Category Archives: Travel
Family Camping Trip in Canada: Jasper + video
Family Camping Trip in Canada: Calgary & Banff
Quick Utah Trip (in Feb…) for my Grandma’s Funeral
“Christmas” Vacation in Atlanta for New Years
A couple of my siblings have work schedules that make vacation time around Christmas a little difficult so sometimes we can’t all get together until the first week of January. This was one of those years. Since my parents moved to Atlanta 10 years ago, we usually change where we go for “Christmas” each year. Some years we have done destination locations, but most of the time we go to someone’s house, since we are all spread out across the country. We have actually come to Seattle more than any other location. This year we decided to go to my parent’s house in Atlanta, since this is the last Christmas they will spend there before they retire and move to Seattle this summer/fall. (Yay!!!!!) It was Vu’s first time going to Atlanta, and it’s a good thing he made it before they left, as both my mother and his mother like to point out. We flew nonstop from Seattle to Atlanta on Friday and UW was playing in the final four the next day in Atlanta, so there was a lot of UW spirit on the plane, including a tailgate party at the gate before boarding and a camera crew talking to fans as they boarded. I think 80% of the passengers were in purple.
We had a relaxing week, hanging out and playing lots of games. We got Chick-fil-a as much as possible since they are everywhere in Georgia, and I am still waiting for the one and only one we have in Bellevue to not have a huge line. Probably not going to happen.
We had a pretty low key New Year’s Eve. Rachel and Andrew went to the UW football game. We slept in (hello West Coast time and recovering from colds that unpleasantly messed up our heads all week thanks to the flight), watched “The Lord of the Rings” and played games until we watched the ball drop with some sparkling cider. It was my first New Years actually spent on the East Coast.
California Phamily Reunion
Last week we went down to Los Angeles for a family reunion with Vu’s family. We flew out Tuesday night and got in pretty late. Wednesday was a really relaxed day, we slept in and then went to lunch with Vu’s cousin Hanh, who was kind enough to let us stay at her house. That evening there was a pool party and Vu’s aunt made some Vietnamese food. Afterwards we went to get ice cream at Cauldron where they use liquid nitrogen to freeze the ice cream and you can get it in a puffle cone. It was so good!
Europe: Aggstein, Vienna and Budapest + a video
On Thursday morning we were planning on driving straight to Vienna, but after seeing the castles and pretty drive along the river the night before we decided to drive back along in the daylight and stop at Castle Aggstein. I am so glad we did this, the castle was one of my favorite things. It is maintained in a sort of crumbling state, and I love castle ruins. It is also built up on the top of one of the hills and right into a rock. We had so much fun exploring the castle ruins.
Europe: Germany, Austria and Czech Republic
Friday was the day of Thomas and Nicole’s wedding. They had the ceremony in the late morning, and then we all headed up to the reception which took place at a ski resort in the mountains. It was such a beautiful area, and I loved the hotel where the reception was. It was so fun and had so much character. I loved that for the couple’s first dance they did the Viennese waltz. It was so fun to see how our wedding traditions differ.
Europe: Paris, Lake Como & Switzerland
When our good family friend, Thomas, got engaged last year, my family knew we had to fly out for the wedding to celebrate with him and his new wife, Nicole. Thomas and Nicole are from Germany, and we thought we would add of few more countries into our trip as well… 🙂 I went to Italy and Switzerland with Rachel, then to Germany for the wedding and to Austria, Czech Republic and Hungary with more of the family. Paris wasn’t on the planned agenda, but I couldn’t go back to Europe and not go to Paris, so I left a day before Rachel and spent one very quick, long and exhausting but great day in Paris before flying to meet her in Milan. My flight to Paris landed at 9:00am and the plan was to have slept the whole way from Seattle to Paris, one reason I intentionally got a direct flight, but I ended up not being able to sleep at all. That was fun. By the time I made it through customs, took the RER from the airport to my hotel and dropped off my luggage it was almost noon. I could feel my precious time ticking away standing in line at the airport. I didn’t make any really solid plans for my time there, I just wanted to be able to wander around the streets, enjoying being in my favorite city in the world! It felt so surreal being back for the first time in 14 years. I have missed it so much!
Video: Our Trip to Orlando
For Christmas Vu bought me a new camera and one of the features it has is video. I was so excited about this because I have been interested in taking video’s of our vacations and things for a few years now. I was able to try it out on our trip to Orlando and then I spent the last 2 weeks figuring out how to get the footage that I had taken into a video I could share. I have really enjoyed learning about this. However, I am very, very aware that I have A LOT to learn. Despite the very obvious flaws I can see in this video I still really love it, it is so fun to be able to relive our vacation a little bit. And I can’t wait to continue to improve my skills. Especially for my trip to Europe in May. 🙂
You can tell I really love fireworks too! 🙂 For the ones at Epcot (with the lake), the spot we were watching them from had a firework go off right in front of us. It really surprised me the first time. You can see it a couple of times in the video.
Also, I didn’t learn how to choose the quality of image recorded until after I got back… so yeah… that could be better. Next time!
Becky Jael 