30 Before 30: 1 year to go!!

Today is the day, my last birthday in my 20s.  I'm not nearly as freaked out by that fact as I am by the fact that I still have 15 items from my 30 Before 30 left to do (yikes!!).  I am in progress on at least 6 of them, but there are still a bunch that I have to figure out how I want to do them.  Here's a status update:

• attend a black-tie event (that’s not a wedding) and wear a floor length gown - I think I will just be the most over-dressed person at the MBA Formal next January!
• be able to do 10 push-ups - Ugh...still working at this one.  It's HARD.
• buy myself an expensive piece of jewelry - No idea what to get...suggestions?
• do a 30 before 30 list - Obviously in progress (ok, fine, this one is a cop-out)
• go to a top 40 pop concert - Detroit has a dearth of awesome concerts...checking Nikki Minaj's tour schedule now...
• host an awesome party - Hopefully this will be our welcome party when we move into a house next year!!
• pick and buy a stock (myself, not with my husband) - I have no excuse for not starting this yet..
• plant a garden - Does re-potting a single plant count?
• read the Bible all the way through - As of next week I will be 75% of the way done with this!! I'm doing it in a year and started on our second anniversary (October 24), so I will be done this October!
• read the top ten novels on a list (thinking this one) - Got bogged down with 1984...can I substitute The Hunger Games?? :)
• renovate something - I am going to interpret this liberally...a table, my wardrobe...not sure
• run a sub-1:50 half marathon - Detroit Half Marathon in October!!
• take a class in something that interests me - I'm giong to enroll in Tennis classes this fall!
• visit san francisco - Hopefully we will be going in September!
• ______(this space intentionally left blank for a miscellaneous adventure!) - I have an idea of what this might be, but I'm not telling yet :)

30 Before 30: Get a new hairdo!

A few weeks ago, I went to visit my sister's new home in St. Louis, MO.  She's busy taking the St. Louis hair style community by storm, so I took advantage of being there and asked her to give me a new hairdo!  She took about 4 inches off of my length, added a bunch more highlights, and cut me some side-swept bangs.  What do you think??

Before:

After:

I know it's nothing drastic, but it feels different to me and it's the perfect 'do for summer and swimming!

Thanks, T, I love it!!!

30 Before 30: Do a mud run or obstacle course race (this one was both!)

Time to check another one off the list!  We recently did a race called the Filthy 5K with Nashville. It counts as both a mud run AND an obstacle race! We chose the race beacuse they had a heat specifically for pups!  It was a very small group of about 20 dogs and maybe 30 owners and was the last heat in the race, so we got there after a lot of the fun had died down, but it was still a good time.

We warmed up before the race by taking Nash through some of the obstacles in the kids race (no children were present or harmed):

Up and over!

 Then we all lined up at the start:
  

Nash suddenly got REALLY interested
in the other pups!

And we're OFF!!!

  

First major obstacle...

This was before Nash really liked swimming,
so he's paddling pretty hard!  Not to mention
that guy in the crazy costume scared him!

The race didn't have a ton of photo worthy obstacles, but here are the photos that I stole off the photographer's web site (sorry photog friends...I didn't want to pay just to show pictures of me on my blog!).

After the race there was a lot of shaking paired with looks that said "WTF, Mom and Dad, that was weird!!"

Still confused, but happy to be done!

After the race, he literally was like, I will sit on you to make sure that doesn't happen again!"

And then I had some tired pups!

Wrap-up of Europe Trip

Alright, we've been back from Europe for almost 2 months and I'm finally trying to wrap things up.  I have 2 more to-dos:

1) Tell you about the amazing iPad apps we used while traveling - I was lucky enough to get an iPad from my work last fall, but it wasn't until our trip to Europe that I really ever felt like the thing was worth the price if I would have had to purchase it myself.  However, the value we got out of that silly piece of electronics was definitely enough to persuade me that it is worth it.  Do yourself a favor.  If you don't have an iPad and have a major trip coming up, budget the price of the iPad into your overall trip budget.  You will not regret it, it won't seem like such an outlay compared to flights, hotels, etc. and - BONUS! - you'll have an iPad when you get home so you can squirrel away the hours playing Bejeweled, Words with Friends or Draw Something with the rest of us.

So, let me tell you about Ulmon, my new best friend.

They make a series of apps for travel called ____Guide2Go.  The apps are $1.99 each, and they include a full suite of Wikipedia articles, Killer Maps that zoom to the Nth degree and truly help you get around, Points of Interest (for things like restaurants, libraries, police stations, churches, etc.), and some even have the full subway map (Paris, London, Rome and New York).  They even have something that I didn't realize existed -  passive GPS, which basically means you don't have to have 3G on your iPad, the app can use nearby wi-fi networks to locate you even when you are not connected to them!  Oh, and everything is available offline.

I cannot tell you how many times we used the iPad around Paris. Everything is integrated, so we could be looking at the map and see a Wikipedia article about a museum, decide we want to go there, use the map to find the nearest Metro stop, use the Metro map to figure out where to get off the metro, and use the passive GPS once we got off the Metro to figure out where we were and how to get to the museum.  PHENOMENAL.

They also have a lighter version for a ton more cities called CityMaps2Go.  It's one app you download and then for each city, you download that city map within the app.  Once you download it, it is fully offline, so you can use it on the run.  CityMaps2Go have all the POIs and also have even more detailed maps and the passive GPS.  You can zoom in almost to the building level, which was really helpful in Prague and Krakow where the streets can be very confusing.  I HIGHLY recommend these apps (and the iPad to go with them.  Think about how much you'll save on maps, not to mention your time and peace of mind.

2) Make the photo book - I am in the process of putting together my photo book.  And by in process I mean I have populated the online book with all of my photos and now need to start cutting and pruning the pages so that the book is not 116 pages and $125.51 (which it is at this point).

I will post a link to my preview once it's done!!
Carissa

What do you say I blog when I'm NOT doing my 30 before 30? Sound good?

Well, I actually will be doing 2 30 before 30 blogs this week because TURNS OUT, I'm 29 on Saturday!  And I figure I should be up-to-date at that point on what I have yet to accomplish in the final year.  So with that said, be on the lookout for blogs about 1) my new hairdo and 2) our mud run later this week.

But first, an un-related post about my pup.

So I've recently taken up Tennis (OMG, which gives me an idea, I'm TOTALLY making that my "take a class in something that interests me" item.  Sweet, note to self, register).  Anyway, so yes, I've taken up tennis, and by that I mean that Taylor has been kind enough to hit balls that I can easily return a few times in the last week.  It's been really fun!  It's also been fun for Nashville because we have all sorts of tennis balls around the house.  He's been destroying them with some consistency, so today I bought him some special "pet" tennis balls that are supposedly "TUFF" as in harder to destroy than a standard tennis ball.  

Which I guess Nashville took as a challenge.

Because here's what happened almost immediately:

Love that crazy pup!

30 Before 30: Travel to Europe: Table of Contents

Europe Trip Blog Posts
Click below to read about each of our cities!  At the end of each post is a link back to this page so you can move on to the next easily.

• Paris
• Amsterdam
• Berlin
• Prague
• Krakow and Warsaw

30 Before 30: Travel to Europe: Stops 5 and 6, Krakow and Warsaw

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

We arrived in Poland, the first place on the trip that Taylor had not already been, at 7am.  The train station was very poorly marked, and a nice, but clearly begging old man tried to help us get to the train. We ended up having to be quite firm in telling him to stop following us and trying to help us.  Eventually, we got out of the train station and found a line of cabs.  Taylor had to take money out of an ATM and we got a cab to our hotel.  The price was 25 Polish Zloty, which are about 3.5:1USD, so about $7, not too bad.

We arrived at Hotel Ester and were not able to check in yet, as expected, so we washed up a little and headed out to see Krakow.

Our cute hotel room!

Taylor liked this sign

The first stop on any tour of Krakow is Wawel Castel (sound familiar?).  The castle was the Coronation point and home of Polish Kings and Queens all throughout Polish history.  The castle grounds were beautiful and  thankfully the grounds were open so we could wander around, because the castle didn’t even open for another 40 minutes after we got there! 

Once it opened, we bought our tickets to tour the Castle and some related exhibits.  The first things we did was tour the private royal apartments and the castle staterooms.  For the former, we actually got a tour with an English-speaking guide who pointed out all of the period pieces and the significance of the furnishings of the room, which was really interesting.  Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take any pictures!  The next exhibit was very similar to the first except without a guide.

Castle Courtyard

After our castle tours, we went to see a famous Leonardo DaVinci piece that was on display at the castle, called Woman with a Ermine.  It was a really beautiful painting with an even more interesting story.  Apparently, it is a portrait of the mistress of the Duke of Milan and was painted during DaVinci’s lifetime (1500s, I think?) but it was actually lost until about 1800 when a wealthy Polish nobleman bought it for his wife.  It took years before anyone saw it and recognized it as a DaVinci and then they went to great lengths to protect it during WWII and now it’s on display in a castle!

Next, we visited an exhibit called “Lost Wawel,” which actually winds through an underground area and shows excavations of Wawel castle from before the 1500s.  It was very interesting to see the castle and all of the artifacts found within it during excavations over the years.

We climbed one of the defense towers of the castle and saw some great views of Krakow before heading to an area called The Dragon’s Den, which is really just a cold dark tunnel that drops you out on the Vistula River next to a statue of a fire breathing dragon (that actually breathes fire!).  The presence of this Dragon’s Den is apparently linked to the fact that Polish legend has it that Krakow was founded on the site where a dragon was defeated (or something like that).

Wawel from the defense tower

The fire-breathing dragon outside the Dragons Den

After all these sights, we were quite tired and hungry, so we went to a nearby restaurant for some pizza and potato pancakes.

After lunch, we headed back to our hotel, checked in to our adorable hotel, took a shower and a quick nap to recharge and then we headed out to see the Old Town Square of Krakow.  Krakow’s old town square is actually the largest medieval square in Europe.  It is 200meters square and feels gigantic!  Inside, it has St Mary’s Churn, which is very big and a clock tower that is the only remnant of an town hall that once stood there.  There’s also a beautiful building called The Cloth Market, which used to be a market for all sorts of goods and is now a long line of souvenir stalls.  It’s really pretty, even though I really couldn’t find anything I wanted to buy.

We walked around the town square for a while and waited for the hourly bugle call from the top of St Mary’s Church.  The call is really nice, and it stops suddenly (at a different point every time) to commemorate a time when the castle was stormed during a call and the bugler got an arrow in his neck (yikes!).  We then went to see what we had heard was a beautiful old courtyard of the University Jagglieon, the oldest University in Poland and the place that Pope John Paul II graduated from after taking classes covertly during the Nazi occupation of Krakow in WWII.

The University Courtyard

We headed back to Old Town Square and went inside St Mary’s and another beautiful church nearby.  We then went to visit this exhibit we had heard about called Rynek (which means square, referring to the old town square) Underground.  It’s similar to “Lost Wawel” in that it’s an underground exhibit.  The exhibit only had tickets available for later that night, so we bought them and went to grab dinner before heading back to see the exhibit.

Dinner was pierogis and spare ribs.  It was very god and VERY filling.

We headed back for our time slot at Rynek Underground, and boy am I glad we did!  It was such a fascinating look at the old town square back in Medieval times.  Basically, in 2005, they did a huge excavation to find out what was underneath the town square.  What they found were remarkably in-tact and historically informing buildings, cobblestone pathways, and even the bodies of individuals who were buried in such a way that it’s clear they were thought to be vampires.  The exhibit itself was so well made, you actually walked on pathways past the old market stalls and between layers of stone where you could actually see history stacked on top of itself like sedimentary rock.  They say that the current town square is actually 2.6 meters higher than the old one, due partially to the fact that people threw their trash all over the ground because they did not have a good waste disposal system.  It was incredible!  And to think that the city of Krakow did all of that excavation and research, designed, and built the exhibit in 5 years is also fairly impressive.

Rynek Underground

Beautiful views of the square by night

After the exhibit, we headed back toward our hotel, got changed, and went out near our hotel in the Kazmirez area of Krakow.  It’s the old Jewish area, but is also known as an up-and-coming area for young people to live and go out.  We hit up a bar that the Lonely Planet recommended.  It was on a sort of square with lots of other bars and in the middle was this large round building with many windows selling late night food.  As we sat outside the bar we were at and did our people-watching, we noticed that a lot of people were eating these long pieces of bread with melted cheese, different toppings and sauces on them.  They kind of looked like French bread pizza but longer and a little narrower.  We saw that they were called Zapiekanki and vowed to return the next day to try them for lunch.

We headed back toward our hotel after a couple of drinks and enjoyed some wine out on our patio before heading up to our room.

Thursday, May 24, 2012

On day two in Krakow we walked from our hotel across the Vistula River to go to a museum housed in the enamel factory owned by Oscar Schindler, the namesake of the Steven Spielberg movie Schindler’s List.  On our way, we passed through what used to be the center square of the Krakow Ghetto where Jews were sent when the Nazi occupation of Krakow began in September of 1939.  Basically, the Nazi’s said that their officers could not be expected to live side-by-side with Jews, so they sent them all across the river.  The told them they could take all of their things, but when they got there, they realized that 17,000 people were being forced to live where only 4,000 really could fit, so most of their belongings were left in the square and stolen or pillaged by Germans.

The museum wasn’t far from the square and it was phenomenal.  It tells the story of both Oscar Schindler and his factory during the Nazi occupation, but also of the city of Krakow during that time. Oscar Schindler was essentially a Nazi party member, but sympathetic to the Jews, and he offered his factory to be an annex of a concentration camp nearby, but he treated the Jews there very well and, toward the end of the war when the Nazis started to suspect something was up, he took 1,200 or so of his employees to another old factory that wasn’t even in use and pretended that they were working for him in order to save them from death.  Pretty amazing.

Oscar Schindler's office

The exhibit also had tons of info about how the German’s not only occupied Krakow from 1939 to 1944, but truly overtook it in an attempt to completely convert the city to a German territory (in addition to removing all of the Jews).  So they renamed all the streets and the old town square became “Adolph Hitler Platz.”  They closed all Polish schools and made them German schools. They posted German and anti-Jewish propaganda all over the city and opened stores selling images of Hitler.  It was kind of, no wait REALLY, nuts.

After the museum, we went to get our Zapiekankis for lunch and they were amazing!  Basically, the base of all Zapiekankis is toasted breadk with a mushroom and cheese topping.  Then, you choose what meats or veggies you want on it and what sauce you want on it.  I got a  Grecka (Greek) with tomatoes, cucumbers and feta and then Dill sauce.  Taylor got salami on his and garlic sauce.  They were amazing!  We decided that it would be the perfect kind of think to sell late at night in a popular bar area in the U.S.  And they were only like $3 each!

After lunch, we really just spend the afternoon relaxing and enjoying the beautiful weather in Krakow.  We walked around Kazmirez and saw all the Jewish Synagogues and a cemetery.  We got beers at a café outside and got ice cream and walked down by the river.  It was very nice and relaxing and it felt like we were really experiencing city life.

At 5pm, we left our hotel to go to the train station for our last city, Warsaw!  The train, despite some confusion with our ticket, was very smooth and the Polish countryside was so pretty.  We arrived in Warsaw at around 9pm and got a cab to our hotel.  Our hotel was actually somewhat inconveniently located near the airport and not very close to downtown, so we stayed in our hotel and grabbed dinner (more pierogis!) and a drink before heading to bed.

Friday, May 25, 2012

Last day!!  Can you believe it!?  Are you tired?  Because I sure am!  Our last day was a full day in Warsaw, Poland’s capital city.  Our first impression of Warsaw is that it is much bigger than Krakow and Prague, with a proper downtown with skyscrapers that we could actually see from our hotel room.  However, after taking the bus in to the middle of the downtown and old town area, we were very impressed with how clean and quaint it actually was.

Our first stop was a museum that we heard from the Lonely Planet offered an English-language video every day at noon detailing the wartime destruction of Warsaw.  It was a great way to start the visit because it gave us such an appreciation for how beautifully the city was restored from, literally, total destruction.  In the video, we learned that after the fall of Warsaw, the Germans literally tried to wipe it off the map.  The city was so destroyed that no one even lived in it for a solid 3 months after the fall.  Slowly but surely, though, people started to return and revive the city.

Our first stop was the old town market square, which was full of cafes and men selling paintings.  The square was much smaller than Krakow but still very pretty.  

From there, we walked to an area called the Barbican, which was an old fortress and one of the entrances to the city.  You can actually walk along the city wall for a little while and it’s a really pretty area.

We walked through old town to the Royal Castle (number 3!) and the Castle Square area.  The Royal Castle in Warsaw was completely destroyed in WWII, and it was restored from 1971 to 1984, when it opened to the public as a museum.  Because it has been restored, this castle truly looked like a castle inside.  They took care to re-construct every room with as much accuracy as possible (relying on paintings or sketches or written descriptions of the rooms as available).  The rooms were beautiful, opulent, and very interesting, and they had great descriptions in each room (they were even in English!).  We even got to go in the room where the Polish Constitution of May 3, 1791 was enacted.  I didn’t know this, but it was actually the first true Constitution in European history and the second in the world only after the United States!

Where the Constitution was enacted

After the castle, we went in nearby St. Ann’s Church where you are able to climb the bell tower and see awesome views across Warsaw, including the stadium where the Euro Cup will be played in June.

From there, we headed out of the old town area and down a road called Royal Way.  Along it, we attempted to go to the Museum of Charicature, which we did manage to walk in to and even look in one of the galleries before a not-so-nice Polish gentleman came to tell us they weren’t open (why were the doors unlocked then?  We do not know). 

We then passed the President’s Palace and went to the Church of the Holy Cross, which contained probably the strangest thing we  saw on our trip…the heart of composer Frederick Chopin.  Yes, his heart.  Now, we didn’t actually see his heart.  It’s in an urn in the wall behind a plaque that says “Here lies the heart of Frederick Chopin.”  Apparently when he died, there was some issue where his body could not be buried in his native Poland, so it was his wish that at least his heart be kept there.  So it is.

After seeing Chopin’s heart, we went to Saxon Gardens, a very nice park and just relaxed for a bit.  Then we grabbed some ice cream and decided to head back to the old town square for a beer in the sun before dinner (notice the pattern…eat, drink, eat…repeat). 

For dinner, we walked further from old town and toward the new hip and trendy area of town and went to a Mexican Restaurant recommended by the Lonely Planet.  I should know not to go for Mexican in Europe, but the LP usually isn’t off on their recommendations so we tried it.  It was bad per se, but it wasn’t that good either.  Except the margaritas, those were pretty good.  After dinner, we went to one more bar and had a carafe of wine before catching the bus back to our hotel.

Saturday, May 26, 2012

After a VERY long and tiring trip, we figured we were due some indulgence, so we reserved the hotel Jacuzzi and sauna for Saturday morning before our flight and got up early to relax our cares away.  It was very nice and a good end to our trip.  We caught at 10:30am shuttle from our hotel to the airport and boarded our 12:40pm flight to Amsterdam right on time.  We had a 3 hour layover in Amsterdam, but fortunately the airport there is actually pretty amazing.  They have tons of great areas for relaxing with comfortable furniture, TVs, free internet, you name it!  They even have a casino!  Our flight from Amsterdam to New York took off right on time and I am sitting here in the tail end of it now finishing up my recounting of our trip.  We should get back to Taylor’s parents house tonight around 9pm and will probably leave sometime in the late morning tomorrow to drive back to Ann Arbor.  We can’t wait to see our pup, sleep in our bed, and be HOME for a while.  It was a great trip!!

Back to Table of Contents

30 Before 30: Travel to Europe: Stop 4, Prague

We arrived in Prague at around 7:15pm and were somehow able to figure out how to take the Metro from the train station to our hotel (I worked the logistics, but Taylor gets credit for securing the tickets for that).  Luckily, our hotel was very close to a train stop and was very nice.  We checked in and got changed to head out for a night in Prague.  In our last few cities, we only have 1 day each, so we wanted to make the most of it.

Going 100% off of Lonely Planet recommendations, we first went to dinner at a delicious little Czech place near our hotel called Ferdinand.  Taylor had chicken with mushrooms and cheese (I actually ordered him the wrong thing, sorry honey!!) and I had a delicious Czech goulash.  We also had some great local beers.  Our next stop was a little beer place called Pivovarsky Dum.  Pivovar means brewery or pub, so that’s basically the name of all bars.  There, we tried the beer sampler, which included a coffee beer, a banana beer, and a green beer we couldn’t even figure out.  It was all delicious!  After that, we headed to a chill bar closer to the center of town called Duende for our last drinks of the night.

The highlight of the night, though, was after we left Duende, Taylor suggested that we make our way toward the River that runs through Prague.  I was lukewarm about the idea because I didn’t really know what we would see, but boy was I in for a treat!!  Right across the river was Prague Castle, all lit up like a literal fairy tale castle.  It was so beautiful.

We then headed in to the Old Town Square where I was again blown away by the beauty of the buildings all lit up at night.  The Czechs seem to love putting spires on their buildings and it makes them look so much like fairy tale castles, it was awesome.

After seeing Old Town it was time to call it a night, but not before a trip to the Night Gym

Kidding!

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

In the morning, it was off to spend the day sightseeing around Prague.  We had to make it quick, too, because we had an 8:17pm train to Krakow to catch, so not too much time to see all the sights!

Our first destination was the Charles Bridge, which crosses the Vltava River over to Prague Castle.  We didn’t get to go to the Charles Bridge Museum unfortunately, but did learn that the bridge was built around 1400 and served as the major reason that Prague became an important trade route.  The bridge itself is very ornate, with statues lining both sides. 

Prague Castle by day

We crossed the bridge and climbed a large hill up to the entrance to Prague Castle.  Apparently it Is the largest castle complex in the world, and we were determined to explore as much as possible!  We started by visiting the Cathedral, which is really the piece of the castle that makes it look truly majestic from across the river.  It has many huge spires and is lit up beautifully at night.  Inside, the church is full of beautiful and somewhat modern stained glass, as 20^th century artists were commissioned to replace the glass after WWII.

Prague Cathedral

We also visited the inside of the castle itself, which wasn’t as ornate as I had expected, but considering it is no longer lived in and has been subjected to many fires over the years, I guess there’s no need for fancy adornment.  It was, however, really cool to see the inside of a real castle (the first of 3 in the latter half of our trip.

We got to see the changing of the guard at Prague castle before taking a stroll around the left bank of Prague and taking in beautiful views of the city.

Finally, we headed in to the castle to a place called Golden Lane.  It’s a set of home that were actually built into the castle wall to house employees of the castle.  In the early 1900s, apparently the residents of Golden Lane started to realize that people found their little homes in the castle wall fascinating and would come to see them, so they started to decorate them beautifully in order to show them to tourists.  Some people even rented out their homes for visitors or simply lived elsewhere and owned the home just for showing to tourists.  The famous author Franz Hall actually wrote some of his works there in 1915 – 1916. 

Golden Lane

Looking out over Prague

After completing our tour of Prague castle, we began to head back toward the town center, on the way stopping to see a somewhat infamous sculpture that stands outside the Franz Hall Museum.  It’s 2 anamatronic men peeing in a pool shaped like the Czech Republic.  The figures were quite lifelike, and their *ahem* “members” actually moved mechanically while they peed.  Quite interesting!

We then headed back across the Charles Bridge for lunch where we caught our breath after a busy morning of walking.  Then, we headed in to Old Town Square, which we had seen at night but really wanted to see during the day.  It was just as beautiful, but very crowded and hot, so we didn’t stay long before heading to the Jewish Quarter of Prague.

Old Town Square

In the Jewish Quarter, we toured several synagogues, including one where the names of the 797,000 Jews from the Prague who died in the holocaust were written.  It was pretty intense, because literally every wall of the church was covered in names.  It really helps you take in the enormity of what happened in the holocaust.  We also toured an very old Jewish Cemetery, where they stopped burying people back in the 1800s because it was so crowded that the bodies were in some cases 12 layers deep!

After seeing all the main sights in Prague, we decided to treat ourselves to some delicious beer at a place recommended by the Lonely Planet.  After a couple of beers, it was time to head back to our hotel to get our bags and catch our overnight train to Krakow!

Beers!

On the train, we had our own compartment with 2 bunk beds, a small sink, and a window (thankfully!).  We both took a NyQuil to help us sleep and probably managed to get 6-7 hours of fitfull sleep (due to the train starting and stopping a lot) before waking up to coffee being delivered at 6:30am just before our arrival in Krakow.

Back to Table of Contents