Where to start?

Ben and I just got back from a 3week trip to Europe and came back with over 1400 pictures. Since no one in their right mind wants to look at that many pictures we've been trying to cut them down, but it takes so long to go through that many pictures.

So I've been trying to figure out how to present the pictures and our trip on my blog; first I thought I'll do a day by day blog for the next 21 days representing each day of the trip and showing pictures from each day. Then I realized there was no way I wanted to commit to 21 consecutive days blogging. Then I thought I could do a blog post per city we visited. But then I realized that was 15+ cities and again I didn't want to do that much. So then I decided I would do 3 blog posts -1 for each country we visited. However, that means I have to cut a lot of pictures out in a mild attempt to make the posts not too long.

With all that said, the first country we visited was Ireland. We flew into Dublin, stayed there for 3 nights and then spent the next several days traveling and staying in Cork, Galway, and Blarney.

We stayed in hostels while we were in Ireland which means we were staying in a room with anywhere from 4-10 people per room. This is our hostel in Dublin.

Here Ben and I are in front of Dublin Castle.

Right next to the castle were these buildings painted cool colors. I have no idea what the buildings are used for but I liked the way they looked. This is St Patrick's Cathedral. Since we were still on West Coast time we woke up really early the first day which allowed this picture without people in it since normal people were still sleeping at that time.

My sister Brittany also came on the trip with us. We saw a postcard in Dublin that had doors on it, because there are a lot of cool doors in Dublin so Brittany and I started taking pictures of the cool doors we saw with the intent to scrapbook a page of just doors from our trip. Here we got 3 cool doors in 1 picture.

And of course a trip to Dublin isn't complete without a tour of the Guinness Storehouse. Here we are in the tasting room. Don't tell but I thought the beer was gross. It was cool to take the tour because at the end of the tour you go into a bar that is about 10 stories high with windows that provide a 360 degree view of the city.

Another church in Dublin with beautiful landscaping.

After a few days in Dublin we took a bus to Cork. This is the church we found there.

A cool door we found in Cork.

From Cork we took a bus to Blarney to see the Blarney Castle and LOOK at the Blarney stone. I know you're supposed to kiss it but after being warned by a friend of all the germs on the stone I figured I'm already chatty enough and didn't need to be endowed with the gift of gab from the stone as legend states.
The view from the top of the castle.

Ireland reminded me a lot of Oregon with its hilly green view. This is a view from within the castle.

Our next stop was Galway where Ben found this cool hat in one of the souvenir shops. As you may have guessed by our coats and beanies it was quite cold in Ireland but mostly dry.

In Galway we took a bus tour through the Burren and onto the Cliffs of Moher. These rocks mark the grave of 30+ people who, according to our bus driver, were determined to have died from arthritis (I think that's what he said -given his Irish accent he was a little difficult to understand). However, that same bus driver also told us we would never meet a bus driver who wasn't crazy. The roads are so narrow and we commented on how impressed we were with his driving skills. He bragged that he hadn't lost a side view mirror yet -but he'd only been on the job for 2 months!

The Cliffs of Moher:

From Galway we took a bus ride back to Dublin and flew out of Dublin to Scotland. Our adventure (we stopped calling our trip a vacation about 3 days into the trip when we realized how much walking we were doing and how exhausted we were at the end of the day. We figure by the end of the trip we likely walked over 60 miles!) through Scotland blog post will be coming soon...

Five years

Five years ago today Ben and I married. To celebrate he took me to Portland City Grill for dinner and Gerry Frank's Konditorei for dessert. It seems like the five years have flown by and I feel so lucky to be married to such a wonderful man.

I was going to put up pictures of our wedding day but those are all tucked away in an album safely secured so I figured instead I would post pictures of the trip when Ben proposed.

I was studying abroad in Spain and Ben was at Fort Leonardwood, MO at basic training. When he completed basic I bought him a ticket so he could come visit me.

December 4, 2005 in Sevilla, Spain. This is the exact spot where Ben asked me to be his wife. It overlooks the gardens of the royal grounds.
Ben loves this picture of us on a bench in Sevilla enjoying Spanish tortilla sandwiches.

Here we are in Lisbon, Portugal.

We also got to visit Granada, Spain.

Mexican Riviera Cruise

As the title of this post suggests my family and I had the opportunity to go on a 10 day Mexican Riviera cruise with 5 ports of call and 3 days at sea. It was awesome! But instead of boring you with words I’ll show you in pictures.

In order to get to San Diego, CA –where the cruise was leaving from- we determined since there were 7 of us going –my parents, sister, other sister and her husband, and Ben and I- it would be substantially cheaper if we drove down. So we rented a van and left at 2pm on Thursday February 10, 2011.
We arrived in San Diego 17 hours later to board the Carnival Spirit.

Once on the ship the first two days were spent at sea. There were plenty of activities for us to do like play mini golf...

and play cards...

play dodgeball (actually only Ben and my dad did this activity). Here my dad was the last man standing on his team. Ben and my dad were on the same team and their team ended up being cruise ship champions and they got cool medals.

We saw beautiful sunsets...

had cool towel animals in our room each night...

we dressed up...

And had fantastic service by these two men...

who fed us delicious food like this...

Then we arrived at our first port, Puerto Vallarta. We had decided to do an “Extreme Canopy Adventure” and let me tell you this was so much fun!

We zip lined (here Ben and I were racing; the guides say it was a tie but I say I won)

We also repelled down a rock wall with a waterfall...

And Maxx held up this building.

Next was Mazatlan where we did a lot of this (walking)...

but we made friends with statues...

and the locals...

and saw cool sites like this...

and this.

Then onto La Paz where we stood under this arch...

and saw this beautiful beach...

and this cool looking church.

Next was Cabo San Lucas. We took a water taxi…

to see this site...

and play on this beach.

Finally we went to Ensenada. We had to walk through this market…
to see this “natural phenomenon” (as our guide called it). It was a blowhole.

Then on Sunday February 20 we drove another 17 hours to arrive home on Monday February 21 at 3:30am. We had such a good time with family and the weather was a nice break from this cold Oregon winter.