seeing everyone and the weather being so great just really added to the feeling. At the same time, being home reminded me how lucky we are to have this experience and such a great life to return to.

Some overall musings and thoughts and experiences over the last week to share:

- the people of OC are just incredibly good looking. Much better looking than the lot here in London... Take the case of some of our incredibly handsome friends for instance (at happy hour on Thursday night):

- as much as things change, mostly things stay the same

- those friends of ours who are parents have produced some incredible kids! Here is little Ellie, daughter of my friend Rachel at her first "girls lunch"

and my friend and fellow blogger Laurie & her three girls when we go them standing in one area for 30 seconds to take a pic: Adia, Ruby & Chloe:

- the weather in CA is hands down the best... and I appreciate it more than ever when we came home to typical London weather- overcast and chilly. We took in a day game and got some great seats... so I could watch my fave pitcher Frankie warm up and go out and get a save for my fantasy baseball team:

- I miss US TV! I can't believe I went 9 months without the Food Network

You can see more pics from the wedding and such on our link. We are home for four days and this weekend we leave again- this time for Lisbon in Portugal with a group of our friends. I think it is the perfect antidote to homesickness- get right back on the travel horse and be reminded of why we are here- friends and travel!

Viva Espana!

We are back from Spain and we had an amazing time! We spent a week down South, hoping to take advantage of the balmy and warm climate that Spain is known for- only to hit the country during a cold and rainy spell.... oh well- I'm beginning to think that the only holidays you should expect good weather from are those taken either south of the equator or in Hawaii & the Caribbean. You don't go to Europe for the weather.

So, to give an overview- we spent 3 nights in Barcelona, 1 night in Toledo (which is about 60 mins outside of Madrid), and 2 nights in Madrid. Here are the highlights:

Barcelona: We loved it here, it was gorgeous, bustling, and there was plenty to do. We saw a Flamenco show, visited the Sagrada Familia, ate paella and tapas, drank Rioja like it was water, and got accostomed to the later eating times of the country (Lunch between 1-2, dinner at 10pm at the earliest). We window shopped, walked our tushies off, and took in a siesta every day. JP's spanish was perfect and helped us get through Spain- but here in Barcelona most people spoke English and Catalan- a regional dialect and as different from Spanish as Italian is. So, at times when we spoke Spanish, they answered us in English- it was weird. Barcelona was much more touristy than we planned on- we heard more Americans on the streets than locals- so a couple times we wandered outside the main tourist areas to get a little bit more culture. We saw enough fanny packs and Teva sandals to last us awhile here. View of Barcelona from the Park Guell:

On Tuesday we took a train to Toledo- which is a little medival town built on top of a large hill surrounded by a river. It used to be the capital of Spain a long time ago. The city was old, gorgeous, and the people were really friendly. Here we just got lost in the streets- reading a map was useless here- and enjoyed a nice dinner and quiet evening. We woke up Wednesday morning, had a quick breakfast, took a tram ride around the city and we were off back to Madrid. Here is a view of Toledo from the tram ride we took:

Madrid is Spain's capital and central Madrid reminded me nothing of Barcelona- except for the ridiculously intricate architecture and busyness. I loved it here- more than I thought I would. A trip to Spain is worth it just to see the architecture- and as I went through our pictures I thought to myself that we didn't take enough pics of the buildings and such. However, there really isn't a way to capture it all with a camera. You just have to see it. We did a walking tour in Madrid, saw some of the big sights, and met with JP's cousin Nico who lives there. He and his girlfriend Maria took us to dinner on Wednesday night to a "muy atentico" establishment and enjoyed tapas and wine. It was great to meet Nico- he has lived in Madrid for almost 4 years and was the only member of the family I didn't get to meet when we went to Argentina in 2006. He was friendly and fun and I think JP had a great time catching up. Maria and Nico's English was pretty good- but I also realized through dinner that my Spanish was getting much better as I required limited translation. Also, at Nico & Maria's request- I spoke English back - they loved it when we spoke English (go figure) but JP stuck with his Spanish.

The highlight of Madrid was our last night when we embarked on a tapas crawl. We took some direction from Rick Steves (love his Spain guide by the way) and by the third stop we veered off and did our own thing. I tried to capture the places in the pics, but as I had more wine I got sidetracked and forgot to snap the pics. It was fun though- and we enjoyed our last night of tapas before heading home on Friday. Here is a view of Madrid from our hotel's rooftop bar:

Overall- we loved it and are already planning a return trip- this time away from the beaten path of the major cities and we'd like to head to the countryside and possibly the coast for an even more authentic experience! You can check out all our pictures by clicking the link up on the top left of our page.

On another topic: our GEP family grew by one last week when our friends Nicole & Darren welcomed their new daughter to the world- Alexandra Ludwig was born last Friday night. Baby & parents are doing great- and I'll post pictures from that after our visit later today.

Tonight we welcome guest #4 in the last month- Dave Placek, our OC friend who now lives in NYC. He is in town attending a friend's wedding and is stopping over for a few nights to hang out with us and catch up. We head to work tomorrow for four days and then on Friday we depart again- this time for Phoenix & OC- and we can't wait to come home for a week!

Hope to see most of you on our visits home!