September 1st 2002
TEN years ago, on a big deck above the Deschutes river...we said "I do!"
My best friend, soul-mate and the man I want to spend the rest of my life with...sealed it with a kiss.
What a beautiful day!
Our lives became one, we bought a house, joined our bank accounts and got an Alaska Airlines credit card. The thought was that, waaaaaay in the future...when we hit the ten year mark, we could use the miles for a big trip to Italy. It seemed so far away, but indeed time did pass, we bought more houses, got a dog, made some babies and BAM, 10 years came and the trip happened. Good job to us, to not only still be in love, but to follow through on this trip! Right on Team Staley!
There was lot's of logistics to figure out as far as what to do with the kids, but thankfully our parents are rock star Grandparents and without a second thought took on the challenge of 2 weeks of kid duty. Piper went to Seattle with my parents and sister and Dave's mom stayed at our house with the boys and Mango. We are so thankful to have such willing and able Grandparents and value the special bonds they have with our kids. Thank you again for this break and time to be "us" again. We love you!
The first stop was Venice, Italy. The romantic place meant for getting lost among the "elegant decay" of this ancient city. We had no plan or agenda, so we roamed the narrow alleys taking in all there was to see, just happy not to be worried about bed times or meal times for anyone else but ourselves! We loved the canals and gondolas, the five story buildings lined up next to each other. My favorite thing about looking up was seeing all the open windows and balconies covered in hanging laundry and planters brimming over with bright flowers. With no patches of dirt in all of Venice, they artfully get their greenery in where they can.
The open plazas and bridges were fun spots to linger and eat gelato. There were huge elaborate churches around every corner. The architecture was so impressive to me. My first time in Europe, I've never seen anything like it. Even the churches that weren't "main attractions", took my breath away with their vastness of space inside, in an otherwise crowded and tight city. All the small details in such a grand space was so interesting to me. The tall rounded ceilings with mosaic tiles creating beautifully detailed pictures, the carved stone and marble sculptures, the tiles, even the floor we walked on made me think of how each and every piece was hand laid centuries ago, yet still here and able to be appreciated. 
This mark in time also brought thoughts of trying to imagine what our life will be like in 10 years from now. My immediate thought goes to our kids...Piper will be almost 15 years old and the boys 13. This brings a serious lump in my throat. Right now we are in the throws of intense times, where we are constantly demanded at and whined at, our full attention is focused on these three little monkeys we love so much. Some days, bedtime cant come soon enough! But when I think about how quick these next ten years will go, it is a reminder to live in the moment, see it for what it is and "sacar el jugo de la vida" (suck the juice out of life), as Dan Shaw quoted he and Dave's NOLS leader for his toast on our wedding night.
Our itinerary: 3 nights in Venice, 3 nights in Cinque Terre, 3 nights in Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland and 4 nights in Amsterdam.
We traveled light with our small backpacks and loved the train travel for the time it gave us to read our books which otherwise didn't get cracked open because we kept so busy checking out the places we visited.
Cinque Terre is a place I knew we had to go. I remember hearing about it many years ago from friends and from their description, my imagination immediately put it on my "must see" list. Thankfully the Cinque Terre didn't disappoint. It just kept getting better the further we explored it. The first day we arrived and found the room we booked on line, I was so happy because it was just what I'd hoped for. During my research for this trip, I kept hearing that the best places to stay were just rooms you rent in peoples houses that you find by showing up and getting lured by someone at the train station. But we would be there during peak tourist season and everything could be booked up, so not recommended to show up with out a reservation. In my hours of late night online hunting, all I could find were hotels, so I finally just picked one and tried to book it. The email I got back said that the hotel was full, but she had a room in her parents house that I could rent. SCORE! Not only did we get the whole apartment to ourselves, there was an amazing roof top terrace in the middle of the town, even had an ocean view! The terrace is where we enjoyed fresh tomato/mozzarella/basel salads with wine one night and beers another.
Hiking and swimming and swimming and hiking, we loved every minute of our time in Cinque Terre. Each town had something different about it that we liked. We stayed in Vernazza which had a fun spot we swam the first night. I was surprised how warm the water was and had forgotten how salty and buoyant that sea water was. The warm water was a welcome change from the mountain lakes and rivers at home. Next we hiked to Cornigila which is the only town not right down on the water. This town had beautiful views from this vantage point high on the cliff. We had a snack in Cornigila and planned to keep on hiking to the next town. I kind of remember now reading in the Rick Steves book that some sections of the trail could be closed. But after seeing all the amazing trail work that had been done in Vernazza after their devastating mudslides last October, I figured that the worst of it was fixed so we would be golden the rest of the way.
We headed down the trail which was down many stairs from Corniglia, passed the railroad station, until we came to a "trail closed" sign. Bummer. Not wanting to walk all the way back up the stairs, we decided to keep going and see "how closed" the trail really was. We saw some locals walking down the obviously un-maintained trail, so thought maybe some people walked the trail anyway, but all these people soon turned off at the stairs to the beach. We kept going, even climbed around a pointy, rusty fence. This would have been no big deal to us back in the day, but now I was starting to feel a little guilty for not following the rules. We really wanted to hike to the next town, the trail was overgrown, but hike-able for quite a ways. Eventually we came to a big hill slide that had washed the trail away and probably the reason for the closure. Even so, there was an old pipe sticking out of the ground that hung over the edge, you could tell that others had made their way across. Here is the difference in our gumption 10 + years ago...then, we would have loved the thrill of shimmying down cliff and scrambled the sketchy trail without hesitation. We could see the other side it was totally do-able. But now with 3 kids at home and a lot more awareness of risks worth taking, we turned back. It was humbling and not easy to admit we had lost that gumption, but really it did feel good that we didn't put ourselves in a situation we could have easily regretted. 
Instead we made our way back to the top of all those stairs back to Corniglia, found a nice table in a courtyard to enjoy another snack. Then we walked down the other side of the town to an amazing swimming spot with fun rocks to jump off.
The next day was spent between Manarola and Riomaggiore. In the morning before it was too hot, we hiked high above Manarola to a monastery. Getting up in the hills was fun to have a better look at the terraced land and neat to see how they cultivated the area. Lots of grape vines and olive trees, impressive rock walls to form the terraces.
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| This part of the path is covered with locks representing couples love for each other. |
Quick video of our walk through the Via dell'Amore "Lovers Lane" connector between two of the Cinque Terre towns: http://youtu.be/9QXbM8-hRUY
We ate some of the best hand made pasta on our trip from this woman's take-away pasta shop. The pesto sauce was AMAZING!!!
I am happy to report that I became an adult on this trip and finally decided I like coffee! The cappuccinos were an easy way to ease my way in to this new caffeine world I have resisted for so long. This picture is of an iced coffee and a cappuccino next to a bacon over melon appetizer. The view couldn't have gotten any better!
And then we made it to Switzerland! Funny how close in proximity the countries in Europe are, yet how different they look once you cross a border line. We had a smooth train ride experience considering we got on 7 trains and one bus between Cinque Terre and Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland. It was a bummer to go from 85 degrees and sunny to 55 and raining up in the Alps. We didn't let it slow us down too much, but had a hard time letting go of all the beautiful views we weren't seeing. I loved all the green, the gardens and flowers and waterfalls in the Lauterbrunnen valley were very charming.
We hiked up to the nearby villages of Murren one day and Wengen another day. The rain let up a little in the morning, but the further up we hiked, the colder and wetter it got and even sloshed through snow before calling it quits and headed back down. In Murren, we found a sweet coffee shop and thawed out for a few hours while playing a game of chess.
This view of the waterfalls is from the balcony of our hotel room. There were over 70 waterfalls in this area.
The cows and their bells were fun to hear while walking through the towns. There were many times throughout our hikes that one of us would bust out, "The hills are alive..."
This is the highest we got, I believe all the tallest mountains in the area (Jungfrau, Eiger) would have been in crystal clear view had the clouds not have thwarted us. We weren't expecting this weatherr and came unprepared in our barefoot shoes and thin sweatshirts. =-(
And finally on our last day before we had to get back on the train, the sun came out and it was indeed beautiful. We rode bikes up the valley as far as we could and loved watching all the base jumpers and para-gliders flying through the air.
Really though, this place was beautiful, I am really glad the sun did come out for us to enjoy.
One of our days in Holland was spent visiting a family friend, Cees! This was a fun afternoon, we really enjoyed getting the chance to have a local show us around and learn about the area from his perspective.We got the low down on the royal family, local politics, and an insiders tour of Den Hauge, and even got straightened out on what the difference is between Holland and the Netherlands.
We used airbnb to book our stay in Amsterdam. This was a great experience to stay in an apartment in great neighborhood rather than just a hotel room. Anand, a med student, rented us his apartment to earn extra cash and he went to stay at his parents house. His place was super comfortable and clean, we loved the roof top terrace and super location in the city. We were on the top floor, so the ladder like staircase was an interesting perspective of how homes are built in this city. All furniture has to be brought up by a hook on the roof and swung in through the large windows to each apartment!
It was an amazing vacation and a great chance for the two of us to re-connect, but it felt great to come home and wrap our arms around our little family. One of the best parts of being away is realizing how great it is to be home!
