A Day in the Bay

Alright. It's about time I sucked it up and wrote this blog post.

My time of living in the Bay Area has come to a close. Sometime in October I decided that after 3 years of California, it was time to move back to Utah. I decided that I would move when my housing contracted ended in January. I was very sad to leave, but also excited for my next big thing.

So here is how I spent my last month in the Bay.

Book club at a French restaurant:

We consistently read and met up to talk about books every month in 2019, and I loved it.

A girls night that turned into TPing some boy's houses.

Honestly, such a fun activity. Except probably not for the boys-it rained that night and they had to deal with the wet mess in the morning.

My last day at Merit with some of the 2nd floorers:

I am already missing our chicken wars.

Lots of walks around the Bay:

I will miss all these trials that were so close to my house.

One last "Chain Restaurant Friday" aka middle class fancy night with the crew:

We stepped our game up a little this time and went to P.F. Changs

Tiffany and I went up to the city one last time to recreate a photo we took our first time in the city together:

2020 vs 2017

Obviously Karl the Fog decided to block our 2020 view, but I guess that's just a pretty accurate look for San Fransisco.

The first weekend I was ever here, I went to a goodbye party for some random boy. Everyone went up to the city to go roller skating at the Church of 8 Wheels, and then we went and got Bob's Donuts. So, to come full circle, I decided that for my last weekend here, I would do the same. I also included going to La Taqueria for dinner, because how can you not?

It was a great Saturday night, and I felt so loved. Also, I felt like "wait, why am I leaving this place??"

And finally, Jenn and I made some custom EPA shirts and they were delivered the day before I drove away.

Proud to represent the city of EPA. Even though the same day these were delivered, someone was shot and killed in our neighborhood. Soo actually not sure how proud we should be of this town.

And just like that my last month was over and I was driving home to Utah.

Overall, living in California was such a wonderful, fun, challenging, crazy, sad, happy, great, awesome experience that I truly loved, and I had the time of my life. Being back in Utah for the past 3 weeks has made me really miss the Bay Area, the beautiful weather, and all of my wonderful friends. Plus, I am unemployed once again, so we already know from experience how I don't handle that very well. I know it will all work out all in good time, but patience is hard.

To my avid 2 readers, thanks for following along on my journey while I lived my day's in the Bay, but this blog has now officially come to a close. I am so grateful that I randomly decided I would document my time living there, so now I can always remember this wonderful time of my life. Here is to hoping that the next 3 years will be just as great and adventured filled as the last.

Before we head into the events of Christmas break, let's finish up the events of December in the Bay, Which included a bakery crawl. A group of us spent one morning trying 3 different bakeries around town:

A pretty great way to spend a Saturday morning if ya ask me.

One of the many Christmas parties/get togethers included our second annual roommate (and significant others) potluck Christmas dinner.

The food was delicious, and we ended the night with a white elephant gift exchange.

One night, a few of us made some homemade gingerbread houses. Highly recommend.

Then it was time to fly to Utah, where we had the annual Clark Christmas dinner, complete with sugar cookie decorating.

And then we flew to Europe.

I have been dreading thinking about how I am suppose to write about our 12 day trip of traipsing across multiple countries, in a concise and interesting way. So wish me luck.

On the 22nd, Dad, Makenzie and I (#singlechildrenperks) flew out of Salt Lake City, and arrived in Venice the following day. No sleep was had by me.

We arrived in Venice in the morning and were ready to go and explore the slightly flooded city.

The whole city was one picturesque street after another.

Gelato of course.

Delicious fresh made to order pasta.

We wandered our way to St. Mark's square.

Then we went on a serenaded gondola ride.

This man did not sing to us, but someone on a nearby boat did. So I guess that counts as "serenaded".

Makenzie matched every gondola driver around.

To resist giving into the jet lag, we decided that we wouldn't go to bed until 9pm. So to kill time we went to the grocery store and then watching terrible and bizarre Italian television.
We were grateful when 9pm arrived.

The next morning we awoke to a flooded Venice, but luckily the tide went back in by the time we went out to walk around.

We got some pizza

enjoyed the Christmas decor

and got Gelato one more time.

Then we boarded a shuttle and headed over to Ljubljana, Slovenia.

After we settled into our hotel, we decided to go walk around the town to check it out, and we were glad we did.

We especially enjoyed the Christmas market treats.

We ended the night back at the hotel in the sauna and jacuzzi.

The next day was Christmas, and Brett, Rebecca and crew came to pick us up from our hotel.

We walked around the town with them, when to a Christmas Catholic mass, and then went to the Postojna cave to see the "largest live nativity scene in the subterranean world".

To get down to the caves we rode this great little tram thing:

It honestly was one of the coolest things I have ever seen. As you walked through the cave the whole Christmas story was played out, and there were performances along the way. I swear we walked for miles. It was huge.

After dinner, and one more serving of churros from the Christmas market, we went to our home base in Lake Bled.

okkkaay we are only 3 days into this trip and it already feels like it is taking too long to write about, so to speed things up, here are some of the highlights:

The next day we went to the castle in Lake Bled.

We watched their "lords of leaping" performance, and if you look hard enough, you can see that our very own Doug Jackson was chosen to participate for one of the dances.

Later we rowed out to the island to look at the church. Harder than it looks.

This is looking down on the village we were staying at.

One day, we went to go skiing but there wasn't enough snow, so we adjusted our plans.

We walked around this little ski town

and then walked around in the mountains.

Alright I feel I may never finish this blog post if I don't make it even more simple. So introducing, pictures with captions and little explanation:

Lake Bled Christmas market

Salzburg, Austria

Makenzie and Weston really feeling the spirit in the church.

Mirabell Gardens

Austrian bakeries so we could try...

Apple Streusel

Looking down into Salzburg.

Salzburg was cold.

Going down into a salt mine on another little train thing.

A flat tire on the way back to Slovenia.

the women and children waiting for 2.5 hours in the Mcdonalds for the flat tire situation to be figured out.

learning we would have to spend another night in Austria

Last minute hotel accommodations

Going to Germany for breakfast after getting our repaired car.

Our little German bakery in some random little German town

Enjoying the baked goods

Near Years Eve skiing in the Alps. As amazing as it sounds.

The Italian and Austrian border at the top of the mountain

The sunset as we waited for Dad, who had to bum a ride from a group of Hungarians, to find Brett, who was at the parking lot, to tell him that the lifts had turned off before we could get down to the main parking lot, so we were stuck at a different parking lot, so he could come pick us up from said parking lot.