me & the scrippsie tour

here is my super long overdue post about my scrippsie tour of southern ca...

i flew out to LA and spent the first couple of days with the lovely catherine and the super sweet lucy. we had loads of fun shopping, chatting, eating, movies, yoga-ing and just good ole hanging out. i was out there for miss lucy's first week of school so while catherine and lucy were at school, i got to explore their neighborhood in santa monica. they live in such a great area! i found all kinds of neat shops to stop in and peruse and of course there was a starbucks where i could read my book. i'm quite excellent at entertaining myself. i do it all the time... anyways, one night we met up with sarah for some yoga and another night we saw the social network which i thought was an awesome movie. i walked away with a huge crush on the guy that plays the twins in the movie. yummmmm...


sarah joined us as lucy's personal stylist at anthropologie. omg, lucy looked so darn good in their clothes!


me and the lu.


after a couple of days with catherine, matt and lucy, i moved addresses and joined miss lyman for a quick visit. since it was her birthday weekend, we did a bit of celebrating!


we got our make up done at the bobbi brown counter and then went to dinner at the border grill. who needs a glass when your the bday girl?! not sarah! straight from the pitcher, baby!



catherine and erin joined in for the dinner celebration


as did preston, me (is that me with the dark hair?!?! still not used to seeing me), and liz



aj, preston and me. that is not the same pitcher that belonged to sarah. we got our own at that end of the table.


after dinner, we went to the hotel erwin's rooftop bar, high.


aaaaaaaand here's aj's head! i think the perspective on this pic is so funny.


after visiting santa monica and getting in a quick trip to malibu to visit my aunt ellen and uncle jim, i headed down to San Clemente to visit the Wucetiches. thanks again to sarah for letting me borrow her car so that i could drive alllllll the way out to malibu to visit ellen and jim - they just moved from plano (dallas suburb) to malibu over the summer. their house is beautiful! we had a very nice lovely italian dinner at some restaurant whose name i don't remember.


in the OC, courtney allowed her child to wear a speedo!! hahahahaa... just kidding... she swears it is just a swim diaper. you be the judge :) in any case, sarah drove us down there and we spent that sunday afternoon by the pool, in the hot tub and eating a fabulous dinner outside bbq'd by peter.


while in the OC, we got to play at the beach, take some walks thru the neighborhood, eat fro-yo, snuggle with my lil man harrison (he slept with me every night!), literally run around cars with the lil man alex and go out to dinner.


one night we went to pizza port. alex is an excellent boxer. peter and courtney are excellent boxers and game players as well. i'm told that was a 'mild' night there. omg, if anyone needs some birth control - go to pizza port! haha.


i can now understand how courtney is in such good shape - alex definitely keeps her on her toes all the time! he is endless bundles of energy and beyond adorable. he even made me teary when we said goodbye at the train in san juan capistrano... he gave me a hug, blew me a kiss and i forget what he said exactly, but it was so cute i bout died. after a couple more hugs, we said goodbye and i jumped on the choo choo to glendale!


as my final stop on the scrippsie tour (are you counting? 4 scrippsies graciously hosted me on this trip!) was mrs sarah and the dave's place in glendale. i really liked that giant s on the wall. i'm gunna get me a big k. or maybe h. but i like k i think better. hmmm. anyways, after this picture was taken, we all went to pasadena for a dinner at roy's. YUM.

the next day i went to school with dr mrs sarah macschwendy and had a great day watching her teach her two classes. i kinda really loved being a student again! i didn't even take my phone with me in to the class room so i wouldn't be tempted to check my email if there was group time :) and now i've been convinced to read devil in the white city (omg, i have so many books i want to read right now!) since sarah had been teaching it in her first class. and in her second class, which is her team taught one i was learning so much that since they had passed out a handout, i took one and even took notes (as evidenced above!)! i learned about coleridge and jacques-louis david. i really enjoyed being a student and i can again testify to the fact that sarah is a fabulous professor!!!

in between her two classes, we got to go to the wb studios lot in burbank and meet aj for a quickie lunch. never been on a studio lot before...i'll admit, i felt pretty darn cool!

that evening, sarah made a fabulous lasagna and the three of us ate very well that evening and enjoyed a lovely bottle of wine. and then after a much much too short of a trip, it was time for me to head back home to chicago.

thank you so much to all of my amazing hosts - i love you all! i couldn't have asked for a better trip... unless it was longer... and i'd gotten to see everyone... and well, i guess something has to be left until next time!

so wrong... and yet so funny!

i've been cracking myself up. my new favorite website to waste time on is awkwardfamilypetphotos.com. omg, it is a total gem.



i know it's small, but there is a CAT in between the two bridesmaids. please, otis does not EVER need to be in my wedding photos!!


that poor poor dog. why do they have two of those things anyways?!


so, this isn't me, but i do have a suspiciously similar photo of me and my aunt holding a cougar or leopard or lion or some baby big cat. i was probably 2ish and we'd gone to lion country safari in florida where you could hold, pet, and ride all sorts of various animals. man, i loved that place!


devon, i am so glad you and patrick never got a dog... i would hate to see a piper version of this poor girl!!



looks normal enough, right?! yeah, look in the background at the dog!!


and now, the finale... this is just so wrong it's beyond funny to me. omg. hilarious.

happy birthday ebs!

as most of you are aware, there were a ton of birthday events around the country for ellen browning scripps (ebs) ... and chicago definitely celebrated her bday in style on sunday, oct 17th. we first met at argo tea which seemed very scrippsie appropriate to me. and then afterwards, we headed to the joffrey ballet where we saw a lovely ballet performance with their all stars. it felt very refined and is definitely not something i usually do on a sunday, but it was so much fun! we had a nice turnout. nothing huge, but still a good group of ladies.


the gorgeous theater.


there were a few of us missing in the photo, but like i said it was a nice group.

et maintenant, le dernier poste...

for those of you who don't speak french (i sure don't), the title says: and now, the final post... at least that's how google did the translation for me! i should mention i don't mean my last post ever... i just mean the last of the france/belgium trip. so... after a few days exploring in and around bayeux, i trekked to honfleur which is a lovely lovely town located right where the seine and the mediterrean sea meet. i'm so glad i went to the trouble of getting there and the trouble of having to get back to paris, because it was one of my favorite places i visited!

from bayeux, i had to take a train and then a bus. and it took a couple hours, but i managed to time it perfectly (somehow!) and catch the express bus which made the trek much faster and actually rather easy! yay!


this is the view from my hotel window. LOVED this hotel. LOVED! i stayed at les maisons de lea. great location!


this was my room. super small, but it was just me. and i loved how light and airy it felt in there.


the view from the bed. super cute! and the bathroom was actually fairly large and nice.


the hotel. seriously, this town was alllllll charm.


it was a gorgeous gorgeous warm day and sunny. the town is centered around the basin.


i saw a bunch of people sitting around the edge and eating lunch so i decided to follow suit. my sandwich and location were so fabulous, i did the exact same thing the next day!!!


this is a big artist community - i was surprised how many galleries there were. i loved this guy painting the harbor.


such a picturesque town!!!


i loved the town so much, that i even bought an oil painting (and hauled it all the way home) from an artist's shop near my hotel. i passed by this shop on my way from dinner and of course they were closed so i waited until the next morning for it to open... which delayed my departure from the town back to paris, but that was ok... i HAD to check out and see how much this painting would cost. there were so many pretty ones in the window, so... here's the one i picked out! it reminds me of the beautiful town and all my good memories of the trip. i love it.

the shop lady (not the artist unfortunately) gave me a really big discount if i just took the painting with me instead of having it shipped. so i did. not that i didn't have enough stuff to haul around, but hey, a deal is a deal!!

i had asked the hotel the quickest way to get back to paris' CDG airport and they told me to take the bus to deauville, then the train to somewhere else and then the train in to paris and then switch and take another commuter train to the airport! oh good grief!!!! all in all with the waiting and the actual traveling, it took about 8 hours to get to the stupid airport. but i made it. and then, once i got to the airport, i had to find the shuttle to take me to the marriott. omg. really?! ok, well totally exhausted, i managed to finally find this shuttle and get to the hotel. it was by far the most expensive hotel i'd stayed in (why are hotel airports so pricey?!) but it was convenient for the next day's flight. and turns out, my parents were super generous and used some of their marriott points so my room was free. except for the room service i ate for dinner cause i was starving and exhausted and not leaving my room after a very long day of traveling!! and then, the next day i had to go to the airport and head home.... sad sad sad day!!!!

and that mes amies is the story of my two week partially solo, partially with friends and wedding party trek through parts of france and belgium.... now, when do i get to go back?!

a bit of history.

when i was planning my trip, my mom told me i HAD to do a d-day tour since i was going to be in normandy. to be honest, i wasn't all that excited to do it, but knew it would be one of those things that would be good for me. so i consulted my travel bible rick steves' book and found a good tour company. i had been thinking a half day tour would be just fine. only this company didn't offer half days... but you could do a full day or a whole two days of sights for both the american tour or the british tour. holy smokes... that's a lot of wwII history there... so i settled on the one day tour and thought, well, i'll definitely get my fill of history on this day! and i've got to say: it was an absolutely fabulous, fascinating, sobering, amazing day. i actually wished that i could have had more time to spend and that i could do the second day.



the tour started at 8am and we went to the town of mere st eglise. it was one of the first towns to be liberated in the war and it is now the home of the airborne museum. here are some artifacts from the war.


medical supplies. i can't even imagine. omg, the stories... my guide was tremendously well informed and told us all these stories and really made everything real.


an exhibit in the museum.


the mere st eglise church. there was a movie made: the longest day. it's all about d-day and features this town pretty prominently. you can see a white blob on the steeple of the church- that is a parachute. as the parachute troopers came out of the sky - a lot of them got stuck in trees and other such places - this poor guy was stuck on the chuch. many of these guys were sitting ducks and were killed in action. the steeple guy actually survived.


the town still has scars of war - those are bullet holes.


and then we went to another itty bitty town. pretty much this church and a few homes are it. not sure you can even cal it a town. this is where two medics set up and almost everyone they brought here survived.


these are the pews that the soldiers were laid on. you can still see the dark stains of blood.


the town doesn't have the money to fix the church and so it is still a work in progress. they have collection boxes that people can make donations in, but they don't actively fundraise. this is one of the replacement stained glass windows. the two names are the men who were the medics and saved all those lives. they are still alive and come back to the town often to commemorate.


this was my incredibly well informed guide. he was AWESOME. he really gave wonderful and powerful stories about all these soldiers and places we visited. he made it real. and he's met all these soldiers as well.


here i am at utah beach. one of the sights of the invasion.


and this is pont du hoc where the germans had many bungalows below ground set up. there are big holes all over this field from where US bombs were dropped.


it's beautiful scenery here.


at pont du hoc.


and here is my guide explaining how the US troops made there way on omaha beach which was the deadliest place to be that day.


and this was the final stop of the day: the WWII cemetary.


for a cemetary, it is absolutely breathtaking and stunning. if you look to the left, the trees are pruned so that the tops are cut off. this is to symbolize the shortened lives of the soldiers buried there.


the cemetery sits on a high bluff overlooking the ocean. the rows upon rows of white crosses all lined up perfectly... unreal. and very moving. there are over 9000 soldiers buried here.

on this tour, there were 6 other people - all couples, all american. it was so nice to have english speaking people to talk to! one couple was about our age and super nice. they were so fun! when the tour was over at 530, they invited me to get a drink with them. and so i did. several in fact. and then they invited me to join them for dinner. and so i did. and i tried my first escargot. i actually loved it! and then around 1030ish, it was time to say goodbye to my new friends and head to bed... they were from boston, but moving to denver once they got back. we're now friends on fb. gotta love fb. oh, and turns out they new a couple of people i knew back in newport! it's a small world...

adventures in bayeux & mont st michele

after the wedding festivities were over, we all said our goodbyes and sarah and i headed in to bayeux where we would explore the town and then go to mont st michele the next day.


sarah in the streets of bayeux. it's a small town and very cute. i really liked it!


they have a massive church there. it's gorgeous!


after exploring town for awhile, we found a cafe to stop and eat at... sarah models her awesome sunglasses.


and then i modeled them!

after dinner, we headed back to our hotel. we stayed at hotel churchill and i must say i was pretty darn disappointed by it. it was fascinating for all of its wwII memorabilia and it had a great tv room where we ended up watching saving private ryan that evening. i met several random people - all american - staying at this hotel. they gave me great pointers on where/how they had done things in this region since they'd been there a few days already. i had chosen this hotel for the reason that it was in the center of town, historic and it was where a van met everyone to take them to mont st michele - so it was convenient. but our room was disappointing/old/but it worked...


and so the next morning - we caught the shuttle which took about 90 mins (i think!) to get us to mont st michele. and there it is behind us!


the scenery is absolutely gorgeous!


we rented headsets so that we could listen in and learn more about this island/church/cathedral...


aren't we just gorgeous?!


my attempt at being artistic!


c'est belle!



we rule.





sarah is learning more about the uses of this particular room.


and then when we were done with the tour, as we were leaving we found these strange angel wings just hanging out for us to take goofy pics with. so of course we did!




and then there were these really really strange t-shirt souvenirs... i had to take a picture.

after this, we headed back to bayeux where sarah and i went to see the famous tapestry. it's one of those things i think you have to do. bayeux is famous for it. was it worth the however many euro it cost to get in?? probably not. but hey, at least now i can say i've seen it. and it is impressive. i mean it really is. and then, it was time for me to move hotels (to a much cuter and not so far away inn that was also much cheaper) and once that had been accomplished, it was time for sarah to head back to paris. so i walked with her to the train station which was not so far away and said goodbye. i was now officially all on my own...again! damn... no more map readers to help me!!!!