So long Seattle...

After 5 years, tomorrow Seattle will no longer be my home and I'm moving back to Hawaii.  I always knew I wanted to move back eventually, but I never thought it would be with my husband to-be and that we would move back together to get married and start a family.  I am one lucky girl.

This week was jammed pack with lunches, dinners, and saying our good-byes.  Dan and I are truly blessed with the friends and family that we have here in Seattle.  We love all of you soooo much! 

Leaving Seattle is definitely bitter-sweet.  There are lots of things that I'll miss like our friends/family, my T-mobile family, our favorite places to eat, snowboarding, etc.  But I am very excited to start this new chapter of my life and see where it takes Dan and I.

Since a blog is so much better with pictures, here are a few Seattle pictures from the last 5 years...

My sissy

@ the JT Concert ;)

T-mobile team trip to Lake Chelan

The Girls

Our first summer together - 2008

PwC Golf Day: Olympic themed costumes + Drinking at 8am = No actual gold played

Sharky..he introduced Dan and I. I guess I kinda owe him, hehe.

Wendy: My bestie who came to visit me.

Our group of friends

This is one of my favorite Seattle pictures @ Kerry Park

My family @ Ray's (my favorite restaurant in Seattle)

I'll miss our weekend snowboarding adventures.

I love this picture of Sondra and I!

All dressed up for PwC's Holiday Party

So long Seattle..hope to see you again soon! :)

I ♥ San Sebastian

After Valencia, we headed to San Sebastian for three nights.  To get there we had to ride a bus for eight hours which I was totally dreading but it ended up not being that bad. 

I ♥ San Sebastian, it was my favorite city that we visited in Spain.  It was absolutely beautiful!  San Sebastian is known for its amazing beaches since it is on the coast of bay of biscay and for its food.  We ate the best food out of our whole trip here.  If you go there, you have to eat pintxos which is there version of tapas.  Pretty much every night, we went to several bars and ate pintxos.  Every bar has plates of bit size goodies on its bar (kinda like pupus).  All you have to do is ask the bartender for a plate, pick whatever you want to eat, show him the plate so they know what you took, and enjoy!  There was also pintxos that are made-to-order, like ox cheeks, pigs ear, foie gras, etc. 

Other than the food, we also enjoyed the beach.  The weather was perfect to spend each afternoon on the beach.  The water was a little cold but tolerable. 

If you go to Spain, I would highly recommend spending a day or two in San Sebastian.  It's a great city to have a relaxing couple of days since its a small with not a lot of 'touristy' sites. 

Yummy pintxos!

The bar counter with all the pintxos.

Panoramic view of the bay

Playa de la Concha



Streets in Old Town

Random old guys we met on our pintxos crawl, they were super nice and funny. hehe.





We ♥ San Sebastian

Next stop Barcelona, our last stop in Spain!

Home of Paella - Valencia, Spain

Our second stop in Spain was Valencia.  From Madrid, it was a quick two hour train ride.  We stayed there two nights so we really only had one full day there.  We arrived in Valencia around 2ish in the afternoon, so we were able to check into our hotel and walk around the city for a bit. 

Prior to leaving Seattle, Dan did some research and found out that Valencia CF had a game the first night we were going to be there.  He was super excited that we got tickets.

The stadium was HUGE! (also really old)

We bought a beer then realized that it was 0% alcohol. Booo!

Valencia CF won!

The next day we went to the City of Arts and Sciences.   We ended up going to the aquarium and to a paella festival.



The best aquarium that we've been to!

Valencia is the home of Paella and there was a paella festival going on that day.  We got two beers and a plate of paella for 6 euros, what a deal!

Look at that pan of paella!

We also went to the beach, but we didn't go in the water.  We just sat on the beach and enjoyed the scenery.

Of course, we couldn't leave Valencia without eating Paella Valenciana which is paella with chicken and rabbit.  To be honest the rabbit tasted like chicken.  It was very yummy though!

Next stop San Sebastian...







Madrid

After a ten hour flight to Amsterdam followed by a three hour flight, we arrived in Madrid.  We caught the bus and metro to our hotel, which was quite easy and I was very proud of myself since I was the one who looked up the directions. Gold star for me!

We stayed in Madrid for four nights and had three full days to explore the city.  We went to the Royal Palace, two museums (Museo Nacional Del Prado and Reina Sofia), saw a Flamenco dance, and went to Toledo for a day (it's about a hour away from Madrid).  We also had tapas twice at Mercado San Miguel, which was one of my favorite places in Madrid.  Anthony Bourdain featured this market on his show No Reservations.  It was amazing, the market was filled will vendors selling everything from jamon iberico to sushi.  We just wandered around the market, bought whatever looked yummy, found a table, and ate it. 

*side note: if you go to Spain you MUST try jamon iberico.  It is cured ham from the black hoofed pigs that only eats acorns.  It was the best ham I have ever ate in my life and it better be for about 90 bucks a pound.*

Now for the fun part, picture time!  Here are a few pictures from Madrid...

Entrance to the most amazing market.

 
Look at all the black hoofs!

Jamon iberico & cheese...yum!

 

In front of the Royal Palace.

Dan admiring a painting at Reina Sofia.

 Random statue in the city..hehe

Flamenco Dancers

Toledo, Spain

Our beers, guess which one is mine.

Madrid's coat of arms a bear and a cherry tree.

You can't really tell from this picture, but the streets were packed!

Despite being jet-lagged for the first couple of days, we enjoyed Madrid.  Next stop...Valencia!

Jet-Lag

Traveling 18 hrs back to Seattle + Being up for 26 hrs + 10 hr time difference = Major jet-lag.

After traveling for three weeks through two countries and seven cities, we flew back to Seattle last week Tuesday.  We've been back for almost a week and I'm finally getting over being jet-lagged. 

Overall, our trip was AMAZING!  We loved it! We did pretty much everything we wanted to do in each city we went to.  Here are some of the highlights of our trip....

*Bike tour through Barcelona
*Relaxing on Playa de la Concha in San Sebastian
*Watching a Valencia CF game
*Seeing the Parthenon in person
*Swimming in the hot springs of the Caldera in Santorini
*Learning how to cook at traditional Spanish meal
*Seeing a Flamenco dance in Madrid

Once I download all my pictures, I'll write a post for each city we went to. 

On another note, in exactly one week we will be on a plane to Hawaii!  I can't believe we're finally moving.  We are pretty much all packed up, we only have a few more boxes to mail and we drop off Dan's truck on Wednesday to ship.  We dropped off my car last Wednesday and now I'm driving a little Hyundai for the next week.  I have a feeling this next week will fly by.  ;)

tapas & gyros

Once we decided to move back to Hawaii, we also decided to do one last big trip to Europe since it's pretty hard to get to Europe from Hawaii.  It was also another excuse to have a long vacation before we get married which is why I started calling this our "pre-wedding moon" hehe.  Dan wanted to go to Spain and I wanted to go to Greece, so we decided to do both. 

In just five days, we leave for Madrid and start our three-week Europe vacation. I'm very excited to eat tapas in Spain and gyros in Greece. Yummers!  Starting on Monday, Sept. 26th this is our plan....

Fly from Seattle to Amsterdam and Amsterdam to Madrid.  With all the flying and the time change we will arrive in Madrid on Tuesday evening and we'll stay for four nights. 

From Madrid, we'll catch a train to Valencia and stay two nights.  Dan hopes that we can get tickets to the soccer game.

Then we'll catch a bus (for six hours...ugh) to San Sebastian. We'll stay for three nights and hopefully eat at one of their Michelin star restaurants. ;)

Of course, our last stop in Spain is Barcelona and we'll stay for four nights.  You can't visit Spain without going to Barcelona. One of the things we're going to do there is a cooking class.  We're going to learn how to cook a traditional four course Spanish meal.  Exciting!!!





After two weeks in Spain, we're off to Greece for the final week of our trip.  We'll fly from Barcelona to Athens and stay two nights before going to the islands.

Our next stop is Santorini for four nights.  We decided to fly between the islands and Athens since we're going in October and it's considered to be off-season for tourists.  I'm really thankful we decided to fly since there was no 'fast' ferry between Athens/Santorini during that week and it would have taken us seven hours to get there. 

From Santorini, we'll catch a ferry to Mykonos.  We're only staying here one night since there weren't any ferries the day before. 

After Mykonos, we fly back to Athens for a night.  We have to wake up super early that morning to catch a 5am flight to Amsterdam.  Then it's a 10 hour flight back to Seattle.

Once we get back to Seattle, we ship my car the very next day.  We'll be in Seattle for 12 days before we officially move to Hawaii on the 31st.  I can't believe it's coming up sooo fast!

*Note: All photos were from wikipedia.com under each city's page*