Dreaming of Europe...

As my school semester is hastily wrapping up and as finals are approaching, I find myself dreaming of better days... aka our trip to Europe this past summer!  It was, by far, the best vacation that Jake and I have ever been on... and we were fortunate enough to share the experience with our good friends Garrett and Merilee!  

We spent a lot of time researching for our trip so that we could save money while maximizing our experiences.  Fortunately, we were able to find some great deals and save quite a bit of money... so in this post, I figured I'd share what we learned (good and bad).

So to start off, I have to recommend a Costco membership for the sole purpose of access to their sweet travel deals.  We were able to find a killer cruise deal on Costcotravel.com.  For less than $700 per ticket we booked a 7-night Western Mediterranean porting out of Barcelona and reaching ports near Naples, Rome, Florence, Cannes, and Palma de Mallorca.  To put this deal into perspective, we essentially paid around $100/day (each) for lodging, food, and travel from destination to destination.  And the great thing about cruises is that your travel (for the most part) happens while you're sleeping!

The cruise was through Norwegian Cruise Line, which overall we were quite pleased with.  The only other cruise I had been on before was a Disney cruise, which is usually highly rated, but I felt that NCL was actually quite comparable.  We especially enjoyed NCL's "freestyle" dining options, which allow guests to dine at whatever time they please as opposed to the set dinner times on other cruise lines.  This allowed us to freely schedule all of our activities without having to worry about being back on the ship at a certain time.

As far as flights go, we have a slight advantage living closer to the east coast.  We found that travel to Europe was actually cheaper from Toronto than it was from anywhere near us.  We saved somewhere between $400 and $500 dollars per ticket (around $1000) by driving 5 hours north to fly out of Toronto.  We even made the most of the trip by visiting Niagara Falls on the way up (I had never been)!  I guess my main point of advice when looking for flights is to look outside of the box.  Even if you have to drive a few hours to a different airport, you might be saving yourself in the long run.

Now for the fun part!  When we got to Europe, our first stop was Barcelona.  We flew in a couple of days before our ship departed and stayed in a hotel outside of the city center which saved us around $150 (link here).  The hotel was right next to a metro station, so we were actually able navigate through town easily all on our own.  This leads me to one of the biggest lessons we learned on our entire trip: It's totally possible to navigate yourself to different sights/landmarks in a foreign country.  You just have to do a little research and be able to read a map.  Here are some pics of our first couple of days!

Our first stop after boarding the ship was Naples, Italy.  We spent the morning on an excursion to Pompeii through the cruise line.  This was one of three excursions we booked through the cruise line and it was the one that we were most happy with!  Our tour guide was very informative, from the time we hopped on the bus until the second it dropped us off after the excursion.  Pompeii was incredible! Here are some pics :)

Our afternoon was spent doing Rick Steve's recommended walking tour through Naples (thanks to Merilee and Garrett's travel book)!  We also were able to taste authentic Neapolitan pizza at at a small pizzaria named Trianon (also recommended by Rick Steves).  We each ordered different types of pizzas and they were all AMAZING (Jake was especially fond of them--he said it was the best pizza he's ever had)!

Our next stop was Civitavecchia (the port near Rome).  We booked another excursion through the cruise line to help us get to and navigate through Rome.  Most of the excursion was great.  The tour guide was, again, very informative and we were able to see several sights including the Trevi Fountain, the Forum, the Colosseum, and the outside of the Vatican.  Our friends Garrett and Merilee, however, navigated Rome on their own and were able to see each of those sights but, additionally, tour the Vatican--all for a fraction of the price.  Next time, we will do the same :)

The third stop was Livorno, the port near Florence & Pisa.  We again booked an excursion through the cruise line to see Florence and Pisa, but this excursion was actually really disappointing.  Our tour guide was not nearly as informative and knowledgable as our other tour guides and the entire tour was VERY slow.  We could have seen so much more of both Florence and Pisa had we done it on our own.  Again, Merilee and Garrett navigated to the sights all on their own and they actually did so at about 1/8 of the price.  You can read about their experiences here. :)  Often, Jake and I actually found ourselves leaving our tour group to see more... but what we did see was still amazing!  Overall, Florence was absolutely beautiful (look at those blue skies).. and of all the places we had been to, I was especially in awe of the area's rolling green landscape!

Our last two stops were Cannes, France and Palma de Mallorca, Spain.  Both stops were much less touristy and refreshingly relaxing!  Rather than spending our time in Cannes, we actually took a train about 40 mins away to Nice... which may have been my favorite place to visit!  I was impressed with the beauty and cleanliness of the entire city.  We enjoyed walking the streets and biking along the coast with Garrett and Merilee.  We also hiked up a hillside along the coast which had the most beautiful waterfall at the top!  The views were amazing!

In Palma de Mallorca, we spent the entire day at the beach and I wouldn't have had it any other way!  It was the most perfect & relaxing day for the last stop of our cruise.  We swam in the Mediterranean Sea and sun-bathed for hours (we even got awesome tans to prove it)! Here are some pics *note: I may have stole a pic or two from Merilee's blog ;)

Some final points of recommendation:  1) DO NOT exchange a bunch of US Dollars for Euros... and when you do, wait until you're actually in Europe to do it.  Most places accept credit cards and the benefit of using them is that your credit card company will automatically find/use the best exchange rate.  If you're worried about security, just use a prepaid visa card.  Having cash on hand is only really needed as payment to street vendors (for souvenirs) or to tip drivers.
2) Don't spend extra money on the cruise ship to eat at the specialty restaurants.  The food offered at the "complementary" restaurants is actually really good.  And of course, on a cruise, it's all you can eat soooo you could try everything on the menu if you'd really like haha.

Sooo, if I haven't convinced you of a European vacation at this point, this picture will be my final effort (who doesn't love some amazing food hahaha):

xoxo - Michelle

My First Half Marathon!

I DID IT!!

This morning I woke up at 4:30am so that I could get to Columbus around 7am for the race.  After 12 weeks of consistent training, I'm happy to say that I accomplished my long time goal of running a half marathon in 1:44:28 & I placed 22nd out of 664 women!  There are a number of things that I gained from this experience and I highly recommend that anyone complete at least at some point in their lifetime.

1)  I learned that if you REALLY want to do something, just decide you're going to do, and do it.  Don't waste time second guessing yourself or making up excuses.  In late June, I decided once and for all that I was going to run this half marathon, and had to very deliberately push out any doubt from my mind that tried to sneak in.  I just signed up, found myself a training plan, and got straight to it!

2)  I lost weight!  Over the course of my training, I lost about 10 pounds!  So.... that's pretty cool :)

3)  I learned about my potential.  My goal was to finish under 2 hours but I learned I could've decreased that time goal a little bit.  With the right consistency and amount of training, your potential to improve is insane.  I hope to get even faster!

4)  I learned that a schedule is key!  Without a doubt, this schedule (below) combined with my strict sleep schedule was key to my accomplishment.  When I started training, I did my best to wake up at 6am, run first thing in the morning, and go to bed by 10pm.  I feel like anyone can create their own variation of this schedule, but consistency is very important.  If I didn't run in the morning, I found it way more difficult to find time at night.  That being said, I still found time to do it, and did not once stray from this schedule (even in Week 8 when I shredded my legs playing volleyball & in Week 11 when I was as super sick).

note: "Week 0" was an optional "pre-training" week

5)  Super cliche, but I learned that I can do anything I put my mind too!  I hope to apply the same amount of devotion and consistency to other goals in my life!

xoxo - Michelle

Back to School!

Well school started almost a month ago and has surely kept me busy (hence the lack of blogging)!  I'm taking 16 credits and I'm already feeling the heat!  Over the past 2 weeks, I've had 6 tests and 3 quizzes!  Sounds crazy, I know... but looking ahead on my schedule, I won't have that many quizzes and tests over such a small period of time again, so that's nice.

Despite the fact that I've been studying for HOURS upon HOURS, I'm still SO happy to be back in school!  Jake has long days and lots of studying to do so it's nice that I have something to occupy my time again.  And the fact that we both have lots of studying to do keeps us from distracting each other (at least most of the time). ;)

Here are some pictures of OU!  It's so beautiful here....I feel lucky to enjoy such green beauty every day!

So being a transfer student has made for a few awkward situations on campus.  Whenever someone asks me if it's my first year here and I say yes, they're always like "oh cooooool so you're a freshman?! what dorm do you live in?!".  And I'm just like uhhhhhhh.... Then I go on to explain, "I'm a transfer student, I'm actually an upperclassman..." blah blah blah.  But can I just ask, DO I LOOK LIKE A FRESHMAN?! I don't think so. I don't know. Maybe I do.

Anyway, almost ALWAYS people then ask "well where DO you live?" (which I think is weird but I guess it's a really big deal here--where you live as a student).  So I tell them where I live and how it's not within walking distance of campus and they're always so confused (they don't get why I wouldn't live right next to the party!!).  Haha so before they can ask any more questions I explain how I'm married and how my husband is a med student and how we wanted to live somewhere a little more quiet that wasn't next to bunch of undergrads.

Now this is where people's responses have differed.  As expected, some people are like "WHAT. THE. You're married?!! HOW OLD ARE YOU?"  Then, to my surprise, there are some girls whose responses have been "omg I'm sooo jealous, I want to be married.  HOW COOL!" and I just think, HAHAHA! go to BYU.  Oh and thanks for not freaking out.

It's funny how much I hated the normality of people being married at BYU and now I'm wishing I was back there so I don't have to keep explaining being married at 22 to people.

BUT, I wouldn't change a thing! I love my Jake and life here is GREAT.  We've even had the opportunity to go up to Columbus a couple of times since school has started.  It's great because we go to the temple & Costco, and Jake's family travels down so we get to see them too.  Thanks to my Nelson fam for always making me look forward to these day-cations. :)