OK I cannot contain my excitement anymore.  I’m bursting to share details of my vacation!  I think that’s why I have a blog; spilling my guts is so much fun and even better when I have cool things to spill my guts about!!!!  One of the most exciting things about my life this year is EATIN’ TOUR 2015! 

If you read my blog, you know that I am a woman with tons of goals and dreams not only for me but also for my husband.  I make lists, timelines, and resolutions or as I call them resolations (resolutions/revelations). Completing these things, even if it takes longer than I would like, is a huge achievement. The big stuff comes more into focus.  I now know how to celebrate all of these little goals that get me closer to big goals. I’m doing great on that LONG list with only a few months to go until 2016.  Baby steps but no babies yet (sorry, Mom!).

One of the major things on my big “list” of things to do this year was to save and plan for a trip to Europe.  I didn’t specify to take the trip this year, just to save and plan for it.  Well, we saved, we charged, and we are going!   I was so proud of my Hubs. He moves at a different pace than I do but he jumped right in with me, ready and raring to go, go, go!  This is our time, still in the honeymoon phase, medium on the responsibilities scale, and childless for now.  It’s time to take this love story INTERNATIONAL.

So where you may ask? Where are we going on this trip of a lifetime?

Drumroll………………………………………………………………………………………..

ITALY AND GREECE!

This Italian Greek Jersey girl is finally visiting the homeland! How did this all happen?  I still cannot believe it!

I’ve been an animal, researching tours, excursions, and mapping out how to do everything we have ever dreamed of visiting, the perfect assignment for a meticulous planner and concierge like myself.  I have become a TripAdvisor junkie.  I stare at travel sites watching prices fluctuate daily.  I Google prices for everything and anything. I research unique places off the beaten path like Il Buco di Roma.  I search for images of food that makes my mouth water in 2-D!  I dream of gelato. Yum, gelato….

Some of my favorite highlights of our trip, I suspect, will be:

*The Bridge of Sighs (“We were under the bridge of sighs, under Italian skies!!!” Thanks, Little Women the musical!)

*Teatro al Fenice- clearly, a theatre!

*THE GRAND CANAL– a big thrill for me after performing Nine at Westchester Broadway Theatre “It’s the Gran-an-an-an-and Canal!”

*Piazza dei Cavalieri di Malta— did you know that through Il Buco di Roma, aka the keyhole, you can see the city of Rome in all its glory?

*Our cooking class in Florence

*The Vatican!

*Sistine Chapel– that ceiling! I’m a’comin!

*Amalfi Coast!  Specifically Positano and Sorrento.

*Santorini in all its glory

*Oia for a gorgeous sunset

*The Caldera

*Odeon of Herodes Atticus- maybe I can stand where Maria Callas stood?

*All of those gorgeous white and blue buildings sloping downwards towards to water. I cannot wait to see where the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants have been.

Did that feel like I was showing you slides of my vacation with no people in them? I can’t help it. Call me grandma– call me crazy or annoying— but you’ll soon call me a European traveler!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Right now, I have absolutely no complaints and I know what a lucky person I am to say that. We’ve worked SO hard for SO long to get to this point with fewer worries that I’m going to enjoy it while it lasts.

The best part of the trip is that number one I will be experiencing everything with my amazing husband.  We made this dream come true for ourselves with hard work and I can’t wait to share it.  Number two—— SEEING MY GREEK FAMILY!  I am so happy that we will not only see my fabulous Thea and Theo but my cousin will be bringing her family to visit us too!  We get to meet her beautiful babies and husband and she gets to meet mine!  It makes everything so much more magical to end our trip with seeing them.  I really can’t say how happy seeing them makes me.  They are truly special people and I am thinking of them often these days.

So why is this blog called the Eatin’ Tour 2015?  Dubbed every so cleverly by my fellow foodie husband, we love food and well, what does one do in Italy and Greece besides sightsee?  Dieting is happening right now just so we can eat until our zippers bust.

How could we not salivate when we’re going to be eating in places like this?

And eating things like this?

Thus dubbed, Eatin’ Tour 2015! I’m so happy I could share our upcoming adventures with you.  It’s a few months away and I’m already psyched! Saddle up for some EPIC photos and tales from across the seas!  🙂 We are so fortunate to have something so wonderful to be grateful for.