Favorite Day!

Wednesday was one of the best days.  It was a long one - but it was great!

We loaded up in the car around 7 or 8 a.m. and drove a couple of hours up towards the tip of Sardinia - past Olbia.  If you look on the map on the last post, we were around Sassari.  We drove up towards that way to take the ferry across to Corsica (France y'all!).  We got to the ferry port too late to catch the 12:30 ferry and so we had to wander around the town and wait until 3 p.m. for the ferry.

Not sure what this means, but it was kind of funny????....

Our first sight of Bonifacio, Corsica!  Amazing!!!!  Incidentally, Corsica is the island where Napolean was born, but he was born up on the north end and we were on the south.

I know you don't really care where you're buried once you're there - but wouldn't it be cool to know that this is where your family got to come and visit you - ah....

Goodnight Corsica!  I loved you and I'll be back!!!!

From The Beginning

Now - come the pictures...

I'm going to try to work my way through our vacation in Italy - slowly - from the start.  I want to pick out some of my best pictures and we'll do the story from there...

So we start...

Karen and I flew in together and Kim came separately, but met us at the airport in Rome.  The three of us then flew over to Cagliari, Sardinia (Italy) and drove a car about 2 hours or so to our house in Tortoli.

I put maps because no one knows where Sardinia is - you can see it in the first map on the side of Italy... The boot is kicking Sicily and then above Sicily is Sardinia - the already kicked island :)  Then the second map shows where we were on Sardinia.  We flew into Cagliari as its the bigger airport and then drove up to Tortoli which is right by Arbatax, a smaller airport is there.

We had a little difficulty finding the place but Antonella, the housekeeper, drove out to meet us.  As we went bumping down crazy dirt roads narrow enough for half out car, we wondered ....  But then we came to this house all by its lonesome...  Above on the terraces is the owner's apartment which they're not always there, I believe they came the last day we were there.  On the side that still has a shutter down is a second apartment and then ours was on the other side of that.  They're basically mirror apartments - 3 bedrooms, two baths, kitchen and living area and then the patios.  There was no one in the second apartment so we used both patios all week.

Walk down the steps from the villa and there is this path...

This path leads to this gate....

This gate leads to this path....

This path leads to this beach.... all ours..... !!!!!

Brittney flew into Rome too late to catch an early enough flight to Sardinia to take a bus out by us so she flew into Cagliari on Saturday and then found a bus to another town closer to us where we picked her up on Sunday.  It actually turned out that the town we had to get to was through mountains  and scary narrow roads and it was pouring rain.... freaky.  We sped up hill and down, shifting gears and squealing tires, slamming on brakes for sheep...

 for railroad crossings which were manned by a woman, or a man, and a chain and an umbrella....

 and then there was the occasional stop to allow certain passengers to take a closer look at the side of the road.... (this was a reinactment as it happened often with the windy roads that we had to drive.... Alison doesn't tend to drive slow so if you tend to get sick in a car, you'll get sick in my car in Italy!)

The first day we were all together at the house we relaxed at the beach for most of the day and then went over to Arbatax, the largest town in our area, about 15 minutes from our house.  Arbatax is a port town and, if you look at the map above, it almost directly across the water from Naples (to take a ferry from Rome, its about a 6 -8 hour ferry ride).  One of the things that Arbatax is also known for is red rocks.  There are big cliffs of them along the waterfront.

We hung out at the red rocks for a while and then wandered around town and then found a great little seafood restaurant where we ate local sardines and Sardinian pasta, which is a big fat, hollow noodle.  Sardinian food is quite different from mainland Italian food - they use a lot of seafood and have a lot of different flavorings due to the fact that they're pretty far removed from mainland Italy.  One of the spices that is locally harvested on the island is saffron.

The next day we had planned on doing some kayaking but we had to find a place to rent kayaks.  So we drove around and wound up in a small town right on the waterfront called St Maria Navaresse.  This was seriously one of the prettiest towns that we saw on the island.  We were told that there aren't many old town on the waterfront on Sardinia due to the fact that most towns were scared that they would be attacked and so they built their villages way up in the mountains.  This town was built on the waterfront as there was a Spanish princess that was travelling and was caught in a storm but they were able to land here.  Because of this, the princess (Maria) built a church to thank God that she had been saved and then the town just grew from there because people wanted to be closer to the church so they could worship.

It worked out that we were inquiring about kayaks and we found a man who spoked English who knew of an American girl, who spoke Italian, who was actually going out sea kayaking that afternoon.  He made a phone call and we were booked to go sea kayaking later that afternoon.  We met the guide and the kayaks right by our house and then followed him to a beach about 30 minutes from us (he drove crazier than I did so I ended up having to drive double crazy!)  We went out kayaking for about 3 or so hours and had a blast!

We finished kayaking and drove home to be met by Antonella, our housekeeper, and her mom.  We had arranged for them to make dinner for us that night - all local cuisine and seafood to boot!  They made SO much food - we had like 6 or 7 different dishes all loaded with seafood and enough to feed twelve rather than 4!

I Can Breathe Again!

It may not look it, but this is the most wonderful thing ever.  Don't be smart -- not the guy in the lycra shorts who's all sweaty.... Ok, kind of... but I was meaning the yoga pose.  Well - its one of the most wonderful things ever!  There are actually 26 of these poses that are sublime and, after I do them - I am a human being again!

My name is Alison and I'm addicted to Bikram Yoga!

I got back home from "vacation" last Monday.  I say "vacation" because, as usual, the last week I ran myself trying to see everything.  But, more on that later.

When I got in on Monday evening I picked up a message from my friends who are living in Utah and working with the Mormons (they are not, I repeat, NOT, Mormons ... even though they have 6 kids and my friend's sister now lives with them so when they get out of their van everyone says "where are you from?" and they say "Utah" and then people nod knowingly...).  So, I found out on Monday that they were for sure going to be in my area on Tuesday and were planning on staying with me as I had offered earlier that year.  They have a camper that they use as home base when they travel so we didn't actually have to put them up in the house, we just gave them an extension cord and called it a day.

Anyways - so I worked in my office during Tuesday-day and checked my 9000 work emails that I hadn't looked once at while we were gone due to the fact that we bascially never had wi-fi - that was SO nice!  Matt and Karlene got in around 5ish and so I was busy with them and then the rest of the week just flew by between work and them (they left on Thursday).  I had a ton of area visits I had to do to catch up with all my customers and while I'm on those calls, more work piles up back in the office so - on top of what I hadn't finished from before, it kept on rolling in.

Needless to say, I've not had time to actually feel like I'm caught up enough to try to do anything personal.  So, my apologies that I've been neglecting my blog.  I did get my pictures up and posted so everyone from my trip had something -- if you want to check those out....  http://alisonspicts.shutterfly.com/

Run on the weekend as we had family in town.  But I have to add that it was an enjoyable time "running"....

We did have Monday off for Memorial Day so we went out and paid dad a "visit"...

Run during the week -- I did go into the office one day this week and got NOTHING done as usual.  When I finally do sit down to do work I always seem to have problems with my laptop and connecting in the office so by the time I got connected, it was time to go home and I hadn't finished anything.

I'm finally pretty caught up from my trip and yesterday I was back downtown again working with my big customer.  It was a horribly rainy day and I had set my alarm to run early but looked and thought - no way.  So then, a little thought popped into my head -- BIKRAM!  I haven't done that in like a month and I felt like I needed it so, I packed my yoga bag, worked downtown and then chugged over to the corner of Erie and Rush to catch the 4:30 Bikram class.

It was marvelous!  When you get a good teacher you learn something every class.  Yesterday I needed what she was trying to drill into us.  There were a lot of new students and so she spent a lot of time just talking about breathing and it kind of hit home with me.  When you do the savasana pose (which is lying on your back with you hand straight at your side and just looking up at the ceiling), its the time to let the blood just go through your body and breathing is so important.  Unless you're told, the only way you should breath in yoga is through your nose.  So, savasana its really even more important to breath through your nose.  She was discoursing yesterday on how this applies to life -- when you breath through your mouth, your heart rate speeds up.  And if you are in a taxing situation, you breath through your mouth and your head takes on the "flight or fight" mentality.  You breath through your nose and you heart rate slows down and you can control your emotions.

I actually tried it yesterday.  The room is so hot and its been a while so there were a few times I started to "eeek" in my head so when we were doing savasana I breathed through my mouth a few times I totally felt my heart speed up.  I went back to my nose and it slowed down and I felt like I could tell myself to chill out.

That was a free life lesson for you all - when you feel yourself freaking out in your head - close your mouth and breath through your nose - slowly, calmly and evenly and tell your head to back off.  It really does work -- you're in control!  I needed that yesterday!

Today I feel a lot more put together.  It also helps that I have an office day at home because I have a meeting in the afternoon.  I've gotten a bunch done this morning - so much so that I gave myself some time on my blog.  I still intend to post pictures on my blog, but until I do so you can go to that link above and look at them on my Shutterfly site.  I'll hone in on the good pictures and stories on my blog this weekend as I have some time.

Next weekend gets crazy with open houses and graduations and such.  But this weekend, I'm going to get some plants in the ground and post some pictures on my blog and experiment with some cupcakes --- and BREATHE!