The Chatsworth House

Ladies and Gentlemen, Dames en Heren, Mesdames et Messieurs, I present to you: 
The Chatsworth House

I tried to cut this post down, I really did. I just couldn't. You don't have to read much though, I'll write more on the post with the gardens. For now, please enjoy the most fabulous house in England. Also known as Darcy's estate. Swoon.

I'm pretty sure these guys would have had their entire home all over Pinterest. I mean, a bathtub in a closet? I'd guess that one in every three Pinteresters has an epic bathroom on their "dream home" board. Chatsworth residents were way ahead of their time.

Hi, welcome to my new bedroom.

I mean, look at that wallpaper.

Please someone tell me you recognize this statue from Keira Knightly examining it in Pride and Prejudice.

More Chatsworth tomorrow

Wicked.

Last Friday afternoon we left Brussels bound for London. The unfortunate thing about every trip so far to London has been train delays. It's something about that Chunnel that messes with our schedule every time. This time we were more than a little nervous when they announced the expected half hour delay because we had solid plans only an hour after our proposed arrival. Wicked was waiting for us.

intermission photo

It turned out that everything went fairly smoothly even with the delays. We were traveling light out of habit and thank goodness because we didn't have any time to check in to the hotel first. Jumping on a tube straight from St. Pancras, we found ourselves coming out from the underground directly across from the theater entrance.

We literally walked through the theater doors, were greeted with a look at our tickets, directed straight up the stairs, met by another theater employee in the balcony and directed a second time to our seats all within a minute and 20 seconds. We sat down, pushed our bags beneath our seats, the lights dimmed and the show began.

Phew!

Countdown

ONE MONTH TO THE MARATHON

Sometimes I wish I'd have some of my usual support system here for this race. Then when moments of doubt attack, I'm glad it will be only Chris, in case I fail. Either way, one month from now, the race will be almost over and by the time it's finished for good my support system will be awake in New York and I can let them know the outcome.

The following is an image moments after the last race I ever ran as a collegiate athlete. Taken by numero uno of my fan club (or numero uno/dos because I think Mom and Dad tie for one and two):

Oh man, just looking at this picture brings back the pain I felt the last two laps of that race. Lets hope that I can take half as decent a picture at the end of 26.2 miles. I want to push myself at least half as hard as this race which is saying something because I killed myself to be as fast as I could in my "last race ever"

Time to be courageous. One month. 

And it begins...

It's soccer season again in Leuven. Chris played his first game last night. 

3 goals and 1 assist later, he was exhausted and I was proud.

 The team finished at 8 goals to 6 and everyone was happy. 

Chris is so fast you can see right through him.

Speaking of sports, I'm off to Brussels now to pick up my new orthotics so I can start to feel like a put-together human being. Apparently all my doctors here think that I have a leg length discrepancy. Strange that that never came up in the thirteen plus years I've had of multiple types of physical therapy with several different doctors/specialists back home...

Needless to say, I'm skeptical. But for 210 euros, they better be freaking right about this. Here goes nothing.

Amber's Visit!

Anytime someone comes to town for a visit, it feels like a party. This time Leuven was all decked out to agree with us. My second roommate of the year came to visit. (A third is scheduled in a few weeks!) Amber lives in Portland, Oregon now so we don't get to see each other all that often. She traveled Europe for a little over two and a half weeks and included us in her trip on the way in and out. 

One of the best parts of her visit was...this chocolate place. No, I'm kidding, (though it is fantastic), it was the fact that we got to see her two weeks after she'd left us to start the bulk of her trip and hear all the recap in person. So rarely do we get to feel as if we have a real, honest-to-goodness, old friend in residence and have it be as if we've just made plans to see them in a few days, living regular life in between. And by rarely I mean never. This is the first occasion where seeing an old friend has been split with a few days "off" in the middle. It's about to happen again with the Florios visit when they will head off to Cologne to meet up with us in Prague a few days later. 

So upon her return to Belgium for her last night before flying out, we got to hear all about her travels to Amsterdam, Paris and Rome. This girl knew how to travel Europe! Ending with Italy is always a good idea, in my humble opinion. Italy is wonderful and relaxing and where will you get better food?? Thank you thank you thank you Amber for coming to Europe and bringing some sunshine!

Reverse of Travel Alerts (part II)

Do you remember this post? I had totally forgotten about it. I was mindlessly going through past posts and it came across my screen last week and there it was, our "European Bucket-List." Ugh I hate the phrase "bucket-list"...so "European to-go list"...? Whatever.

In the post from last November I was asking all of you for advice on must-sees in Europe for our year of travel. So much has changed since then and yet, nothing at all. This weekend with the Florios and Dave marks the beginning of our final travel-frenzy time. Lets take a look at how we've done in crossing things off our list as the end of our time in Europe draws near.

List from November 29:
Barcelona       Trip planned Dec 7-9 (last trip before we are USA bound!)
Seville
Paris (x7)
Brussels
Athens            Trip planned to Crete instead Oct 10-13
Istanbul        
Madrid            Had to decide between Barcelona/Madrid
Copenhagen  
Florence
Milan            
Prague             Trip planned Sep 13-16
Rome
Berlin
Vienna             Trip planned Nov 28-Dec 1
Edinburgh        Trip planned Nov 8-10
Cannes          
London (x3)
Geneva            Went to Basel/Luzern instead
Venice
Amsterdam (x4)

We also added...
Dublin
Pisa                  Trip planned Sep 25-28
Tuscany            Ditto
Munich
Cologne
Bakewell
Basel
Luzern
Luxembourg     Trip planned Sep 22
Liverpool          Game planned Oct 26 (Sean & Chris)
Bastogne
Disneyland Paris
Most of Belgium


I think we did a good job. There are definitely places we missed out on but Europe isn't closed to us forever. We will be back, in short bursts, to see the rest of the world we dream of in this continent and beyond. Thank you, Europe, for treating us better than I expected and allowing us to travel so much from Brussels, "the capital of the World."

2 years

It's our second anniversary today. We are celebrating in London this year! A few months after our wedding we put on our wedding-day-best and took to the park for some fun being fancy. On our actual wedding day I hadn't wanted to set a lot of time aside for pictures since that was not what I wanted the focus of our day to be. It definitely wasn't. We spent our day stealing looks at each other through the ceremony, enjoying our family and friends and dancing all night long. Not for one minute do I regret our lack of photos. (But that might also be because our wedding video was awesome...still can't get enough of it.)

I had originally wanted an autumn wedding but with coaching Cross Country every weekend and Chris beginning graduate school it just didn't seem logical. To make up for the change of plans, our lovely friends Kelli and Dan agreed to be photographer and posing coordinator. It was a perfect day; the beginning of fall. Every time I look at these photos I feel the same joy as the day I said "I do" for real.

I'm so in love with you, Chris. It has been a crazy second year, the whole thing spent in Europe relying solely on each other. It's hard to believe that I could love you more than I did on our wedding day, but I do and I think I'll let it keep on going that way. Happy Anniversary love!