spammers

Friends, family and secret blog followers...

I've enabled comment moderation on my blog now - I was getting slammed with spam comments every night.  Black hat marketing techniques, shame on you Uggs!

Anyway, I always love comments, just the real ones so wanted to give you heads up.  

Happy Friday!!!

Here's a little view from my desk today... sunny day with snow covered roofs and a Christmas ornament in the window.  

})i({

bella went to rome

Rome was really great.  It was a lot of work during the week at the office but I was really happy to meet my whole team in person.  We're 3 in Denmark, 3 in Italy, 2 in Greece and one in Spain on our team.  Quite the group!

So it was the weekend that I did all things touristy Rome.  Friday I left the office at 4ish and basically just set down my things at the hotel and hit the streets for what turned out to be some serious walking.

I romed (hehe) all over the city for five hours before it got too dark for me to really be wandering around a foreign city at night by myself.  I even ate dinner at a restaurant by myself for the first time in my life.  Brought a book and in no time there was so much food I didn't even care.

With no real objective or map I got to see tons of stuff.  I saw several famous piazza's including Piazza Napoli (featured above as well) for a glass of wine and Campo de Fiori for another glass of wine.  

I saw the Fontana di Trevi and threw in 1 euro - so my return to Rome is set.  

 

Also saw the Pantheon...

I saw National Monument like 8 times, it was close to my hotel so I just always looked for it to find my way around.

Palazzo Venezia...

 By the time dusk hit I was walking along the Tiber and saw this island thing (erhm probably a church or something seeing as it is Rome) and Teatro Marcello.  I finally took a map when I got home to make an official walking plan for Saturday.

Saturday I wandered even more, but this time on a path.  You'll start to notice pictures with my hand in front - this was to show my ring and pretend Christian was with me.  You start to get weird when you travel alone!

I first went to Santa Maria Maggiore, then over to Piazza della Republica.  

Then I walked down to San Carlo Quattro Fontane and took Via Sistina down to the top of the Spanish Steps. 

The Spanish steps along with every other place in Rome were hugely crowed with tourists, of course myself included.  

Wasting no time I headed over to Piazza del Pappolo.

A shourt walk down to the river again and walked down to Piazza del Tribunali.

Next few blocks over was Castel Sant Angelo which is the home to the National Museum.  I would like to go in there next time, I think!

And finally arrived at Vatican city.  I was tired so I stopped for water and fruit and met a nice Italian waiter who called me Bella.

I walked to St. Peters, stood in line for 40 mins, only to be told I was not dressed appropriately enough to get into the actual church.  I was pissed.  I had a thick strapped dress on but apparently that's too slutty for the Vatican.  I'm sorry but I found the woman in front of me who didn't quite fit in her pants to be more offensive than my bare shoulders but hey...

So I walked over to the Vatican Museum because I've been told it's highly recommendable.  Another 40 minute wait and they tried to deny me again.  This time I was able to negotiate by pointing out another woman they let in with similar shoulder barrings (?) as mine.

There were so many people in there I immediately had anxiety.  I also felt like all the guards all over the place were staring at my shoulders, then I was pretty sure several paintings of Jesus were staring at my shoulders.  All in all I felt dirty so I saw the Sistine Chapel by Michaelangelo (no pics allowed) and got the flip out of there. 

I stopped back in my little spot to wait out a rain shower with my Italian waiter friend.  He told me I breaka his heartaaa when I told him I was married. :)

Back to the hotel and then quickly turned around to meet my colleague Thomas (who also stayed the weekend in Rome) for gellato, dinner and drinks, all of which were delicious.  

The next morning I took a leisurely breakfast at the hotel and set out for the Colosseum, finally.  I could see it from my hotel block but saved it for the last day.  It was hot sunny weather and I didn't quite feel I had the time to dedicate to buying the tickets into the Colesseum and Forum to really enjoy it so I snapped a few shots and vowed to take the proper entrance next time.

Many of the major roads are closed to vehicle traffic on Sundays and to our delight we got to witness some kind of battle of the bands in the streets.  It was all Italian military dressed men (and some women) in funny hats in mini marching bands.  They sang and played brass instruments.  I got a kick out of it!

Took some more walking with Thomas and got a bite to eat and then headed for the Airport.  All in all a good trip!  I'm still recovering from all the walking and lack of proper sleeping but it was worth it in the good food alone! :)

I highly recommend Rome but never when it's hot and at the height of tourist season, I couldn't imagine.  I was overwhelmed in mid September!  But I want to go back and explore more bits closely and actually go into some other museums and such.

My souvenirs included proper olive oil and pesto.  So good.  And an Italian lottery ticket for Christian (pot is at 130m Euros) upon his request, haha.

Just in case you go, and your guide book doesn't mention it, if you go the vatican COVER UP... haha.

})i({ 

rome | roma | rom

Call it what you will, but I am en route to Rome, Italy this afternoon! :)

from voneurope.com

I'll be there for work until Friday and then I'm taking the weekend to explore the city and eat delicious food.  I am sans friends/husband so I am a little interested to see how I do on my own in a new city.

What recommendations does anyone have for my visit? Anyone have special picture requests?  I hope to bring home some really good olive oil, but not sure if Rome is the place to get it from or if it's other parts of Italy better known for olive oil.  Hmmm.

Let me know your ideas/suggestions! 

})i({

august is going to be crazy.

Well, life is about to get busy here in Denmark.

I signed my contract to work for Experian (my parent company from back in the US) and I start Monday August 2^nd!  It’s been a long time coming, just so happy it has properly worked out.

Here’s where I’ll be working, not a typical American office, huh?:

It’s in Copenhagen East – pretty central!

My role will be to support Experian domains all over EMEA (Europe, Middle East & Africa) to get some better ecommerce (webshop) functionality hence my title, eCommerce Project Manager.  I am also going to be working on SEO and web analytics for key sites and teaching local marketing teams how to do some of these bits on their own as well.  A variety of hats I suppose, which I like!

Of course as soon as I accepted the job all the other opportunities I’d been working came rolling in.  You snooze you lose, Denmark!  I hit the ground with rollerblades on (hitting the ground running just wouldn’t do it justice as we all know what a slow runner I am).

School starts August 7^th.  Say goodbye to relaxing Saturdays.  I have school every Saturday from 9-3 for the next year and a half.  Awesome.  I also have plenty of assignments to work on during the week. 

Then what else… oh let’s see… we have a Danish wedding on September 4th! We just mailed in the invites.  I have no idea how much time this is going to consume in planning but I know I don’t have a whole lot of it to go around so it should be interesting!

If you’re interested in any wedding details (any of you in the states are MORE THAN WELCOME – we’d love some guests from home!), I’m once again updating the ‘wedding’ section of the site.  Including the wedding blog. :)

To get me through all the celebration and the stress, my husband found proper Tequila in duty free in Latvia two weeks ago. God bless Latvia.

 

God bless tequila.

})i({

summer on sjælland continues...

Another great summer weekend in here in Sjælland (the big island we live on).

Friday I traveled out to western Sjælland with Christian’s mom, a friend and Christian’s siblings Emilie and Magnus.  We stayed at a “summer house” on the peninsula called Røsnæs just outside the city of Kaldunborg.

We took a boat trip out into the bay to look for some dolphin like fish, the closest English translation I could find was “porpoise” but I think they’re still a little different.  I don’t know, we didn’t see any in the end.  Which I’m sure you can guess, was fine by me the fish hater. ;)

We left late Saturday afternoon and I headed into Copenhagen to meet up with Jeanette for dinner, a movie and drinks.  Sounds like a romantic date, haha.  We ate at ChilliMilli and saw Shrek (the 4^th?) which was fine, definitely not as funny as the first two but anyone could have predicted that.

We were going to get a beer at a bar or something of the sort but decided to buy a few beers at the grocery store and sit in Nyhavn and people watch instead.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, it’s my favorite thing to do on a nice day in Copenhagen.

I like to watch all the people walking by and guess where they’re from.  Come join me sometime and I will share with you my skills on guessing.

I took a train home around 11:30 and missed a connection by 4 minutes and ended up with a 200kr ($35) taxi ride home from the station.  Oh well, it was a really nice night and worth it!

Yesterday I relaxed for most of the day and then joined Christian’s uncle’s family and Farmor to Gillileje for dinner in the harbor.  I found the one bit of chicken on the menu (I’m pretty good at that) and we ate outside and enjoyed the evening sun.

We took a walk on the rocky/sandy beach there after dinner.  We looked for amber and special rocks that had what looked like petrified starfishes on them.  I found a piece of amber, not sure if that’s special or not, though.  The kids took a swim and then we started out to go home.

On the road out of the town there was a circus setting up.  They literally had just arrived and the animals were out getting some fresh air.  We stopped and got to be pretty close (without anything than a mere rope between us) to elephants, zebras, camels and horses.  Pretty cool.

In other news, most of you probably read on Facebook that I got a job here, finally!  I am absolutely  over the moon about it.  I definitely need structure and routine back in my life, not to mention a Danish income!!

I’m working remotely until the end of the month for my old job still and then supposedly I start my new job the first of August.  So I never really was unemployed, kind of nice.  I’ll know more details this week when I go in to sign some paperwork. :D

Thanks for all your love and support, as always.

})i({