Eat, Shop, Repeat

Seth's girlfriend (officially fiance now), Candace, and her daughter, Blakely, moved out to the ranch and in with Seth in February and they are getting married in August. Candace had her first shower last weekend in Amarillo, so I flew out there for the day to go. It was a quick trip and then Faye flew back to Dallas with me Saturday afternoon.

It seems like all we did was eat and shop - I guess that kind of was the case, but those are probably my two favorite things so it made for a great weekend. Faye was on a mission for a dress to wear for Seth's wedding and she was successful in finding one - in fact, she had a couple to choose from. Faye did have the honor of watching all of the video footage that Benton took while we were in Europe - what a good mom to sit through the whole thing!

We had fun with Faye while she was here! She headed to Destin for the remainder of the week to hang out at the beach with my mom and Grandma. Wish I was there with them!

George Strait at Cowboys Stadium

Friday, June 5th was Gam's (Benton's Grandma) 80th Birthday, so we celebrated all weekend! Friday night, Benton, Seth, and I drove out to Grandbury to meet the Brantley's, Gam, and Claude for dinner at Line Camp.

Benton's sweet Aunt Nancy and Uncle George bought tickets to George Strait for everyone for Saturday. We had a great time and were so thankful to get to tag along! Despite the complaints they've been talking about on the news every day, I thought the concert was great and the stadium is pretty cool.

Everyone except George and NancyCousins

LeAnn Womack - so glad she replaced Julianne Hough

Blake Shelton

Reba - such a ham

Good ol' George

We took Seth to the airport on Sunday then met George, Nancy, Tom, Gam, and Betsy for lunch in Grapevine. Gam came back to our house to spend her final night in DFW with us. I made sure she had a stressful "Carli Hyatt" sending off to the airport on Monday morning, but luckily both she and her bag made it safely to San Antonio to continue her 80th celebration.

Since We've Been Back

Now that I documented our whole Europe trip, I can get caught up on what's been going on since we've been home. It took us quite awhile to recover from the time change, jet lag, and exhaustion from our trip, not to mention getting caught up from being gone from work for two weeks.

My dad and Dutch picked us up from the airport and Dutch barely remembered us! We literally did not leave the house on Sunday and didn't do much other than lay around and sleep. Monday we were both up and wide awake at about 5am. We decided to get out and do some stuff which included looking at baby furniture. WOW! Were we overwhelmed! We are pretty set on the furniture we like, but the carseats/strollers are a whole other ordeal that we weren't prepared for.

We had our third doctor appointment the Thursday after we got back from Europe. It was fairly quick - they ran some tests, we heard the heartbeat for the first time, and that was about it. Then I had to go over to a different building to get my blood work done. This lady was much better than the last one though - I had track marks for weeks last time.

Ciao Bella

We spent our last couple of days in Venice and were pleasantly surprised with how much we enjoyed it. I really wanted to go to Venice when we booked this trip a year ago, but had since heard not the greatest things about it so I expected to be disappointed, but was not.

We got into Venice much later than any of the other ports (around 12pm), so we were sitting out on our balcony as we "drove" through the middle of it. Since Venice is comprised of something like 177 small islands you either walk or take a waterbus/taxi everywhere. From the port, we took a waterbus to St. Mark's Square where we started the day.
Benton got to go into St. Mark's Basilica, but they discriminated against me. You can't get into some of the Cathedral's with shorts on, but I was mad because Benton said there was a man inside the church with shorter shorts on than me. I also saw the "guard" (or whatever you want to call him) let other women in with shorts on, so I'm not sure why he didn't like me. Oh well, at some point if you've seen one European Cathedral, you've seen them all (and we have now seen several).

Benton on one of the bridges over a canal

Us in St. Mark's Bell Tower

We went up in the bell tower, did some shopping, stopped for a drink along one of the canals and people watched, then we decided to take one of the infamous gondolas through the canals. You can't go to Paris and not see the Eiffel Tower, so didn't feel we could leave Venice without taking a gondola. Of all the things we heard about Venice, the one thing that was definitely true is that it is expensive! The gondola definitely falls in that category, but we enjoyed it.

Since our ship wasn't going anywhere, we were able to spend the evening and eat dinner in Venice instead of on the ship - which was a nice change. We headed back to the ship around 11pm for our last night sleeping on water.

We got off about 9:30am on Friday and were not sad to say goodbye to the ship! We got our bags, jumped in a (car) taxi and headed to our hotel near the airport. Once we got checked into the hotel, we took a bus back to Venezia for the day. We went to the Murano island in hopes of seeing some glass blowing, but didn't ever see any. It was a super hot day in Venice and we were tired, so we headed back to the hotel to get ready for our long travel day.

We were up at the crack of dawn on Saturday for our flight home. It was a truly fabulous vacation with amazing memories. I am so thankful that Benton and I were able to experience everything for the first time together.

A Hidden Treasure

Our third and final day at sea was on Tuesday and we arrived in Dubrovnik, Croatia on Wednesday. Dubrovnik is a beautiful little hidden treasure, but I imagine it won't stay that way for long. We took a bus from the port to the old town which is where we spent all of our time.

We walked all through the old town which is automobile free and marble-paved. Benton decided to partake in this common practice we saw throughout Europe...

Just a random spot inside the Old Town

It was hot in Dubrovnik as well, so we followed a sign for "Cold Drinks" to this tiny gem of a spot. Literally, it was a few tables and chairs set on the cliffs with cold drinks. No frills, but the view was spectacular. We sat for awhile and watched some Australian kids cliff dive. The water is so unbelievably blue and clear I think Benton would have joined them if he'd been wearing his suit.

My tragedy of breaking my camera on a small tumble down a few steps happened shortly after this. Those marble steps are dangerous when you have flip-flops with no traction on. After my fall, we went up to the top of the city walls to walk around the old town. Once again, the view is spectacular but it wasn't that fun for me because I was so scared I was going to slip and fall again on that marble! We made it about 1/2 - 3/4 of the way around and decided to head back down for lunch where we had amazing lasagna (Benton's fave).

Dubrovnik is definitely on our short-list of places to go back to!

The Armpit of the Mediterranean...

Athens was probably our least favorite stop on this trip. Our shipped docked in Piraeus and it was a good walk to the train station which took us into Athens. We got off the train and headed straight for the Acropolis to learn that it was "National Museum Day" (or something like that), so everyone got in for free. We thought it was our lucky day, but boy were we wrong. I would have much rather paid to get in and there been a lot fewer people there. It was miserably crowded (shoulder to shoulder as thick as possible in all directions) and it was hot as heck that day.

One of the first things you see in the Acropolis is the Odeon Theater which was built in the 2nd century, but has since been reconstructed and they use it today for Athens Festival performances. At the top of the Acropolis is the Parthenon. I'm not sure if you can ever walk through it, but this was as close as we could get.

We did eat lunch in Athens and wandered around the Plaka awhile, but we wrapped the day up fairly early here. I wish we would have taken a picture of one to remember them by, but there were so many stray (we assume) dogs in Athens. They were all big, furry, sleeping, and appeared to be well fed but not owned and they were everywhere. Very strange. I'm glad we got to see Athens, but I don't have any desire to go back and spend more time there.

Santorini, Greece

First pic at the top

Lunch on the beach
Admiring the view - nice pose :)

Big cruise ship looks pretty small out there

Neither of us really remember this, but great pic by Benton

After our second day at sea, we arrived in Santorini on Sunday morning. When we looked out on our balcony, the island looks like snow-capped mountains because all of the buildings are white.

Once again the shipped anchored in the harbour and we took small tender boats to shore. Once onshore, you have three option to get up to Fira (the island's capital): cable car, donkey ride, or walking up 588 steps (sharing the donkey path). Benton and I had every intention of getting our morning exercise by walking up the steps, however I quickly changed our plans when I got a face full of flies and whiff of the donkey crap on the path. I turned right around and headed for the cable car!

The view from the top is even better than the "snow-capped" mountain view. Santorini is a really cute and very clean island. We loved it there! Unfortunately, the weather didn't cooperate with our plans to lay out on their black sand beaches, but we still enjoyed the day. We walked through all the little shops in Fira, then we took a bus down to the closest beach (which I think was Kamari) and walked along the sea. We ate lunch on the beach and decided we'd seen everything down there, so we took the bus back up to Fira and shopped some more. We bought lots of souvenirs in Santorini and had a drink with a beautiful view before we headed back to the ship.