Bonjourno!

At the end of November, Christopher competed in the Sailor of the Year competition for his command and he won! With his win came another competition; the Sailor of the Year competition for all the European & African commands; which was being held in Naples, Italy.

My grandparents, or Crinkles as the British people call them, were set to arrive on Saturday, December 4th and we all decided to fly to Naples with Christopher. So, we set out for Italy on Monday, the 6th.

We didn't arrive at our hotel until late, so we walked a little ways down the street and stopped in to a restaurant called Gusto! Gusto! We started the meal with a glass of prosecco (and ended with a shot of lemoncello), we had pizza and a caprese salad... let me tell you right now, that crap in the states is not pizza...just stop eating it now...lol. And the buffalo mozzarella cheese was absolutely the best I've ever eaten!

On Tuesday, Christopher went on a tour of a monastery (Monte Cassino) and a wine tasting with the other Sailors of the Year and their sponsors. Mymom, Grampy, and I bummed around Naples. We ended up with beautiful weather all week. It was sunny and warm and pretty much the opposite of England weather right now. We ended up getting a taxi and paid 50 euro to keep him for 3 hours for a personal tour of the city. We went all over the place. We ended up at 2 churches, all through the city, up to the top of the mountain so we could see the most beautiful panoramic view of the city, a cameo factory where we met the proprietor and bought some cameos, and then we finished our tour at a pizzeria.

One of the streets of Naples.

On Wednesday Christopher had his board for the competition. We had breakfast together at the hotel and then he got ready and competed. He came back absolutely thrilled with his performance. He knew that winning was probably a long shot for him, since he's only been in for 6 years, but he said he KNEW that he was good enough that they HAD to at least consider him, so he counted that as a win! After he got out of his uniform, we went out and walked around the older part of the city. We ended up in a Christmas market that was bustling, to say the least; it was PACKED. People were literally shoulder to shoulder trying to make their way through the narrow alleys. There were nativities all over the place and I wanted one so bad, but couldn't find the perfect one. Plus, it was absolute insanity in there, so we left.

One of the tiny streets the market was held in

We had a dinner with everyone scheduled for that night, so we hopped on the bus and headed to somewhere in the heart of the city and stopped at a place called Pepe Russo. We didn't see a menu, they just started bringing food... whatever they felt like cooking that day. We had:

House Wine with no label (amazing!)

Our Anti-pasta course was:

Italian bread, roasted eggplant, potatoes, dough balls, pickled and sauteed anchovies, proscutto and buffalo mozzarella.

Then we had our pasta course with 2 different pasta's, a penne with eggplant and tomatoes and the most amazing spaghetti I've ever eaten. The sauce was like nothing I'd ever eaten before and I still cant figure out what it was and I have a pretty awesome palate. It was a sauce so thick it stuck to the noodles... it was red, but not super red, more pink and very cheesy... smooth, so tomato chunks. It was divine. I ate every bit of it.

For our meat course, we had Italian sausage and a giant pork chop.

We had a course of just fresh tangerines as a palate cleanser and then came dessert: Zeppoli (Italian donuts) in Nutella... absolutely incredible!

Everyone at dinner

It was pretty much one of the most amazing meals ever! The food just kept on coming and it was all amazing. We tried everything and enjoyed it immensely.

The next day, we had breakfast and then headed to the base for the awards ceremony. There were two ceremonies that day; one for Sailor of the year for the region at 9:00 in the morning (I still dont really get the difference between that competition and the one Christopher competed in) and then the ceremony for Christopher's competition at 1:00 in the afternoon. We had a little time in between, so we went shopping at the NEX, which was nice since all our base has is a crappy BX.

Sunrise Thursday Morning... this was our view at breakfast!

We got into the awards ceremony and I was a bundle of nerves. I wanted nothing more than the Master Chief who was over the whole thing to call out Christopher's name. He got to the part where he announced the winner and he said the Rate and rank first and my heart skipped a beat-- it was Christopher's Rate! And then, after a pause, he said the name and it wasn't Christopher's. I'm not going to lie, I was pretty disappointed. But, Christopher was still awarded a COM (A Navy and Marine Corps Commendation medal), which is a really big deal.

Christopher accepting his medal from the Admiral (and his Master Chief, his sponsor, behind him).

After the ceremony, we headed back to the hotel, grabbed a nap, then headed down to dinner where we had even more pizza.

Mount Vesuvius

Friday we had all day to ourselves. We walked ALL over Naples. We managed to find the oldest Cafe in Naples and have some breakfast. Cappuccino's, cannoli's, and elephant ears! It was incredible! I am not really a coffee drinker, much more a tea person, but the cappuccino was amazing... the coffee wasn't bitter at all and the foam was so creamy. The cannoli was one of the best I've ever had, as was the elephant ear.

We wandered around some more and managed to find some Christmas ornaments that said "Buon Natale" which means Merry Christmas in Italian!

Mymom, Grampy, and I

We stopped at a restaurant and had some lunch; Mymom and Grampy had Lasagne, I had spaghetti noodles with garlic and chili, and Christopher had Gnocci.

We went back to the hotel and Christopher went out to grab some cash for a taxi and came back with Gelato for me! It was one of the things I wanted, but didn't manage to get it while we were out. He got me pistachio and chocolate and just like everything else in Naples, it was amazing!

Sunset our last day in Naples.

So yeah, basically we ate our way through Naples and it was fantastic! We had a great time. The language was beautiful and we're going to work on learning a bit more before heading back down there sometime next year. My dream is to spend at least 2 weeks in Italy seeing as much as we can. I want to go to Rome and Vatican city, Bologna, Venice, Tuscany and Sicily if we can manage it. For now, I'm just happy we at least got to step foot in the country I've dreamed about seeing my entire life. I'm excited to explore the country more; Naples was a lot of fun and it was great, but it was so dirty. There was trash everywhere; apparently the trash guys were on strike and had been for a while, so garbage was piled up EVERYWHERE. I'm hoping the rest of Italy isn't like that.

First Snow!

This morning we woke up to the lightest dusting of white stuff! The first snow of the season is upon us!

Everyone is saying its going to be a rough winter this year... apparently they're calling for lots of snow. I will perfectly fine with all that snow as long as a) we have heat (which we should have by the 15th of December--they start work on replacing everything on the 10th) and b) we can still get out and about and travel with Mymom and Grampy who arrive in England in a week!!!

I cant believe that some of my favorite people on Earth get to come out and spend Christmas with us!!! We have a lot planned for their trip and I want to be able to get out and see things... so the snow needs to hold off.

Our itinerary includes: London (of course), Paris, possibly Italy (fingers crossed on this one!), Brighton, Windsor Castle, Leeds, and lots more! Of course, pictures and blogs will follow!

Hope everyone has had a great shopping weekend-- we've spent the weekend perusing the sales online trying to find things we cant live without.

100!

With all the blogging I've been doing this month (in honor of National Blog Posting Month), I've been able to reach some pretty awesome stats on the blogs! I hit 100 posts on the baby blog a few posts ago and today, 100 posts on the travel blog!

I wish I had an epic post for my 100th, but we've not done a lot of traveling this year. We realized that we've only been to Paris and the States...no where near the amount of traveling that we wanted to do this year.

Next year is our last year in England and we WILL travel. We're definitely still planning a cruise at the beginning of the year (we're trying to decide between January, February, and March), so we'll hopefully see a couple of Italian ports, Spain, and maybe even Greece and/or Egypt.

We also want to go and spend some time in Italy. We're hoping to do a week-10 days for our anniversary next year. I would also love to go back to Germany at Christmas... that was one of the coolest things we've experienced since we've been over here, so I'd love to do it again.

So, pretty much a pointless post today... but a promise to ourselves and to everyone who reads and is interesting in our worldly travels--we WILL travel next year, come hell or high water! :)

Happy thanksgiving!

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving. We got together with friends from my work and had a massive spread of food!

I posted on the baby blog about everything I'm thankful for... but most of all, friends and family. Being so far away from home during the Holidays can be difficult, but phone calls, emails, and skype make it a little easier to be physically so far. Having good friends definitely helps as well...

I hope everyone across the world had a fabulous Thanksgiving!

Harry Potter 7 Pt 1

So, those of you who know me know that I am a HUGE Harry Potter fan. Judge all you want, I really dont care... I fell in love with the books long before the movies came out. The last book, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" is not only my favorite Harry Potter book (minus the epilogue...hello JK Rowling, I need more than that...lol), it is probably my favorite book of all time. Again, judge all you want, I dont care.

Anyway, every time we go to see one of the movies, I always leave dissatisfied. They always leave too much out and change things they shouldn't change (do I need to talk about what they did to the Burrow in the last movie...ugh). Anyway, no one ever likes going to see them with m because I critique... well, bitch really, about everything.

This time, I left the theatre and wasn't totally and completely disappointed. There were a few things that I really missed that they left out, but nothing too major. I actually said it was decent adaptation. Christopher freaked out and was like, that's like you saying its the best movie ever!

So yeah, it was alright. I'm excited for the last movie... but I'm sad its the last. Just like I'm sad the books are done. JK Rowling needs to get on it and write some more... I have not had enough of Harry Potter!

On a side note... it is SO different watching the movies once you've lived over here. Like the Dursley's house? SO British! The wallpaper, the decor, the neighborhood, everything.

Again, I really dont make this stuff up.

Today we ventured out to Birmingham with our friends Liz and Tim to the Christmas Market. We hit crazy traffic in the town center trying to find a parking garage. And then we found the parking garage, parked, and got ready to walk out when Christopher shut the trunk and then a string of explicatives came bursting out of his mouth. He locked the keys in the trunk.

We called the AA (their version of AAA) and waited for an hour til they showed up. We walked around the market while we waited and then the guys went to meet the AA guy. Liz and I ventured around and finally decided to go and see how they were getting along. Luckily we did because they were trying to unlock my car all wrong (its a push button thing instead of pulling it to unlock.. Saturn's are weird). So, after trying to unlock the door with a long, metal coat hanger looking thing, and then trying to pop the trunk for what felt like forever in the freezing parking garage, to no avail, the AA guy gave up and left. And we were left trying to figure out what to do.

We ended up grabbing some dinner and walking around the rest of the market before heading to the train station. We found out to get a ticket from Birmingham to Huntingdon, we'd have to go through London and our tickets would cost about £60 EACH (that's like almost $100) and there were 4 of us. Not cool. So, we checked with a cab company and found out they would only charge us £120 (about $200). MUCH better. Plus, instead of getting to Huntingdon at 1am, we got back at 10:30... which ended up giving the boys enough time to head back to get the car before the garage closed.

Let me just tell you a little bit about the car ride back. We were serenaded by the most ridiculous hip hop and pop music from the 90's & early 2000's. It was like being in High School again. Seriously. It was hilarious. And so unbelievably random. Bouncing around between Aqua's "Barbie Girl" to Lauryn Hill to Usher to 50 cent. And the driver blasted it. It was... interesting. Liz and I just kept looking at each other and laughing.

Needless to say, it was an interesting/stressful day. We had a decent time at the Market, but we were all a little, um, irritated. I'm holed up in our bedroom with a glass of wine, two space heaters (we STILL have no heat), and Sex and the City while Christopher goes to rescue the car.

The lesson for today? Always have spare keys with you.

Veterans Day

Today, November 11th, I salute and thank all of our Military members... past and present. I thank each and every one of you for your sacrifice, honor, and love of our Country. Without the dedication of our military members, the US wouldn't be the amazing place it is today! I'm proud to be an american and the Wife and Daughter of a veteran!