2 Fat Girls on a Volcano Top 100 Things to See/Do Before You Die:

1. South Rim of the Grand Canyon

2. Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion

3. Walk up Monmarte and watch the sun set over Paris from the steps of Le Sacre Cour

4. Hagia Sofia of Istanbul

5. Walking tour of the Coliseum

6. The Scarab beetle ceiling, King's Palace, Brussels, Belgium

7. St. Paul's Dome at night, as seen from the Millenium footbridge, London

8. Albuquerque Balloon Festival

9. Anne Frank's House, Amsterdam

10. General Post Office, Dublin, Ireland

11. Wander through Venice on foot

12. Have tapas on the waterfront in Barcelona

13. Fisherman's Bastion, Budapest

14. Viennese New Year's Eve Concert

15. Mirabel Gardens, Salzburg, Austria

16. National Finals Rodeo, Las Vegas

17. Leed's Castle, England

18. The Greek Amphitheater ruins of Taormina, Sicily

19. Stay overnight in the monastery of Assisi

20. Cruise the Seine on a summer day

21. Live Theatre in London's West End

22. The Library at Ephesus

23. The Kentucky Derby

24. Sunset tour of the canals of Venice

25. Windjammer Days, Boothbay Harbor, Maine

26. Try Limoncello in Capri

27. Walk up the Acropolis to the Parthenon

28. Throw a coin in the Fountain of Trevi

29. Eat chocolate dipped Belgian waffles in Le Gran Place, Brussels

30. Dromoland Castle, Ireland

31. The Musee D'Orsay, Paris

32. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

33. Valletta, Malta

34. Marsala salt mills, Italy

35. La Familia Sagrada, Barcelona

36. U.S.S. Constitution in Boston Harbor

37. Punting on the Cam, Cambridge, England

38. The Leaning Tower of Pisa

39. The Black Fort, Inishmore, Ireland

40. Michelangelo's David, The Uffizi, Florence, Italy

41. Topkapi Palace, Istanbul

42. Empire State Building, New York City

43. Cloud Gate, Millenium Park, Chicago

44. Napa Valley, California

45. Sydney Opera House

46. White Cliffs of Dover

47. Alaska's Inside Passage

48. Niagara Falls, Canada

49. Mount Haleakala, Hawaii

50. The Sistine Chapel, Vatican City

51. The Pantheon, Rome

52. The Golden Gate Bridge

53. Barossa Valley, Australia

54. The rust colored sails of the Hooker boats, the Claddagh, Galway, Ireland

55. The Cliffs of Moher

56. Notre Dame, Paris

57. Schoenbrunn, Vienna

58. The Burren, Ireland (closer then the moon, same landscape)

59. The Maasai Mara Wildlife Reserve, Kenya

60. The Space Needle, Seattle

61. Yellowstone National Park

62. The Tribune Building, Chicago

63. The Statue of Liberty, New York City

64. The Olympic Stadium, Athens, Greece

65. The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust Nursery, Nairobi, Kenya

66. Big Ben

67. The Vienna Christmasmarkt at Rathausplatz

68. Melk Abbey

69. Jackson Pollock at the Peggy Gugenheim, Venice

70. The Eiffel Tower at night

71. Palazzo Ducale, Venice

72. Amalfi Coast

73. The Karen Blixen House

74. Leopold II summer palace, Tervuren, Belgium

75. Mount Rushmore, South Dakota

76. Pike Place Market, Seattle

77. The Lipizzans performing at the Imperial Hofburg Palace, Vienna

78. The Salza River, Salzburg

79. The Belvedere, Vienna

80. Tuscany, Italy

81. Charleston, South Carolina

82. San Diego Zoo, California

83. The monuments of Washington, D.C.

84. The horse tetrad inside the second floor of Basilica San Marco, Venice

85. Savannah, Georgia

86. Newport, Rhode Island

87. Pompeii

88. Toronto, Ontario, Canada

89. Steel drum music in the Bahamas

90. The Summer Music Concert on the island in the Danube, Vienna

91. Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado

92. Fanuiel Hall, Boston

93. Independence Hall, Philadelphia

94. Frank Llyod Wright's Monona Terrace, Madison, Wisconsin

95. Leuven, Belgium

96. Stefansdom, Vienna

97. Vancouver, British Columbia

98. St. Augustine, Florida

99. Bruges, Belgium

100. Mt. Etna, Italy

Wanderlust Melting Pot

As I muse, I sit immersed in a Viennese bathtub full of bubbles, drinking a full bodied Spanish red wine from a glass acquired at a boutique Virginia winery. I am reading an Italian memoir; Tuscan to be precise. My iPhone is belting out Edith Piaf from iTunes Radio, and my very American husband pops his head in the bathroom to ask if I need a top up on the wine. I tell him thanks but no, that he should finish the bottle if he likes.

And it strikes me, how there is so much to see but yet sometimes the layers of experience layer over one another, like Mille foile or a gauzy dress that you can almost see through.  We have just booked our trip to Portugal for our friend, Jules' wedding. And I have been looking forward to having some time to plan our spare time during that trip. So far we have arrived only at the fact that our five and a half hour layover in Brussels gives us time to catch the train and lunch at Le Gran Place. Jon has never been, and I hope to have a moment to stop at Neuhaus, my favorite chocolatier in the world.

To this day my dear Swiss friend, Silvia, and I argue over who has the best chocolate.

But I find myself contemplating the adventure of house shopping in Tuscany, even though we are still furnishing our apartment here in Vienna, as well as making mortgage payments on our house in Charleston, SC.

According to my TripAdvisor profile the other day, I have only seen 12% of the world. How can that be possible? I have been to 4 continents! How will I ever see everything I want to see, and have the career of my dreams as well as a wonderful and happy marriage? I need more lives, like a cat!

And oddly, at the same time, I think of all the places I have listened to Edith Piaf, and the crazy On The Globus Go adventures mom and I had in Italy, and it seems like I have already lived lifetimes.

Jon and I met this darling couple on our safari in Kenya. They were retired and traveling the world boldly. They had seen a lot, been places we haven't, and yet they were so excited for all we had seen and done, for our exciting lifestyle of adventure.

It is something I have to remind myself of, rather often, because like anything, it is easy to get bogged down I how hard the day to day is. But I believe it is like that anywhere, so I hope to enjoy everything this opportunity has to offer, and to try to ignore the difficult days. 

For example, I found out last week that my PhD, in Holland, will be largely based in Bioengineering. I have no experience or training in Engineering, but those who knew my dad are laughing with him about this!

So for now, we will try to keep living the dream, for as long as it lasts. And we will try our best to chuckle at the many, many bumps in the road.

And so the New Year Begins...

Here it is another year, and the Twitter feed is full of people asking what travel destinations, bucket list items, and new year resolutions everyone has planned. All that is well and good, but what about enjoying the season?  I know there is a lot going on, but everyone seems so rushed to move on. What happens to all those great moments we spent, celebrating the Christmas spirit and ushering in the New Year? Do they just get lost in a sea of checking items off a list? Isn't the point of having memories being able to pause, look back, and reflect on those special moments?

Don't get me wrong, I have plenty of travel destinations in mind myself for this brand spanking new year.  We will head to Portugal for the wedding of two dear friends, and we are planning to head back to the US to visit Jon's family in December.  No doubt there will be many more trips throughout the year: I have my heart set on showing Jon some of Italy, and we are dying to visit Prague.  Skiing would be fun as well, since we are in Austria and all. 

But I think it is important to fully take the time to cherish these moments we experience in life. For example, last night my mother, my husband and I made our way through a misty evening in downtown Vienna to the dramatically lit Palais Auersperg. We were ushered into a vaulted oval performance hall lined with rose marble walls and exquisite crystal chandeliers, where we listened to an orchestra featuring a famous antique violin known for appearances at the esteemed Viennese Philharmonic Silvester.  At Intermission we sipped champagne and strolled among the oil paintings on display, undaunted under lavish chandeliers. 

The performance featured an opera duo as well as a ballet duo, and Jon was really enthralled by the opera pieces. At the end of the evening, there was a last piece that featured the opera singers, who had been singing in Italian. This last song was fast and in German, and involved champagne toasts, but I think it was an Austrian tradition, kind of like their version of Auld Ange Syne.  

We headed home to check on our nervous yellow dog and were met by a constant barrage of fireworks. They were everywhere, flickering against the night clouds, sounds exploding all around.  As midnight came and went, people set so many store bought Roman candles off from the street that we could see them just sitting in our 2nd floor living room with the blinds open.  We popped some tiny bubbly bottles that Santa had left in our Christmas stockings and rang in the new year watching the crazy fireworks with Castle on in the background.  For New Year's Day we have tickets to a hockey game near the house, and we are starting our own tradition of New Year's shrimp cocktail and split pea soup with ham. 

This holiday season has been fun, but I think next year we will make some New Year's plans to be out of the city.  The trains apparently don't run, so you have to leave early or drive yourself. And as I much as I enjoy fireworks, I think last night we all felt like it was a WWII reenactment.