Girls Night Out

Girls night out in the city. Jen's b-day....it has taken me sooo long to post this that I forgot who the dinner was for, so I emailed Jen asking her, her reply was "me". Boy do I feel stupid.

Late Happy b-day Jen!

Yummy Greek food.

The group

Big Basin

In the beginning of the summer Jon and I went down to Santa Cruz. We love camping and so decided to camp in Big Basin which is very close. It was so beautiful and amazing. The quality of these pics aren't very good. I just took them with our point and shoot camera, but you get the idea.

Once upon a time we had some delicious black licorice from Trader Joe's. Jon didn't want to leave the licorice with us in our tent over night because of the raccoons and bears. Instead of taking it back to the secured car, he put it in this cupboard. Notice GIGANTIC hole in front of said cupboard! The next morning Jon and Diana woke up and opened the cupboard, and this is what they found....their licorice had teeth and claw marks in it and was half eaten. Gosh dangit you squirly squirls! Diana was still very tempted to eat it because it was her favorite, but her husband quickly threw it away before she did anything silly.

WARNING! This post contains a man in a thong

So...I was driving to work the other day and this is what crossed in front of me! I couldn't believe it....this guy was just wearing a thong and was walking around totally casual. He was even doing some window shopping...don't worry though he was wearing sunglasses, a bandanna, and crocks.

Just another crazy day in the Castro....yes, of course this happened in the Castro.

Rancid

So, I'm obviously really behind in blogging. Rancid came to San Francisco in July and our friend Branden, who is the drummer, invited us to their show in Oakland. It was amazing!

We got backstage/VIP passes which made the experience so much more amazing! I've never felt so important. Thanks Branden!

This is Rancid playing... Jordan did the rad visual effects that played behind them.

It was very crowded

Us enjoying them...

I Lied....

I lied...these are the last couple of pictures from Italy. Again, the boats parked in the "garages" that I think looks so funny.

When we were on one of the water taxis, this massive thing rode by us. It seemed really out of place.

The cutest mini ever. The only picture Jon will ever look tall in... (written by Jon)

Jon and I went to an island called Lido one of the days we were there.....oh man it was so wonderful. We rented one of those paddle boats and paddled around on the ocean for a while and then took naps in the sun.....dreamy.

Ok...now I'm done....I promise no more Europe posts.

Last Italy Post

Isn't this building amazing? I would love to have a house covered in green vines...or whatever those are!

I loved looking at all the boats that were "parked" outside peoples houses. It still is such a foreign concept to me of having your transportation be a boat.

These houses made me so happy when I saw them! Check out those colors.

This was the coolest chimney I have ever seen. Look how crooked it is.

This is Jon accomplishing one of our favorite tasks....eating gelato.

This was on a rainy part of the day, I think the streets look so cool when they are wet.

So we went back to Murano...the glass island...to get a souvenir. We went into this one shop and the owner was so cute. He showed us this glass ornament that, turns out, he made. He was speaking Italian and I was speaking Spanish, but from what we could figure out he is kind of famous....well kind of. He showed us a book that was displayed next to the glass ornaments and his name was in it....I couldn't read it, but his name was there. He was so proud of himself. I bought the ornament and he signed it. It was really cute. I think it's the best souvenir I got.

Jon, doing his thing.....figuring out what public transportation to take to get where we need to go.

Another cool door.

Cool street.

So you know how a lot of big cities have street vendors....so does Venice....kind of......and it's not a big city....anyway....this was cool.

He works out of his boat....even in the rain.

Jon bought us some delicious fruit.

Like I said in another post, there was a eatery next to our hotel that had delicious gelato and calzones....they also have pizza with french fries on it.....just in case the pizza wasn't greasy enough.....and yes Jon got one and ate it. Who would ever have though to do that?

Cool view.

Some famous building that I can't remember what it is.

And another...

And another...

I know this one wasn't famous or anything, just cool looking

Cute Jon face on the bus boat ready for an adventure.

Some more parked boats.

That's one of those traghetos that I talked about earlier that goes from one side to the other.

Gondoliers chit chatting.

So...turns out they are everywhere.

There was this one path that we always walked on....and this guys was always staring out of his window... Kind of creepy.

Later that day we went to the airport to get on the plain to go back to Barcelona....we were there at least two hours early and this was the "line". It was mass confusion and in Europe I don't think people really understand the concept of lines.

Seriously, the whole place was just packed.

My favorite part of Italy

This was the highlight of our Venice trip. Even though it cost a billion dollars, we went on a gondola ride. This was our gondolier.

He didn't sing to us, but turns out the gondoliers go to like four years of college to become what they are. I guess they have to learn a lot of history and stuff. So this guy knew everything. I thought we were just going to paddle around in the boat, but it was also a totally awesome tour as well.

Jon enjoying the romantic ride with his super amazing wife.

We went down the coolest little, narrow streets, or canals. I can't believe how skilled these gondoliers are to maneuver around this place!

It was so pretty and serene in the back allies. I love the architecture of these buildings.

It was funny for me to imagine having my back door open up to just water...there isn't even like a step or anything, if you were sleep walking, you would be in big trouble.

The other thing we loved were all the cool little bridges everywhere.