I nostri hotel in Italia

Jonny and I are terrible, and I mean TERRIBLE, at planning and organizing. Whenever I've been in charge of planning travel, I've always taken a fly by the seat of your pants approach, and Jonny is the same if not worse. It makes for fun and adventurous trips, but it also means that we might be left scrambling at the last minute to find a place to stay. We took this pre-marital counseling class, and we were told that we were probably going to struggle caring for plants, animals, and children. We've got a few plants in our house that are still alive right now, so things are looking pretty good for us. 

Anyways, I say all that so that you'll be massively impressed that we've booked all of our hotels for our trip to Italy, and we have an itinerary of which cities we'll be going to. This is seriously unheard-of for us. And to top it all off, I've already started packing my suitcase (something I usually start to do the night before we leave or the morning we're supposed to go to the airport). As I've been packing, I've been thinking about how beautiful all of the places we're staying are going to be. 

Our hotel in Sorrento for Louise's wedding

The place we're staying in Roma for a few days

I couldn't find a great picture of our hotel in Firenze, but I hope this is the view from there

My sister is joining us for Firenze and Siena, and I'm really excited about our Siena b&b

Our gorgeous hotel in Venezia, which will probably be the nicest place I've ever stayed

I hated when Jonny was traveling back and forth to Toronto every week and living out of a hotel, and I would trade a million stays in fancy hotels to have had him here in San Francisco that whole time. But we're getting to stay in some fancy schmancy hotels on this trip for absolutely free, which is a truly amazing perk. 

I can't wait for our Italian adventures! We leave on Friday!

Eight.

Last night, Jonny and I rode our tandem through the Mission stopping at our favorite places to celebrate what we thought was our nine month anniversary. About midway through the night, we realized it had actually only been eight months since we got married. Luckily, that realization only encouraged our celebration, and we decided to make sure we hit eight different places for drinks and food and treats.

Here's where we went and what we had (clockwise from left): 

1. A cheese flight, macaroni, and beers at Mission Cheese

2. A savory pie at Mission Pie

3. A margarita to share at Latin American Club

4. A "Sexy Beast" cocktail at Foreign Cinema to share

-- chalkboard drawing done at Monk's Kettle --

5. Market shots at Frances

6. An ice cream sandwich at BiRite Creamery (we didn't want to wait in line!)

7. An Affligem split into two glasses at Monk's Kettle

8. Chicken Tikka at Pakwan

If this is just eight months, I can't wait for nine! 

Champions

 I'm proud to say that I married into co-captaining a soccer team, Atlantic Bridge, and our championship game was this past Monday night. Actually, the way the championship is structured in the league we play in actually required us to play and win in the semi finals an hour before the championship match. We were tied at the whistle of the semi final, and the game went into overtime, but just a minute into the overtime Seni scored our golden goal. 

Someone on our team said after the first game that it was the best moment of their adult sports career, and I actually think that's true (although my comparisons can only include indoor soccer and half marathons that I only ran three miles in training for). We went on to the championship super pumped, and we won!

 After the game, we went to Zeitgeist for dinner, beers, celebrations, and an awards show run by the amazing Blake Glidden. I'm hoping that Brian's award keeps its place on the Zeitgeist wall. All in all, it was just about the best way I can think of spending a Monday night. 

We're now reigning champions until the new season starts on Monday! 

All photo credits thanks to the lovely star player and team mom, Caroline Gilligan.

Really liking Cults

I don't really like cults (the people groups with bizarre ideas about when the world is going to end), but I do really like Cults (the East Village based duo featured above).

If anyone has any experience sneaking into shows, I'm thinking about sneaking into either their sold out show or their private show in San Francisco next month. We'll have to make our plans offline though so their security doesn't find out about us! :)

Today it is Summer

I'm really sad that I didn't get to be with my dad to celebrate him today, but it was a beautiful happy summer day in San Francisco. Top down in the convertible, crepes at a table on the sidewalk, picnic and crazy crazy people watching in Dolores park, helping Pat and Caitlyn move in (3 blocks away from us!), and a run through the Mission made for an excellent Sunday. 

My sister is so cool

That's an ostrich you see her riding! Outside of Nairobi. She is so cool and I am so jealous and sad that I'm not there with her.

Pollock's Toy Museum

I took an hour last week in London to visit Pollock's Toy Museum by Goodge Street. It is a fascinating place, with a windy staircase and rooms piled with old toys. Fascinating, and also terrifying. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who had nightmares about Toy Story, but I found the old toys and toys from around the world really interesting. If you're not prone to toy nightmares, you should definitely go next time you're in London.

If you're interested, you can find more information about Pollock's here!

Foot Tennis in St. Pancras

 We met some friends for dinner at St. Pancras last Tuesday, and outside the restaurant where we ate, there was a tennis net. I'm still unclear on why it was there, but we took advantage and pulled it out to play a little game of foot tennis after dinner. Somehow it turned out to be four on one, but Sebastien, the one, managed to hold his own. I think Lenny and Kasia ended up claiming the winnings and going home with the giant pink tennis ball. 

Loving on Liberty London

I LOVE Liberty in London. It is my very favorite store to browse in this city (second place goes to Zara Home - why don't we have this in the US?!)

Back to Liberty. To put it in terms of San Francisco stores, it is like Anthropologie meets Britex Fabrics meets Barneys meets Flax Art and Design. There are so many beautiful things and so many levels and so many hidden rooms that you could spend all day in there.

I went on a two hour walk yesterday afternoon after working in order to keep my eyes open and stay up past 6pm. I was so exhausted that I couldn't even think about trying on clothes, but I walked to Liberty anyways just because it's such a beautiful place. I also couldn't think about taking pictures (plus I only had my phone - no camera because it was in our lost luggage), so these all came off of the Liberty website. I am going back there later this trip, and hopefully I'll have my camera in tow then so I can show what the store looks like, not just the products. 

Good Morning London!

Good morning from London! Jonny's company wanted him to come out for a few days for a project, and he managed to negotiate for me to come too. We found out we were going on Friday, flew out on Monday, and surprise, here we are! We actually did surprise Margaret, Jonny's mom, by knocking on the door of their house at about 7:45am this morning. She had no idea we were going to be here, and it was so fun to show up and see her reaction. 

I was acting like a tourist with my iPhone this morning, so these pictures are the result of that. It's 5:58am in San Francisco as I write this, but it's 1:58pm here in London. I'm going off about 2 hours of sleep and three cups of coffee, and I'm really starting to struggle to keep my eyes open. I'm going to do my best to focus my energy for the next few hours, though, and hopefully I'll be bright eyed and bushy tailed by tomorrow.  Maybe I'll have more iPhone pictures to share by then. 

Sunday Brunch

Ashley and Josh had us over this weekend for an amazing Sunday brunch! As per usual, my iPhone pictures don't do justice to the real deal. They had a beautiful spread of prosciutto, scrambled eggs with siracha, grilled asparagus, and tomatoes. Ashley also made a strawberry cake from Smitten Kitchen (the food blog that never ever disappoints!)

I wish I had more pictures from the weekend. We celebrated Caitlin's birthday at Locanda on Friday (which I actually do have pictures from - coming soon!), we went to Elixer to celebrate after dinner, then Lydia hosted another amazing brunch on Saturday, followed by Nick's birthday sloshball celebration in Golden Gate park.

Sunday was my half birthday, and I like to make a very big deal about half birthdays. Maybe it stems from having a December birthday that couldn't be celebrated with a pool party, but I love love love half birthdays. After brunch, we went to a Spanish wine and tapas festival, then Jonny surprised me by organizing dinner Sunday night with friends at a restaurant right around the corner from us (which actually meant more tapas plus sangria!) It made for such a fun Sunday night, and I'm so thankful that I have friends who would celebrate such a holiday with me. 

Santa Cruisin

I mentioned last week that I was really getting into Airbnb. Well, we decided to try it out this weekend and spend a night in Santa Cruz. We were hardly gone more than 24 hours, but it sure felt like a mini vacation. We wogged (walk/jog combo) on Sunday morning to the beach, had an amazing brunch, and spent the afternoon at the beach and the Santa Cruz boardwalk, where we enjoyed both dippin dots AND fried oreos.

On our drive home, we took our time going up hwy 1, and we stopped at a strawberry farm that was all picked out of strawberries sadly! We then saw a sign that said "Slow down for pie" and stopped at a place called Pie Ranch, which was also out of pie. Even though we didn't get to pick berries or eat pie, it was a beautiful drive and a beautiful day! 

A Gigantaur Sandwich by Jonny

I had meant to have lots of fun weekend pictures up by now, but I haven't had a chance to go through them yet. How do real bloggers do it? Seriously. I need an extra four hours tacked onto my day. 

Anyways, what you get today is a gigantaur sandwich that Jonny made. After he made it and before he was about to eat it, he actually asked for me to take a picture of it and feature it on the b-l-o-g. I'm no food stylist and my iPhone is no SLR, but I think it still looks pretty good. I also like how Jonny's hand is moving so fast as he's eating it that it looks ghosted. 

Happy Wednesday! More pictures to come soon! xo