Our Sunny and Surgical Summer

Me and my Grandma Zinn!

          To celebrate the good news we recently went on a trip to California to visit my grandparents and go to the Happiest Place on Earth: Disneyland! We drove from Rexburg, Idaho to San Jose, California in one long day. We had to go through the desert at midday with our A/C deciding when it would like to work, which was not very often! We were so glad to make it to my Grandma and Grandpa Zinn's house in San Jose. The weather was amazing!

          Our first full day there we took a trip to San Fransisco. We crossed the Golden Gate Bridge and went to Fisherman's Warf. At the warf we found a fish and chip shop that was owned by an actual Brit! I thought it was great. Nathan thought there was something to be desired. Anyway we just walked along the warf and looked at shops. One place we saw had a bunch of really old coin operated pier games. We both got 50 cents to spend on a game. I got a fortune from an old woman in a box and Nathan spent his on watching two executions! Those were so strange it was kinda funny.

Fisherman's Wharf

          On our way back from San Fran we stopped into the Redwoods to meet up with Nathan's cousins for dinner. We had a great time talking with them and I learned even more about cute little baby Nathan. :) We really enjoyed the pictures they showed us of Nathan's family back in the day. They were so welcoming and nice. I love meeting Nathan's extended family. They are always so kind.

         Our second day we went to Santa Cruz with my Aunt and cousins. The water was freezing but it was still lots of fun! I liked watching Stephen teach Nathan how to skim board. Stephen was really good at it. Nathan was ... not quite as good :) When we got back we realized it was pioneer day and a tradition in the Zinn family is to make homemade butter. We had to shake a jar til our arms hurt but there were lots of us so we shared the burden. The butter was super yummy when we were done! The last day we were able to spend just hanging out with my Grandma. It was really fun. She took me shopping for maternity clothes and now I am all set! The next day we set off for Fresno, CA. 

The Haunted Mansion at Disneyland

         In Fresno we were able to see my Grandma and Grandpa Shaw. My Grandma was still in the nursing facility and had some kind of virus recently so when we went to visit her I had to stay out in the hallway because I was pregnant and they didn't want me to get sick. I was glad to visit them both though. I love them lots! We also got to hang out with my Aunt, Uncle, and cousins that live in the area, the Hueys. They took good care of us. 

       After Fresno we went to one of my favorite places ever.... Disneyland! We went for two days and it was really fun! I couldn't go on a few rides because of the baby but that's why Disneyland is so great because I still got to go on a lot of the rides. Although, the ride Soar'n made me pretty motion sick! :) While at Disneyland Nathan got a call saying his surgery had been moved from the next monday to this coming friday! We weren't planning on being in Rexburg again til next sunday so we had to get home faster than we had hoped so we had to cut our visits to Julia Meservy in Vegas and to the Fischers in Heber very short! I was pretty disappointed but they didn't have another opening at the hospital for weeks after so we had to make it to Heber, UT the next day! That meant driving through the desert again at midday! So HOT!!!!!! Oh my gosh! The A/C wasn't working again so I just chewed ice the entire drive from Anaheim to Heber. We did get to stop and meet Julia and Joe Meservy for lunch. It was so fun to see Julia so pregnant! She looked so cute! 

The Happiest Place on EARTH!

        We finally made it to Heber pretty late that night and could only stay til the morning but I did get to tell the Fischers I was pregnant in person which I had been trying to arrange since we found out! They are always so good to us when we visit, too bad we couldn't stay longer. We had to leave at 9 in the morning to get to Rexburg in time for Nathan's pre-surgery appointment. 

        

OUCH! (Nath made me
post this sad picture)

        On Friday Nath had the surgery. It took 6 hours and then he had to stay the night at the hospital. He was pretty loopy still when we took him to Rachel and Josh's house til our apartment was ready to move into. I was so grateful for Rachels help during the day! Nathan was in bed for days and was on about 6 different medications he needed at different times of the day. It was a lot of work but Rachel is an excellent smoothie maker which helped Nathan get through those first terrible days. 

     
      Now Nathan feeling pretty good considering it's been about a week and a half. He gets better everyday. Because he is on liquids and soft foods our blender has been used more than ever. I wouldn't be surprised if it just gave up on us soon! (Written August 12th, 2013)

We're Preggo!

             I’m PREGNANT! Nathan and I are now expecting our first child. We are so excited! I am only about 6 weeks pregnant so its still very new. I found out I was pregnant Tuesday, May 21, 2013. A few days before, I had felt the symptoms I believed to be PMS, so I was pretty sure I was not pregnant. How very wrong I was. I took the pregnancy test while Nathan was at class because I was sure it would be negative I just wanted to be 100% sure. I did what needs to be done and I saw the positive line appear. I could not stop staying “holy crap, holy crap, holy crap!” I could not believe it. I was so excited! 

             I was supposed to meet Nathan in just an hour for devotional but I wanted to tell him I was pregnant in a cool way. I decided on what I wanted to do but I needed more time so I had to sit through devotional without telling Nathan I was expecting. It was so hard! It seemed like everything he said was a perfect lead into… “I’m pregnant!” , like “How’s the weather?” and “Man, I miss Preston.” See how tempting it was! Anyways, I managed to keep it together until the end of Devo. 

             I went home and began baking a cake. When the cake was done I began writing, “We are Pregnant!” but the cake was smaller than I thought so it became, “We’re Preggo!” When Nathan got home we ate dinner and then I told him I made dessert. I pulled the cake out of the freezer (he might have seen it earlier if it was in the fridge) and I handed him the cake. The cursive “We’re Preggo!” was a little hard to see on the cake but he got it pretty quick. He said, “Really?!?” then he hugged me. We are so excited! (I wrote this post when I was 6 weeks pregnant I just didn't get around to posting it til now)

We did not eat the part of the cake touched by the pregnancy test!

Ein Wunderbares Ende

          We drove all the way from Venice to Frankfurt in one day. It was a 14 hour drive. It’s hard to do those long drives when we spend the whole day previously walking around all day. Well it’s okay because we did get to Frankfurt with literally no more money for gas. We went without food that day because we didn’t have enough money. We were so tired and hungry when we arrived at Nathan’s parents’ house, but they took good care of us. It was so nice to be looked after for a while. We had spent the last month not knowing where we were going to sleep or what to eat. It was really nice to not have to worry about that for a week. First thing the next morning we did our massive amount of laundry. It took quite a while, but the weather was good enough to dry the clothes outside. We were taken on a shopping trip to ‘Lidl’ where Nath’s parents bought us whatever our hearts desired and then some. My hearts desire was a chocolate treat called, ‘Duplo.’ They are one of my many favorite chocolates from Europe. 

It has been so long that I am not sure of the order of events, but I know we did the following things: We walked around most of Frankfurt with Nathans mum, Luz, in search of a tower that we could ride to the top that overlooked Frankfurt. We were lost for ages but it was really fun touring the city. We did find the tower and the view from the top was pretty amazing. It was really just fun to be spending some time with Luz alone. Nathan said that he heard stories from his mum that he hadn’t known before. It was a really great day.

Another day in Germany we went to Heidelberg. It is this fabulous city a few hours drive from Frankfurt. We went up this crazy steep hill on the most rickety old train that was pulled up by one cable. It was pretty terrifying but gorgeous when you get to the top. Nathan and I have never seen so many spectacular views in such a short few months. The view from the top of Heidelberg was one of the best. There is also a castle about halfway up the hill that we stopped at. Nathan’s dad, John, told us how in the castle there is a really big barrel. He said that we would think that we saw the big barrel, but it isn’t the big barrel, the big one is much bigger than the small ones up front. True to his word, we saw a really big barrel and thought it was the biggest one, but just around the corner was a ridiculously large barrel. It was so big we climbed quite a few steps up to get on top of it. Crazy big barrel. 

           Our last big outing was my favorite. We went to Rudesheim along the Rhine river with both John and Luz. It was a life goal come true. I have always wanted to take a boat ride on the Rhine, since taking 4 years of German and learning about it. It was just as beautiful as I had hoped. We rode the boat up the river a ways and got off at our stop. We had a quick treat, ice cream and hot chocolate (Nath’s parents are so good to us!), and had lovely conversations. I love hearing stories about Nathan when he was younger.

Next we got on a ski lift type of thing that took us up to the top of this mountain along the Rhine. This view really might have been my favorite. It was so surreal to be doing something like this. As we rode up to the top we teased John by raising the safety bar. I think we found it more funny than he did. Once at the top we walked along a trail that would take us back to where we started. It was a lovely tree covered area, with outlooks at the most beautiful views.  At the end of the trail there is a much safer looking gondola that takes you back down to the bottom over oceans of vineyards. Gorgeous. As we rode down Nathan and I looked out over this beautiful place realizing this was our last day in mainland Europe. We were to fly out the next morning. It was sad to say goodbye to the most beautiful places I have ever been to, but it was lucky that we still had three weeks in England when we returned. It was a perfect end to our little adventure around Europe.

Our Day on the Water

               We arrived at our hotel just outside Venice after a long day of driving. We booked our hotel the day before and when we made it there and knocked on the door for 10 minutes or so and no one came! We went to the store further down the building complex and asked the owner of the store if he knew if the B&B was still open or where the owner was. He looked at us like we were crazy and told us to just wait. We didn't wait much longer when the owner showed up and told us in the two words of English he knew... “no space!” We tried explaining that we booked it online and it was confirmed. He looked it up and sure enough we had a space but he had given it away! Ah! It's already 9pm! He walked over to the store we had just went to with the store owner who thinks we are retarded. They talked for a bit and then the B&B owner motioned for us to go with the store owner. Really?! That guy doesn't like us! Where are we going?! Well we followed him anyway just across the street to what we guess is the store owners hotel. We got a room at his place for the same price! Oh good! Another mini heart attack survived. :)

             The next morning we took the bus into VENICE! Who knew you could take a bus? There is just one bridge over to the island. We decided not to get a map so we could just wander and get lost in Venice. So we just began walking toward bridge after bridge. Nathan's favorite architectural things are bridges so he was loving Venice. There were many bridges but not all the streets are water. A lot of the streets were just very narrow stone paths between many 3 or 4 story buildings. It was just like a maze. We would walk all the way down one street only to turn the corner and realise it was just a dead end... of water. So funny. We did know that eventually we wanted to get to the main square so we just wandered about looking out for signs for it. As we walked past thousands of stores we noticed a pattern. The shops mainly sold two things: Vanician masks and glass. We tried on some masks in a few shops but quickly realised that the owners did NOT like you to take pictures. One guy told us to erase the picture.... we ran. :)

              We had some lunch at this awesome kabab place. It was very cheap and delicious. Win! After being fed we made it to the square. It was pretty cool. It was big and open with a really nice cathedral. The cathedral had a cool interior - gold mosaics from floor to ceiling. Out in the square there were thousands of pigeons! I guess it's a thing for people to put food on their heads and let birds attack their skulls. Nathan tried to get me to do it – yeah right! I have learned to hate pigeons. The “Rats of the Sky,” Nathan calls them.

            
             We spent the afternoon taking cool pictures and just having a great time. We had to sneak into restaurants to use the bathroom because the public toilets cost 1.50! We also somehow kept ending up at the main square! I would think we were walking the opposite direction and then we would end up in the square again! Crazy.







              For dinner we decided we wanted that same kabab place so we went back to where we started the day and retraced our steps so that we could find the same place, otherwise we would have never found it. We stayed til night just to look around and before anyone asks, no, we did not go on a gondola ride. They were outrageously expensive plus now we will have something new to do when we come back for our 50^th anniversary. Venice- Another success!

Rome day 2

View from the dome on the top of the Vatican

St. Peter's foot being rubbed smooth

Day 2 in Roma began with a visit to the Vatican. It was spectacularly large and full of amazing sculptures. We have seen many great chapels but this one scores really high. They had the option of an audio tour that they said focused on the spiritual aspects of the cathedral and a real tour that talked more about the architecture of it. I thought it was interesting that anyone could only appreciate the building for its architecture when the spiritual side of it all was the reason that it was even built. I find it really cool to learn about other religions and why they do things. It is funny though that sometimes religions, including our own, don't even know why they are doing something. For example, people were queueing up to rub the foot of a statue of Saint Peter and when we asked the man watching the statue why, he said it's just tradition.

Inside the Vatican

After having a look at the inside we decided to make the climb up to the very top of the dome. It cost more for an elevator up so we walked the 550 stairs, just like we did at the Eiffel Tower. It was hard because the stairs kept getting steeper and smaller. The dome obviously tilts inward so the walls to our left as we climbed kept curving in on us. Well lets just say if you are an ounce overweight you couldn't get up these intense stairs. Good thing Nath and I are SO fit! Anyway, we finally got up to the top and the view was worth all the leg cramps we suffered for the next few days. View of Rome from on the top of Vatican. Like!
Next we took a break at a McDonalds for some lunch. The worker there was crazy. He was under the impression that we would have to pay to have ketchup packets with our meals. Outrageous! Well, after a ridiculously ketchup-free meal we made our way to the biggest green spot on our map.


The park was nice and big and had tourist trap bicycles for rent. Did we fall for that? Nope. We came across some Segways for rent as well and kinda did that thing like... “Do you want to?” “Oh, I don't know...Do you?” “Well, maybe but... I don't know.” Then I saw Nathan looking at them just as longingly as I was. Sold. We jumped on our Segways and enjoyed the ride. You see, we only have had three movies with us on this month long trip. One being a personal favourite, Paul Blart: Mall Cop. In this movie Kevin James is on a Segway 90% of the time. It was great to try a Segway out for ourselves. We did our best Paul Blart impression and did various synchronised routines too. They are really fun and pretty quick. We both marveled at how no one really has one. But all we would have to do is look at each other to know the reason why. Everyone looks so ridiculous on them! We couldn't watch each other ride one without laughing out loud, or LOLing, if you will. :)
Enjoy the video below of our sweet moves on the Segways-

Hundreds of locks all over the bridge

As I mentioned in the day 1 blog, Lovers often come to the Castle Saint Angelo bridge with a lock that has both persons name on it and attach the lock to the bridge and throw the keys into the water signifying their love is forever. We walked our way back toward Castle Saint Angelo looking for a lock that we could fasten to the bridge just outside of the Castle. The walk was once again fabulous. It was so fun wandering the streets of Rome at dusk. Everything is just so lovely. Just before the bridge we found a vendor selling locks. Done. We realized though that we didn't have a sharpie to write on it with. We asked someone and they were more than willing to help. He must have loved the idea of the “love locks” because he was very kind and helpful. It seemed like everyone believes in the magic of Rome. We wrote our names and the year on the lock. We found a good spot on the bridge to fasten our small lock and made a video of the occasion. It was just going dark as we fastened the lock and through the keys in the river. So romantic!
The night was still young so we headed for Trevi Fountain. This site was what I was most excited to see so when we got close Nathan covered my eyes and took me all the way to the front of it. I opened my eyes and there it was. So lovely! We threw a coin in which is said to mean that you will come back to Rome. I hope so I absolutely loved it! By the end of day 2, Rome had been our favourite place to visit. Oh how I wish things could end there but alas there is a little bit more...

Nathan with roses in his backpack at the Trevi Fountain

We loitered around the city a bit after seeing the Fountain because everything just looks cooler at night. Well because of our meandering we decided to just take a later train than we had planned. Well when we got the the train station at about 11, the place was deserted. Just one man sitting at what we thought was our platform. We asked him about the trains and he said, “Fini.” I don't know very much Italian but I know what that means...Done! Over! Final!... or in our case, You are DOOMED!
We had missed the last train out of Rome. We were staying outside of Rome to save a little money so walking was out of the question. Nathan quickly came up with a good plan: take the metro as far North as we can (because we knew that was the general direction we would want), then take a cab and pray we had enough money on us to pay the cab driver. So we headed off for the metro, but soon found out our tickets that last for 108 minutes had just barely run out so we would have to purchase another ticket... yeah that wasn't going to happen. I won't post on the internet about breaking the law. You can fill in the details... Next we were on a metro heading north.

We only had 50 Euros with us so we were nervous about the cost of a taxi. We got off the metro as far north as we could then asked the man in the ticket office about taxis. He gave us a look that was very somber and said “Expensive!” At this point we had come to face the fact that we may have to give up our first born son to a taxi driver just to get home. There was a taxi waiting just outside the station. When we asked him how much to get back to our “hotel,” he said 20 Euros! We asked again just in case, but sure enough it cost only 20 to get back. Miracle! We got back fine and life is good. Heading to Venice the very next day.

Rome day 1

 

Inside the Colosseum

We took the train into Rome our first morning. It only cost 1€ and it was about a 30 min ride. Bargain! (I know I say 'bargain' a lot and one might be thinking that our trip has been cheaper than we thought. This is not so sadly. With the expensive tolls and massive amounts of European chocolate required we are just about on target.) We got onto the train not sure when to get off to get to our first stop, the Colosseum! I waited as Nathan walked along the train listening for someone speaking English. He couldn't hear anyone speaking it but he did hear something tell him to talk to a certain woman. He took a chance, and asked her if she knew English. She did! She began telling him how to get there when other people began to join in, trying to help. Most didn't speak English so she translated them for Nathan. After turning some woman down who offered to have us follow her around Rome, we followed one of their directions and made it to the Colosseum. It was right next to the underground. It was amazing!

This was the one place Nathan was really excited to see, you may even call it his Eiffel Tower :) First thing we did was go souvenir crazy. There are so many vendors selling little things around all the big tourist spots. We bought a bracelet for me, it has a picture of the Colosseum and says I heart Roma! We also got a magnet of the Colosseum for 2€, and 10 postcards for 1€! I know what you are thinking... Bargain! :)

The line was so long to get in if you just want to walk around it. We wanted the audio tour so we skipped the hour long line and payed 5 Euros more to listen to the audio. Worth it to pay the money just to skip the line, or queue, as some people might say. :) The inside was just amazing! The stadium was really well thought out. They had numbered sections to sit in just like we do now. It is crazy to see this place in real life and think about how many people were killed here in the craziest ways. Death by hippo! Dang!

Laying on an ancient Roman pillar

Right next to the Colosseum is a section of ancient Rome that has been preserved. We were able to walk around this pretty massive section of Rome that has always just been there. It had these cool Roman looking trees, thousands of carved stones, pieces of old columns and things just lying about. It was so interesting to be somewhere truly ancient!

Panthenon

We got lost, yet again, trying to get out of ancient Rome. When we finally made it out we decided the Metro was useless, they were no where near any tourist spots, so we walked! I am so glad we did. We walked by some of the coolest things. We didn't always know what the places were called, only that they were amazing. The whole city is just adorable and old. We went into the Panthenon. It was this cool circular church that has a huge hole in the ceiling. I wonder what they do when it rains?

Fountain and Obelisk

We then made it to a square that had thousands of artist painting and selling their artwork. There was of course a huge fountain and obleisk in the center. I think every important building or place in Rome has a fountain and oblesisk in front. Here we stopped for some gelato. The man outside his shop claimed that he had the best gelati in the universe. Well who can pass that up?! It was really really good, but we soon found out how outrageous his claim was because we stumbled upon hundreds of other gelati shops soon after.


One of our favorite parts of the day was walking down this tiny street. It had lots of really cool specialty shops on the cute cobblestone road. We felt like locals just out for a walk. The buildings were so tall on either side it was almost claustraphobic. It was pretty fun. We took that road to Castle Saint Angelo. It's a really interesting building, almost just like one big castle tower. On the bridge leading to it we saw the locks that Micol was telling us about in Como. She said that a movie started the tradition that young couples come to the bridge with a lock. They write their names on both sides of the lock and lock it to the bridge wall and throw the key into the river symboling that they will be together forever. I am a bit of a romantic so I wanted to come back at sunset the next day and do it because we didn't have time to do it now. We were on our way to the Vatican!

Locks on the bridge

 We walked over to the Vatican and just stood in the square in front of it that of course had a fountain and oblisk. Love those things. We just looked at the outside because of another forever long line to get inside. We decided to go in first thing the next day. Walking around Rome all day made us all tuckered out so we headed for the train station. We rode back having finished our first day in the Eternal City!

Au revoir France, Ciao Itay!

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The beach!!

We made our way to Marseille the next day. It was supposed to take 5 hours but instead took 8! Traffic was pretty bad. Luckily Nathan had bought me a movie to watch in the car. Baby Mama! I love that movie and I am quite excited to own it now... in french. Haha! It of course has the english version too :)

We made it to Marseille, a french city by the sea. We got there so late we couldn't go to the beach. We just headed straight for the hotel, kind of, we got lost along the way. The G.P.S. we have is good for getting us to a general area but a specific point is near impossible for it. This was my first hostel experience. It was really small and the bathrooms were shared and down the hall. Good times.

We woke up bright and early and headed down to the beach for a bit. There were a lot of surfers out on the waves. It renewed my desire to become a pro surfer. One day.... 

Super fancy casino in Monte Carlo

On our drive we stopped off in Monte Carlo/ Monaco! It was so cool. The whole city is just dripping with money. The cars, the buildings, and the people are all very fancy. We ate at a pretty nice place for lunch. Little did we know we would get charged for drinking water! Ridiculous!  We also drove the formula one race circuit while making squealing car noises.

We drove again that day continuing to make our way to Como, Italy. I met Nathans second cousin, Will and Wills girlfriend Micol at the family holiday in Knowle Manor. Micol is Italian and lives in Como, Italy. We made our way there to spend a night with Micol and her mother. We arrived later than we thought, as usual! Micol's mother, Stefania, made us a traditional Italian meal. It was delicious! They were absolutely wonderful hosts! Micol helped us decide how to get down to Rome, our next stop. The trains were really expensive so we decided to drive. They helped us find a good route through Florence! We spent the night at their house and the next morning Micol took us around Lake Como. There were lots of mansions and other neat houses along the shore. We even saw George Clooney's house on that drive. We went back to their house for lunch before taking off. Stefania made us a tasty pasta. I have to get that recipe! It was all so very good. We were sad to go. They were such great company.

Lake Como

The drive to Rome took quite a long time. It was supposed to take 5 hours but took 8 again. Oh dear! We arrived at our next hotel... turned out to be a campsite and we were in a shed that had just enough room for a bed. Haha! That's what we get for paying 30 Eros a night. :) It was not so bad in the end. We just needed a place to rest our little heads while spending the next two days exploring ROMA!

Stefania, Me, Micol

Stefania, Nathan, Micol