Catch Up & Vacation Highlights

WOW, it's been a while since I have shared on here.  We had an amazing two week vacation, my first vacation in three years!  One of the things I have realized is that as I get older, I don't tolerate heat well and I don't handle jet lag well.  It was over a week and a half before I started feeling better and really today is the first day I have felt really well.

Many of you have asked about our trip of a lifetime, so I want to share some of the details with you.

When you earn a trip with Stampin Up, it is for you and a guest, but you can add on extra people.  We added Emily, as we don't think we will ever go back to Greece and it is a location she was more excited about I think than Matt and I 🙂  All we had to do was add her to our room and then I had enough airline miles to cover her flight.

We saved to go in early and do site seeing in Venice and Rome.  We had been to Rome before, but for only 8 hours, we were dying to go back!

We started with our flight into Rome, then we caught a train to the train station, checked our larger bags there and then caught the high speed train to Venice.  In Venice we stayed at an Air BnB that was over 600 years old!  It was such a cool home!  We were there two nights.

This was our view:

In Venice we did a lot of eating (YUMMY!) and walking around taking it all in.  We didn't do any tours or anything like that, just taking in all the culture of venice.  No cars, no motorcycles, we didn't even see a bicycle.

Then it was off to Rome via train again, we grabbed our bags and headed to our hotel.  We were there for three nights.  The heat was insane!!  And it was the height of tourist season.  In Rome, we saw the Coliseum, the Vatican, the Roman Forum and other great sites.  We love Rome!  And of course, we ate our weight in pizza and gelato!

Then it was onto the cruise ship.  We were on the Stampin Up cruise with a balcony room.  We love the balcony rooms!  And it was off to Greece.

Greece was never on my top list of places to visit, but Emily is all into the Percy Jackson books.  She loves Greek mythology, the stories, the history – so to her, this was at the top of her list!  We went to Santorini and Mykonos first – and ancient Delos was included in there.  That is the birth place of Apollo and Artemis.  It was amazing to see this ancient city.

Then we went to the Acropolis in Athens – we couldn't believe how packed that city is.  It is just packed with buildings!  We loved the Acropolis!

Then the next day it was off to Olympia, this was another huge highlight.  To stand on the field of the original Olympics was spectacular!  This is the original finish line at the Olympics, and that's Emily and Matt standing on it.  I just can't believe it – we were there!

It was such a great trip!

Then we had a fun surprise for Emily.  My cousin had arranged to be our pilot on our flight from Rome to Chicago.  It was too fun!  She got to go into the cockpit with him and the entire flight crew loved on us for the 11 hour flight 🙂

I am so sorry that it has taken me so long to update you on all we did.  I just can't believe how much the jet lag affected all of us, it's been tough readjusting – but well worth it!

Several of you asked how close I am to earning the next trip with Stampin Up.  It is within reach and I am willing to work hard to earn it, as I have all the others in the past.  We are so grateful for the Stampin Up trips, as we wouldn't ever take trips like this on our own!  We missed earning the last two trips as we were heavily focused on transitioning Emily into school and that was a big priority for us.  And the right call for sure!  But we would love to earn the next trip 🙂

Tomorrow there will be a new blog post that is a card and I can't wait to share it with you!