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Showing posts from 2012

Back to Life, Back to Reality

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After living in vacation-land, lack of bill paying, traveling, nomadic bliss for 2 months, coming home was both a welcomed comfort and a rude awakening. The last month and a half has been filled with family, holidays, wedding venue scouting, wedding planning, work, friends and construction. As 2012 comes to a close, I cannot help but go through pictures of the last year and all of the memories that are attached to them. I smile every time. 2012 has been a good year, and I cannot wait to see what 2013 has in store for me.                        

Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened.

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The past 53 days have been a whirlwind.  We visited 3 different countries, countless towns/cities, met up with great friends, made new friends, had unbelievable adventures, tasted incredible new foods/drinks and the best thing of all, we got engaged.  I am sad that this fantastic journey is over, but Duane and I are both ready to be back in our house, I am beyond excited start work again, I am ready to cook food with spice again (Europe missed that memo), we both miss Mexican food like nobody's business and hanging out with our friends and family in the states.  Yep, its time to go home. Today I am packing up our things to prepare to leave tomorrow. Packing will be much easier than last time due to more luggage and the fact it is all going to one place. This week has been a complication of getting ready to leave, stuck inside due to rain, finding a great yoga studio with a vice nice Boston ex-pat, our last German dinner and a visit to the Kunsthaus Museum. I

A Weekend Adventure in Geneva and Lausanne

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We arrived in Geneva mid Friday evening and were welcomed by rain. In an attempt to not spend hours searching for our hotel, I made sure to book one right across from the main train station. Best. Idea. Ever. The hotel was cute, quaint and had evidence of being a little .... lets say outdated. Look at the most.retro.hair.dryer.I.have. ever.found....ever. Thank you Geneva for 1970's the flash back. We wandered around our area of town for some dinner and stumbled upon some amazing Indian food. We could tell that we were so much closer to the French boarder due to the drastic change in diversity (via ethnicity, social strata and/or wealth). After a month of living in Zurich, I can say that there is VERY LITTLE diversity and just a touch of blatant racism/discrimination. Any who, after CERN on Saturday, Duane and I wandered the rainy city. Lake Geneva sans fountain/geyser Duane came to Geneva a few years back and took me to this amazing cathedral. It looks like your typical

Lets see some particles collide!

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CERN Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire, European Laboratory for Particle Physics or The European Organization for Nuclear Research Whichever title you would like to call the lab, it is the home to some of the world’s largest and most complex scientific instruments are used to study the basic constituents of matter — the fundamental particles (e.g. The Higgs Boson, known as the "God Particle"). The Laboratory sits astride the French–Swiss border just outside of Geneva, giving us an awesome excuse to go to Geneva for our last weekend in Europe! Early Saturday morning Duane and I got up and headed to the outskirts of Geneva to visit the facility. We learned a lot of things during our visit; CERN's main function is to provide the particle accelerators and other infrastructure needed for high-energy physics research, it is the birthplace of the World Wide Web (not Al Gore), and in 2012 they found a boson (apparently it is a really really small

Our last weekend to explore Europe. Off to Geneva!

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When we were planning our trip to Europe, I kept asking Duane, "Is there anything YOU would like to do or see?", but he could never think of anything and was happy with what I was planning thus far. But on July 4th, CERN researchers released their findings that they found evidence that the Higgs Boson actually existed, giving Duane the idea that we should visit! Done and done. I promptly did the research and booked us a free English guided tour for Saturday November 10th at 10:30 am.  Admittedly, I have never taken a class on Physics (Blasphemy, I know. It just wasn't apart of the Psychology curriculum). BUT I feel like visiting CERN will make up for it.... right? Stay tuned for all of the physics nerdiness that I am about to learn! To hold you over until my next post, here are some crazy things I have found in Zurich the past week. A Giraffe Lamp Post No idea. Please note, this is no where near a school... it's in a business park.... Di

Day trip to Lucerne

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This morning Andreas and I woke up and pondered "what should we do today?" Since he is a grownup (I like to think I am taking a vacation from being one), he did need to go to work at some point today back in Lugano. So we jumped on a train a went to the city of Lucerne, a city in north-central Switzerland, for a small adventure.  Due to its location on the shore of Lake Lucerne, and at the base of the Swiss Alps with views of Mt. Pilatus and Mt. Rigi, every turn is filled with a new beautiful sight.  Mount Pilatus One of the city's famous landmarks is the Chapel Bridge (Kapellbrücke), a wooden bridge first erected in the 14th century. The old city walls first build in 1386 the wall is still almost entirely intact. The twin needle towers of the Church of St. Leodegar, which was named after the city's patron saint, sit on a small hill just above the lake front. Just as Andreas caught his train to head further south, it started to rain, so I too

Expovina - Zurich's International Wine Fair

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We started our Sunday off with a 1.5 hour boat ride around the lake (Sunday morning beverages included) with our great friend Andreas! Remember this gem? The Alps After our boat ride, and some much needed Kabob for lunch, we walked over to the Bürkliplatz docks for the Wine Expo. Expovina has been a Swiss institution for more than a half-century, ever y year a total of 170 professionals from 22 countries and 5 continents bring and estimated 4,000 wines from 22 countries and 5 continents are spread across 12 different boats. We were pretty excited. We wandered around the boats tasting champagne, pino nior, chardonnay, but upon group discussion, we decided that the Portugal/Spanish ports stole the show. We tasted vintage, medal winning, 10 and 20 year old ports that were beyond amazing; however, the BEST one was from 1964 and was about $150 for 35ml. That's right, they let us try a 40+ bottle of port and we can officially died a little more happy now.