Future cheerleaders

In light of college football season, I thought it was the perfect time to put this up from Christmas 2006. My nieces are the cutest EVER!!! ~ WAR EAGLE!!!

J'adore la Cote d'Azur!

so a brief recap of what's been going on since Japan...feels like just yesterday that I left, but it's been about 3 weeks!

The weekend that I got back from Japan, one of my closest friends (Neha) came to visit Chicago from Dallas. Unfortunately, between moving and jet-lag, I didn't get to spend much time with her...the weekend flew by despite having an extra day off for Labor Day and back to work I went. Usually I would consider my job somewhat vacation-like (if you will) but because we had only around 2 weeks at home - things got a little hectic. I closed on my first place/condo on 9/7 (the Friday after getting back), so my mom came to help me move and get settled...ya know, doing what mom's are best at doing. Since my mom was staying with me and keeping me pretty busy for a week and a half, I was pretty much MIA in chi-town for most of the time I was "home". My dad also came down for my closing and to help me set-up the new place, so there was no time for anything but moving. I have to say - in the 1 week after moving into my condo, we fixed it up pretty nicely! My parents are awesome for painting and helping me shop, organize, unpack, etc. so that helped tremendously. After non-stop moving for 9 days, my mom peaced out and I had a few days to relax before heading to Switzerland for my next audit.

I was still busy with work - trainings, volunteer events, team-building activities (all this on top of actual work!)...so no rest for me!

(my favorite rooms in the condo)

Wednesday, 9/19, came all too quickly and it was time to head to the FRENCH RIVIERA!

Thankfully my co-worker, Christina (aka - PC), had the same idea that I did...we were both in need of some R&R after the crazy couple weeks we'd had in chicago. We flew into Nice, France on Thurs. morning and took a local "coastal" bus along the water to get to Cannes. I was curious as to why the bus ticket was only 1.30 euro and then realized when I saw the bus! It was a local one, took 1 1/2 hours compared to the highway bus which took about 40 min, and made about 15 stops along the way. On top of that, the bus was so packed with people that PC and I had to hold our suitcases (1 ridiculously large one and a carry on + our laptop bags) and stand for about 30 minutes of the ride. Our stop was the last one and we headed to the Hilton to drop off our large bags...I should probably back up to what our weekend situation was going to look like.

So we took Thurs off for vacation and were "out of pocket" for 2 days based on our travel policies at work. I would consider myself pretty low maintenance when it comes to most things, so PC and I decided that we were going to "rough it" at the Hotel Ibis for those 2 "out of pocket" nights. We had 1 night paid for by the company so we changed hotels on Saturday to stay at the Hilton (great location + points/benefits). I think it worked out pretty well because luggage check is a wonderful thing! Also, thankfully the Ibis was about a 10 minute walk from the Hilton which was on the Boulevard de la Croisette, the main area of Cannes. We loved it! Shopping everywhere (even though most of it was too rich for my blood) and the beach was RIGHT there! We also were surprisingly close to the building where the Cannes Film Festival takes place and took a few pictures there even though it wasn't really that impressive.

Thursday 9/20/07-

We got off at our bus stop at the Boulevard de la Croissette and had to walk about 300 meters to get to the Hilton to drop off our luggage. My family probably remembers walking through the streets of Paris with a BIT too much luggage and plowing through crowds of people while hot and sweaty from the walking/carrying/lifting, etc. Well - it wasn't THAT bad, but it definitely wasn't the most pleasant experience. We dropped off our big luggage and took the small ones to our home away from home for the next couple of days. By the time we freshened up from our overnight flight and unpacked a few things, it was dinner time! Another thing about PC and I...we're very similar in some ways - namely, we love to eat good food!! And there was lots of it :-).

We wandered around for a bit walking up and down the Blvd and ended up finding a cute little restaurant facing the water. The wait staff was extremely friendly and I really enjoyed our dinner! We walked around some more and took a peak inside the Carlton Hotel (Intercontinental)...this is the hotel where supposedly all the celebs stay when they come to Cannes. It was pretty massive and really old school looking. Honestly, not really my style. It looked a little stuffy. BUT ANYWAYS, we went inside to ask the concierge about getting to St. Tropez for a day and it turns out that there isn't much to do for a "day trip" which was a boat ride there - eat lunch - come back. We nixed that idea and walked off our huge meals as we checked out the nearby night scene.

We passed a Lebanese restaurant also on the Blvd which had some pretty sweet music playing and looked fairly crowded with people our age, so we agreed to hit that up on Friday. We ended up at an Irish pub near the Ibis to grab a beer and see what the local band was playing. They ended up being a cover band of both French and English music and even broke out with Van Morrison's Brown Eyed Girl. Overall it was an interesting scene...a large mix of people from the 50s down to their young 20s. I tried a new blond beer - Kronenbourg (pretty good!) and then we headed home since we were both pretty exhausted. Oh yea, one more thing. I was amazed at the noise control there! Apparently it's a pretty big thing because you couldn't hear the music being played AT ALL from the outside...only once they let you in. I thought it was a good idea and obviously beneficial for the neighbors and locals. Maybe that's just me getting old.

Friday 9/21/07-

wow....i hadn't slept that much in who knows HOW long! I think between the exhaustion and jet lag, I ended up sleeping until 1pm on Friday. Luckily we had no plans for the weekend and just wanted to relax on the beach and enjoy the gorgeous weather. We got in our beach gear and found a cute little place to grab some food (yummy crepes for me!!) on the way. I loved the pace we were going....soooo chill. It may seem minor to most people but lately my life has been "go go go", so this was just the thing I needed. I enjoyed my nutella + sugar crepes (yes, i had 2!) and topped it off with a nice cup of tea...geez, i think i'm turning into my mom ;-).

After we took our time at brunch, we strolled over to the beach where i completely forgot is TOPLESS. Yes, that's right...duh, the south of France. There were enough tourists and other "non-french" people wearing their tops that it wasn't TOO bad, but every direction I turned there was a topless girl. Don't get too excited guys! Most of the people sun bathing w/o tops were old, wrinkly and saggy women who had obviously spent way too much time in the sun and looked about 20 years older than they probably were. Not really something you want to look at. But the beach was beautiful and I watched the sailboats and jet skiers or listened to my I-Pod and napped, soaking up the sun. I'd had a pretty bad experience getting sunburned in Greece a few months back, so I was careful to layer on my sunblock and we only stayed on the beach for about 3 hours. I truly felt like I was on vacation!

After getting restless, we decided to walk over the the Cannes film festival area (nothing exciting there unfortunately) and then explore the smaller streets and do some window shopping, hit up an internet cafe, etc. Somehow the day passed all too quickly and it was already 7:30...time to get ready for another dinner - Lebanese tonight! The Lebanese restaurant ended up being almost empty (something must've been going on the night before), but our cute waiter who also spoke wonderful English served us some mouth-watering food that we devoured pretty quickly! We also enjoyed a nice bottle of wine with it...I'm starting to appreciate red wines a little more these days as I've found some good ones that aren't too heavy :-).

During our meal, the restaurant had a DJ/Singer come in - maybe his Friday-night gig, and he sung a mixture of French, English and Italian songs. He was really good and kept us entertained for a while! The Lebanese food was followed by some more walking to find a bar/club/lounge to go dancing. We ended up at a bar called Via Notte (also by our hotel). The people watching was fantastic as we sat outside for a while, but we realized that this wasn't the place to be when we ventured inside to check out the music. I could hardly move or breath for that matter as it was tooooo crowded!! I had to leave within 2 minutes of stepping inside since I was getting too claustrophobic. So that was Friday night...

Saturday, 9/22/07 -

Another day of sleeping in, but not as bad as Friday. We got up and checked out of the Ibis...stopped at the Cool Heure (our breakfast spot) for some more crepes and tea and then headed to the Hilton to try for an early check-in there. We were lucky and got the room, checked out the amazing view from the hotel - overlooking the beach and Mediterranean, and then packed up a few things as we were going to Nice for the day! Since we nixed St. Tropez and neither one of us gambled (Monaco was a little further for us), we decided to check out Nice.

We walked to the nearby train station (btw - I LOVE public transportation!) and bought roundtrip tickets to Nice for less than 9 euro a piece. what a deal considering the train took about 20-30 minutes! We just walked around the city at our leisure and enjoyed some more people watching. PC wanted to have lunch on the beach, but we settled for ice cream instead since it was tooo hot that day! Pistachio and chocolate ice cream....a great combination :-) We hung out at the beach restaurant for a while then continued our walk around town. We hiked up some massive stairs to get to a "panoramic view" of the city and found a cute little park where people were playing soccer (aka - football) and kids were playing. Not that I'm a huge fan of kids, but as long as they aren't crying or screaming they can be kinda cute. Especially with their little accents. PC and I ended up taking naps on some benches to cool down in the shade and then proceeded to head back down and out of town. It probably seems like we didn't do much, but that's because we didn't :-). Taking strolls along the beach and enjoying the scenery, people-watching, and fabulous food was just what the dr. ordered. We got back to Cannes around 8pm and prepped to go out tonight, but this time we were celebrating PC's big 26!!

She wanted seafood so the hotel concierge recommended a restaurant within walking distance, Chez Astoux He wasn't kidding about the seafood! Most of the seating was outdoors and we could see the huge platters of seafood - oysters, crab legs, clams, etc. Not only did we see people eating off these platters, but we ended up being seated right in front of the guys who were cleaning the shellfish fresh! Kinda gross, but I didn't eat it so it was fine. We also had this really weird old couple seated extremely close to us and kept staring at both of us. It was the strangest thing and we couldn't figure out why they kept staring, but not wanting to be rude - I stared right back. Luckily they finished their dinner pretty soon after we arrived, so we didn't have to deal with them for too long. I got some great salmon and calamari and PC ordered Sole, which was amazing! After a bottle of wine, we were ready to go out! First, we both felt like "fish-breath" wasn't really working for us so we headed back to the hotel for some quick freshening up. On the way back to our hotel, some random french guy stopped us and started talking to me like he knew us...maybe he saw some other indian chic - I don't think there were too many of us in Cannes that weekend. Anyways, he wanted to "rendezvous" somewhere and suggested the Hotel Majestic. Yea right - I wasn't born yesterday buddy, so we just told him that we had to run and would probably see him later. That was the last we saw of random French guy....so after our quick stop at the hotel, PC wanted to go to this Club/Casino called Jimmy'z, so we headed there for some drinks and dancing. For some reason the place was closed that night and there wasn't really any other place nearby to go dancing. Disappointed, we walked around and grabbed a drink at Caffe Roma before heading back to the hotel.

Sunday, 9/23/07 -

We planned to do some shopping today, but after walking to our breakfast place and finding out that it was closed, we quickly realized that just about ALL the shops were closed in Cannes on Sunday. What were we to do? We grabbed some breakfast at the Hilton and decided to spend one last day on the beach :-). Our flight wasn't until the evening, so we had a good couple of hours of sun to enjoy before catching the bus (the 14 euro Highway Bus, this time) back to the Nice airport.

Sunday, bloody Sunday...after arriving at the airport TOO early, we hauled our luggage around the airport looking for some place to grab a late lunch/early dinner. this was alittle bit of a process, but we ended up with some ridiculously expensive and not-so-good sandwiches. After eating, we went to check-in our bags and come to find out that we had excess baggage weight. what?! turns out that from the US --> Zurich or Europe, you have an allowance of 46 kilos total (which we were both under), but since we were flying from Nice, France to Zurich, Switz - the allowance rules were different. We were only allowed 20 kilos total. Shocked and slightly upset, we had to fork over some cash for them to allow us to check-in our bags/board the plane. At 8 euros/extra kilo...it wasn't cheap. Oh well, it was a good weekend overall and well worth the extra bit of money that we spent. As great as my job is, I do have to pay for SOME things.

So now here I am in Basel, Switzerland. About a 1 1/2 hour train ride from the Zurich airport and a 10 minute train ride from Liestal (where my office is). So far so good, but we've only been here a couple days. Basel is a really cute little town with shopping and lots of good restaurants (dangerous for me!)...It's a good thing I'll be here a month to explore :-).

PC is trying to keep me on track and has me on a workout schedule for twice a day 3 days a week...we'll see how long I can keep this up. I'll post another update soon, more with my thoughts and observations rather than a re-cap, but thought I'd let you know what's been going on with my random life.

We're heading to Munich this weekend for Oktoberfest!!! Should definitely be an interesting experience (and a beer-filled one at that).

Check out all my pictures from France:

http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=vd2ejfo.ahj6rsds&x=0&y=-3npt3z

Kyoto (8/17/07 – 8/19/07) and Osaka (8/19 – 8/26/07):



Friday – 8/17/07
Having spent 2 weekends in Tokyo (one of which was spent at Mt. Fuji), my co-worker, Holly, and I decided to venture to Kyoto for the weekend on our way to our “new” work cities (mine being Osaka and hers being Katsuyama). We took the Shinkansen (Japan’s Bullet Train) to get there and it was pretty sweet. The ride is extremely smooth, you have LOTS of leg room and it’s a really user-friendly (booking tickets, etc.). It was definitely much easier than flying all over the place. Plus, since I had to work in Osaka for a week and a half, I was able to get work to pay for my Japan Rail Pass, which allowed me to use any JR rail (both the Shinkansen and local trains) for free. The Rail Pass is somewhat expensive, but actually cheaper than buying tickets individually.
So the ride took about 2 ½ hours – almost the entire time was spent sleeping (big surprise right?). I arrived in Kyoto around 9pm Friday night which didn’t really leave us much time to do anything outside of grabbing some dinner. We walked around our hotel to check out what was nearby and ended up at some restaurant called Mary Island or something. It was actually REALLY good! We went to bed early that night knowing that we had lots to do the next day and we wanted an early start.

Saturday – 8/18/07
Kyoto is the old capital of Japan (and literally translated so) as well as being one of the few cities that was actually untouched by WWII. It definitely was a tourist city, but had a mix of city-life as well as maintained the cultural aspects (temples, shrines, castles).
So we woke up around 9ish (ok, so not much of an early start) and it took us a while to find a place to eat breakfast. Tired of eating hotel breakfast, we ventured out to see what was close or on the way to our first stop, Nijo Castle. We crossed the street and smelled something soooo good. It smelled like bread, but we couldn’t figure out where it was coming from! After searching for about 10-15 minutes in every direction, we finally gave up and went back to our hotel to grab breakfast. Once we finished with all that, we finally got on our way to see the castle. We decided we needed to get some walking in since we didn’t do enough in Tokyo. Little did we realize HOW HOT it was going to be!! We had to take multiple water and ice cream breaks on the way there and back. The heat also made it a bit difficult to enjoy our sight-seeing spots, but we did our best and took lots of pictures (probably not as many as I could have though!). The castle itself wasn’t THAT impressive, but the gardens were beautiful! Here’s the link to my Kyoto pictures:
http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=vd2ejfo.1igx11qw&x=0&h=1&y=-z7hpbo

So we decided that we needed a break from the heat and walked back to the hotel to get a little AC and rest before heading to our next destination – Kiyomizu-dera Temple (one of the finalists of the Seven Wonders of the World). On our way back to the hotel, we got a little distracted….shopping! I haven’t really done much shopping on this trip 1- because it’s pretty expensive in Japan, 2- the girls here are tooo tiny and the clothes don’t fit me, 3 – I didn’t allow for much room in my suitcase to bring back a whole lot.
But the shopping arcade (as they call them here) was shaded and looked like a good place to find postcards and other nick-nacks. We definitely got distracted and ended up staying here for at least a good 1 ½ hours before grabbing some pizza buffet for lunch (not my idea, but it really hit the spot!). So after lunch we finally made it back to the hotel where we took a short nap before heading back out into the heat. This probably wasn’t the best idea because we ran out of time and were only able to see 1 other “tourist” spot. The Kiyomizu-dera Temple. We also wanted to go see the Sanjusangen-do Temple, but everything closed by 5pm, so we were outta luck. The Temple we saw was really nice though!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiyomizu-dera

It had a gorgeous view of the mountains and was really peaceful despite all the tourists. After hanging out there for a while, we headed back down this long winding hilly street (full of souvenir shops I might add). We walked back to the hotel since we had some time now before going to our “cultural show” recommended by the hotel. Turns out we walked a little over 10 miles that day! We got back, napped again and got ready for the show. It was supposed to be a 45-min view of various Japanese cultural activities such as a Tea Ceremony, Geisha dance, flower arrangement, some musical piece, a comedy skit and a puppet show. It sounds good right? Unfortunately Holly and I were pretty disappointed. They did the Tea Ceremony off in a corner where most people couldn’t even see. The flower arrangement was such a joke, I could have done better…literally all she did was take her flowers, cut the stem and put them in the vase. It didn’t seem like much thought was put into the arrangement and it didn’t even look that nice! The music was good and the Geisha dance was good, and I liked the comedy performance, but the puppet show was something else! I was so confused despite the fact that they provided us with a synopsis of the plot. It was so ridiculous I couldn’t help but laugh. Anyways – the show definitely wasn’t worth the cost, but I’m still glad we went. Maybe we had high expectations, I don’t know. So after the show, we wandered around trying to find some place to eat. I think we just got in a bad mood after that so nothing seemed appealing. After about 30 minutes of walking around and being indecisive, we finally settled on some random restaurant just to get some food in our stomachs. After a discouraging night, we headed back to the hotel so we could get up early on Sunday to head out to Nara before departing from Kyoto.

Sunday – 8/19/07
We actually got up early today (I think it was around 6am), so we could check out of the hotel and catch a train to Nara to go see the Great Buddha and Holly wanted to feed some deer. I’ll get to that in a minute. Nara was over an hour train ride from Kyoto, but housed the Great Buddha so it was a must-see. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tōdai-ji

You can’t tell from the picture, but this statue took hundreds of tons of bronze, mercury and vegetable wax to create. The head is not the original due to fires and earthquakes. The original was created in 752, but the most current head dates back to 1692. I was surprised to see deer EVERYWHERE! I thought that they would just be restricted to a park or some area, but they were literally everwhere….on the sidewalks, hanging around all the temples, etc. You could buy some deer food to feed them but I refrained due to a bad experience feeding monkeys in India when I was little. Good thing I did too because Holly didn’t know what she was getting herself in to! She tried to feed one and 4 more came up to her. Then they got really anxious so a couple of the deer nudged her with their horns and started getting a little aggressive. I don’t think it was as fun as she expected, but we got some good pictures and now she has another story to tell J. We were pretty short on time today, so this was a rushed trip but still a good one. We had also stopped to see the 5- story pagoda (picture), which was pretty amazing too. Nara was definitely a good stop for us to make during our weekend in Kyoto. We got back to Kyoto and Holly still wanted to see one more thing…the Golden Pavilion (Kinkaku-ji). It was about a 45-min bus ride from the Kyoto Station, so we took our chances with only having about 30 min there (in order to get back to the hotel to get our luggage and get back to the station to catch our trains). We ended up having plenty of time there because the Pavilion is really the only thing there. So we got our pictures and headed back with enough time to grab some Starbucks before leaving Kyoto. Speaking of Starbucks, they are ALL OVER Japan (at least in the big cities). On every corner, just like in the states. The sizes are a little smaller, but the prices are fairly comparable to those back home. They have a few variations, such as Green Tea flavors, but in general it’s the same. I think I saw more Starbucks than McDonalds!
So I arrive in Osaka around 6pm Sunday night and grab a quick dinner in our hotel so I can unpack and settle in for the following week.

8/20 – 8/24: Osaka
Unfortunately this week was extremely busy at work for me since I realized early on that I needed to be back in Tokyo earlier than expected. I was back to working public accounting hours (12 hr days) – boooo! But the affiliate in Osaka was really great and helpful, so it made things easier. Who knows – maybe I’ll come back to work in Japan after my 2 years of audit is up! Tuesday night the affiliate took us out to Korean BBQ, which was just as yummy as when I went in Tokyo. The only problem is that they have this thing in Japan where it’s “all you can drink” and you just pay by the hour for unlimited drinks. I got peer pressured by the Affiliate to have some beer since everyone else had some…it was good, but really filling! I definitely ate wayyyy too much and drank a lot too, so after 2 hours of eating and drinking, I was ready for bed!
The rest of the week was spent working late and just heading back to the hotel, so nothing exciting there. Friday night I was in need of a good time, so the Affiliate took us out for Karaoke (or Kalaoke as they say)!! We had a private room and about 20 people. Food and drinks just kept on flowing and at 9pm on the dot, we started karaoke. It was pretty serious stuff! They had really nice TV’s and this amazing karaoke machine that ranks you among other karaoke-ers in Japan as well as remembers your favorite songs etc (if you’re a member). They definitely take their karaoke seriously, but are REALLY good at it! A lot of the songs were love songs, but Team Japan out-sang Team USA hands down. We even broke out the tambourine and got the rest of the group involved in our songs. Some of Team USA’s favorites were: Sweet Home AL (my choice!), Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, Meatloaf – I would do anything for love, Dixie Chicks – I’m ready to run, and Jackson 5 – ABC.
By midnight, I was exhausted, so we headed back to the hotel so I could meet up with Christina and Kathleen (2 other co-workers who were in Osaka for the weekend) early Sat. Morning.

Saturday – 8/25/07
Happy Birthday Kristen Keating!
Today I woke up at 7am anxious to get the day started. Christina, Kathleen and I grabbed some breakfast at the hotel and headed out to take the train to Himeji. We’re getting pretty good at using the local subway and train systems! We got to Himeji around 11:30 am or so to check out the Himeji Castle – one of the most famous (supposedly the “grandest” of Japan’s 12 remaining feudal castles).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Himeji_castle

I wasn’t too smart and drained my camera battery the night before at Karoke without recharging for the day, so I was only able to get a few pictures in before my camera died. Christina and Kathleen took lots of pictures, so I’ll share those once I get them. This castle was way more impressive than the Nijo Castle in Kyoto, hands-down! The Nijo’s gardens were much nicer, but this castle was 6 stories tall and covered a huge land area with surrounding walls.
(pictures) We spent a good few hours here and then headed back to Osaka around 2ish, stopping in Kobe along the way for lunch. Christina wanted to get Kobe beef from the source, so we stopped at a local restaurant and had some sushi, tempura and beef (we’ve been eating LOTS over here). The beef is apparently much cheaper there as well as really fatty, which is why it’s so good. She enjoyed it and we proceeded to get back to Osaka as we were all thoroughly exhausted from the long day and dealing with the heat.
After getting back to the hotel around 6pm, I was done for the day!!
I couldn’t bring myself to leave the AC of my hotel room and as there isn’t much sight-seeing to do in Osaka, I didn’t feel too bad about resting and staying in for the night.

Sunday – 8/26/07
Back to Tokyo I go! Now on the Shinkansen back to Tokyo, it’ll take about 3 hours in total but it’s a pretty relaxing ride so I don’t mind – I have my Ipod to keep me company J. I actually have some work to do too, so it would be good to get that over with. I headed back a little early so I can take my boss (who is currently in Tokyo by herself) to the Harajuku area of Tokyo since Sunday is the best/most entertaining day to go.
Japan has definitely been my favorite country so far, despite the heat and I know I’ll want to come back at some point. I thought it would be a little more difficult to be away from home for 5 weeks, but the past 4 weeks have flown by! Mostly due to craziness at work, but it’s not too bad. We’re going to try to go to a baseball game this coming week, which should be interesting since they’re so big over here. I’ll be ready to get back home on Friday to see my girl Neha and to start packing up my apt (again) for my final move for a few years hopefully. I’m also excited for my parents to come up and help me move/get settled and spoil me with some good home cooking!! Not like I haven’t been spoiled enough on this trip!
I’ll try to add one more entry before I leave to go back to the States to recap on my final week in Japan…I may work on it during my 13 hour plane ride home!
I hope everyone’s doing well!!! Please email and keep in touch!!