Hello, Visitors!

A warm hello and a hail-fellow-well-met to the people who've been visiting due to our being named a Typepad Featured Blog, woot woot!  Now I can wear my cute glittery shirt with the Typepad logo without feeling like a total pretender to the throne.

A brief rundown of us - my husband and I have been writing on and off here for, holy crap, three years now.  Wow, I really appreciate being made to think of that.  I do most of the writing, though Husbear does put in a more than occasional post about something delicious he's concocted.  His tasty food bits can be found over in his own Kooking Korner.

We first moved to Austin, Texas in August 2001 after graduating from the University of South Carolina.  Go Gamecocks, et cetera, whoop whoop.  We've been here ever since, with one pretty major exception - we spent August 2006 through May of 2007 living in Florence, Italy, while Husbear went to cooking school at Apicius.

While we were there, we learned some Italian, figured out how to shop at the amazing local markets, entertained lots of visiting family and friends, and traveled.  While we did mostly stay inside Italy, we did make it to a couple of other places in Europe and spent an amazing and not entirely comfortable week in Egypt. 

Perhaps the best month we spent there, though, was when we threw on our backpacks and caught a plane to Palermo.  Our almost-month spent in Sicily and southern Italy was indescribable, not that that stopped me from using way too many words trying.

We couldn't bear to cut our year of travel short, so we took the long way home to the States through London and on to Hong Kong, Thailand, and Vietnam.  I'm still blogging the trip here, because finishing it would mean that we're really back now, Waaa.

So, now we're back in Austin with our cats, putting up pictures on Flickr, working to repay our travel debt, and trying to figure out how soon we can get those backpacks back out of storage.  Please comment, and feel free to ask us any travel questions you have!

(Early posts are pretty bad, though I am of course partial to the ones about our 2004 honeymoon in Italy and Greece - some of which aren't awful, I promise.)

Ci vediamo subito,
Girlie

Comments

[ap]

YAY!!
Well deserved recognition from TPTB!!

Congrats!!

[Girlie]

Thank you! :takes sweeping bow:

[Cwningen]

Hi, you don't know me and I don't know you but I really enjoy your blog, especially the tales of your travels in Italy and the photos of food. Keep up the good work!

[Girlie]

Thanks for the comment, Cwingen! Glad you like the Italy stuff... wish we were still there so I could post more of it.

[unk]

Great description of the UT debate. I watched from home, hoping to see you, but alas, only saw the candidates and anchors. I think Hilary is usually the better debater, but she came across at times as a whiner. Barack did fine. Go Obama!
Thanks for sharing with us all.

Anne
xxoo

[Stacey]

I have really enjoyed y'alls blog, thanks! You have mentioned a link to a travel website before but I can't find it. I think you guys have booked flights using this website. Can you tell me what are some good websites or resources to use when planning a trip?

[Girlie]

Anne, thank you! Ellen is sending me a DVD of the debate so I can see what it looked like from outside the gym. Should be interesting. I can't believe the results... I'm so disappointed I didn't get to caucus.

Stacey, I'm thinking the travel website might have been Kayak.com? They compare plane ticket prices for you from a huge array of sites.

My favorite way to plan for a trip is to order lots of guidebooks about the area and search online for travel blogs. Then, I'll go through the information and narrow down where we'd like to visit - but don't overplan! Leave some room to stay in a place you love or leave a place you don't.

[Google]

http://search.live.com
If you do not wish to receive similar messages please inform us on it by mail ban.site[dog]gmail.com