Time for Thailand!

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Wow, writing that title just made me so happy! Happy and maybe just a teensy bit stressed considering I still have a million things to check off of my to-do list before we leave and less than a week now to do them all! Ahh!

This morning marked my last day of work for the school year so the official countdown is on! My sister and I leave for Thailand next Monday and I couldn’t be more excited! Robert will be just a few days behind us and then the fun will really start! I am 90% excited and 10% nervous, mostly just about the logistics of Robert flying in solo and making his way to us. If you asked Robert his numbers would probably swing the opposite way, 90% nervous/10% excitement, but lets hope they shift a bit as the date grows nearer!

Since I DO have a million things to check off my aforementioned to-do list, I’ll keep today’s post short and sweet! A brief rundown of our itinerary just in case any of you reading have been to the Land of Smiles and have any must see/do/eats, in which case, please share!

Haley and I will arrive in Bangkok late Tuesday night and spend a total of three nights (two days) there! Our plans include lots of temple touring (Grand Palace, Reclining Buddha etc.) and tuk tuk riding and shopping. We also want to do a canal tour, check out the Flower Market and go to China Town! On Friday morning we plan to go to the Damnoen Sadurak floating market before we catch our late afternoon flight to Chiang Mai!

We will spend 4 nights in Chiang Mai which is where Robert will meet us. There we are scheduled to spend a day at the Thai Farm Cooking School, tour the Old City and of course the highlight of the trip… Patara Elephant Farm!!

From Chiang Mai we will fly to Koh Samui and do a bit of island hopping! Check out our digs in Koh Tao!

Monkey Flower Villas

This last leg of our trip is the least scheduled as we intend to do some relaxing on the beach, rent a longtail boat or two and just go with the flow! Robert is flying home two days ahead of Haley and I due to his work schedule, so we are toying with the idea of attending a Full Moon Party once he goes. I’m not much of a wild child but it may prove to be something we can’t miss. When in Rome!

Koh Tao
What I plan to do in Koh Tao….minus the thong bathing suit 

If you have any suggestions for any of our destinations, let me know! I love tips from other travelers!  As you can see from the photo above, I’ve been following Thailand instragram accounts which is a great way to see beautiful places and get ideas for your trip!

Signing off until I return in a few weeks! Robert and I will be moving in to our new house immediately upon returning (Eek!) so once I get settled you can expect lots of fun trip re-cap posts and maybe even a tour of my new kitchen 🙂 Til then! ❤

Cool Summer Treat: Snicker Bar Salad

~ atastytrip ~ 1 Comment

Wow, the last few weeks have FLOWN by! Mid May already? How did that happen? The end of the school year is quickly approaching which means work has been crazy (and jam packed with state testing..ugh) and summer is in the air! I am counting down the days because the end of school means it’s time for Thailand!!

Crazy to think that my dream trip is only a few weeks away! Craziest of all is that after the initial planning was completed, I’ve barely had time to think about it with everything else going on in our lives! In the last few weeks Robert and I have been out of town, had friends and family in town, bought a new house (ahh) and started down the road of a career change for me next year (more on that later). All very exciting but nonetheless, BIG life changes in less than a month! In the midst of all of that I am also the proud new owner of a very pricey mouth guard since my stressful  err “busy” schedule has caused me to start clenching my teeth in my sleep. Thank you anxious brain.

Last weekend we had some extended family in town to watch my darling niece perform in her school musical and to celebrate Mother’s Day. My niece and nephew are both incredibly well rounded, amazing kiddos. They are both part of a language immersion program at their school which means that 80% of their school day is taught in a foreign language… Chinese! I struggled all the way through my high school and college Spanish courses so I can’t even imagine!

On top of being geniuses, they are also very talented little performers. My niece had a solo in her school musical, “Dear Edwina”. It was about a little girl who gives her neighborhood friends and family advice in a live musical show from her garage. It was really cute and the kids did a great job! Especially my niece who played a fairy godmother who sang about how to properly set the table. Adorable.

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With the star of the show!

Notice that she is taller than me in the above picture. She was a toddler in diapers when Robert and I first met and now she is going to be giving me her hand me down clothes instead of vice versa! Crazy how fast they grow!

After the show we all went back to my sister in law’s house to have a family cookout. I was tasked with bringing dessert, typically my least favorite thing to make since I am not a baker. Luckily, I remembered this Snicker Bar Salad recipe and thought it would be perfect. The combination of diced apples, snicker bars, pudding and cool whip basically tastes like a candy apple that is 1 trillion times easier to eat. It has been in the 80’s around here lately so this is one dessert that fits the categories of ‘refreshing’ and ‘light’ and is perfect for summer!  It also could not be any easier and there is zero hot oven involvement, win win!

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Girls’ Weekend in DC!

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Happy Tuesday! After another busy weekend away I am back to the grind and ready to recap my super fun extended weekend in DC with my best friend Caite! Caite and I have been best friends since high school and I was so glad she made a trip down to SC to visit me last April, so it was high time I returned the favor!

Caite and I

She lives in Virginia so we made big plans to meet in DC for the weekend, and by ‘we’ I mean ‘she’ because she planned our entire trip and boy did she do a great job!

Caite met me at the airport late Thursday evening and we went straight to our AirBnB in the city. I have never used AirBnB before but Caite is a pro and she was not overly impressed with our digs. We stayed in the bottom of a row house that had been turned into a one bedroom apartment.

AirBnB
Our “Row”

It was clean and the location was great but our upstairs neighbors were horrendously loud (or maybe they own horses?). Oh well, it was a bed and a shower which is more or less all we required.

On Friday morning we grabbed some delicious vanilla latte’s at The Coffee Bar, a hip little coffee shop around the corner and hit the streets!

One of my favorite things about big cities is that you can walk almost everywhere. Walking everywhere with a latte that has coffee art in the foam is an added bonus.

We popped into a few cute shops before deciding it was time for a big late breakfast, Ted’s Bulletin to the rescue!

Ted's Bulletin

When Robert and I were last in DC a few years ago our friend Bud raved about Ted’s Bulletin and their homemade pop tarts so I was excited to check it out.

Caite and I agreed to split one but were both way too full by the time we actually finished our food… next time!

After breakfast we did a little more shopping and then decided to make up for our missed poptarts and satisfy our sweet tooth with a few macarons.

We ogled all the pretty colors and unique flavors and went all in for the sampler pack.

Olivia Macaron 3

As always with macarons I thought they looked a lot prettier than they actually tasted (I’m looking at you fruity pebbles…bleh). The almond and salted caramel were pretty yummy but I won’t be converting to a macaron lover any time soon (Ice cream forever!).

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Super Simple Salsa Crudo

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Happy Thursday! How about an easy recipe?

salsa crudo

I’m back in the swing of things after a great week away for spring break. I spent a long weekend in DC visiting my best friend Caite (more on that in my next post!), a few days at home with my mother and sister who came for an all too brief visit and finished it off with a fun final weekend at the annual RBC Heritage golf tournament here in Hilton Head. It certainly wasn’t the most relaxing spring break I’ve ever had, but all the friends and family were well worth the lack of sleep (and lack of warm, sunny weather…hurry up summer!).

It was so fun re-living my trip to Italy and re-capping those posts and going through those old pictures got me pretty excited for our next big trip… Thailand!!

Thailand
I snapped this photo of the plane magazine on the way to our honeymoon

Our tickets are officially booked and we are headed across the globe in June! I am 100%  ecstatic, Robert is probably more like 70% excited, 30% a nervous wreck who doesn’t know what to expect, but he’s getting there 🙂

elephants
We are spending a day here…and I’m so excited I could wet my pants

Since Robert couldn’t take as long as we had planned away from work, my sister is going to join us. She and I are leaving ahead of him and coming home a little after him which should work out great. Our rough itinerary is Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Koh Tao, Koh Samui, but more on that later. I’ll take a brief break from the trip talk and get to the kitchen talk. This salsa crud0 recipe is super simple and dresses up everything from eggs to grilled meats!

ingredients

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A Trip Back: Italy Part 9 – Amalfi, The Best Neopolitan Pizza on the Planet & Farewell to Italy

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We woke up to beautiful sunshine and decided to start our first full day in Amalfi by the pool. After non-stop tours through the rest of Italy we were more than ready to relax.

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The view from our balcony

Since our hotel was built into the mountain side it was full of curvy steps and endless terraces which we enjoyed exploring on our way down to the pool.

 

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Looking back up towards our room

We came across a second restaurant in the hotel where people were enjoying lunch with a view.

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The pool was built right into the rocks on one of the lower levels, further down still were steps leading right into the ocean.

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