Epic Road Trip Part 1: Washington state

The time FINALLY came for me & my boyfriend to end our long distance relationship last month. Two years of separation is not a fun thing to go through! We moved him down to la Florida via U-haul. Oh wait let me mention that he's from Washington state. You know, literally the opposite end of the country. So that means one EPIC road trip in a massive U-haul in the middle of winter!!
Before I left I got some ideas of things that might be fun to do along the way, i.e. cool restaurants to eat at, and fun places to go. We got to do most of the things we wanted, but not everything. So here's how the trip went...

I flew from Pensacola to Dallas, & then landed in Seattle. Of course it was raining, but I love it. Seattle wasn't my final destination, I still had a short flight to catch to the opposite end of the state ~ Spokane. In the mean time between flights, I stuffed some salmon in my face (WA is known for their good salmon) and bought a "Seattle Rain Festival" cup.

On my flight from Seattle to Spokane, which is just 1 hour, they actually served us local beer and a snack. I was just amazed because airlines are being so cheap these days and don't even give you a snack sometimes anymore.

When I landed in Spokane, it was such a crazy feeling. I couldn't believe it...  no more saying good bye. It was just hard for us to imagine! Trevor and his family were there waiting for me, and we spent the rest of the evening in Spokane before driving to Moses Lake, a town in central WA where he grew up. It snowed the whole way to Moses and I was terrified! They are so used to it but I just couldn't even imagine driving in snow like that. We passed cars stuck in ditches and they were like "Oh yeah they're fine, they aren't upside down". I was like "What??"

The next day I got to build my first snowman! It was so fun playing in the snow. I'm a deprived FL girl! Hey I love the beach but I do wish it would snow sometimes.

We spent a couple more days with his family and friends before taking off on our route. Since it was winter, we had to go a longer way- instead of cutting across the midwest, we had to basically go straight south. So we planned it out this way:

Night 1: Portland

Night 2: Sacramento

Night 3: Phoenix

Night 4: San Antonio

and then we'd hopefully be home on night 5.

The best time we had was definitely in Oregon. That was just an experience in itself, so next blog will be ALL about my food adventures in Oregon. Anyway on day 1 we left mid day, after picking up some Starbucks of course ;) . It was about a 6 hour drive to Portland from Moses Lake ( it would have been shorter but being in a U-haul definitely slows you down!)

Eating in Southern Italy (yum)

Last month I went to Italy for a couple of weeks, & what did I eat? Lots of pizza & pasta, of course! But that's not it. There's more to Italian cuisine than you might think. Here's a documentary of what we typically ate during our time in southern Italy:

Breakfast: Completely different from what I am used to. In the morning I typically stick to something relatively high protein and with whole grain carbohydrate. At the B&B where we stayed, the breakfast provided every morning was basically a croissant with cream filling in the middle, along with strong espresso that I got to make every morning in the espresso maker that was in our room (awesome ;). Anyway, I was glad that I had packed 3 boxes of kashi bars for snacks and breakfast, because I just didn't want to eat those croissants every day lol.. On our last day, my boyfriend and I were rushing through the Rome airport trying to find something.. Anything other than pastries for breakfast, and it just wasn't happening. And then we found Mcdonalds. I have never been so happy to order from there (I just got a egg and cheese muffin). Sad, I know, but I just could not eat another simple carbohydrate breakfast! (and there's the dietitian coming out in me)

Lunch: Pasta. Lunch in southern Italy is eaten around noon, and is the biggest meal of the day. It usually consists of pasta first, followed by meat, and then fruit and coffee.

Here is a delicious tomato-based pasta dish we had for lunch the day we went to Pompeii. The noodles are of much better quality than you usually see in the states- they have a moist quality to them.

On the Isle of Capri, we got a traditional caprese salad and also a caprese pizza. They were delicious of course! I was happy to be eating some veggies.

I was worried that on this trip I might gain weight, since I'm not used to eating that way. However we were both pleasantly surprised to see that neither of us gained weight. It must have been all the walking that we did. 

Dinner: Southern Italians do not eat dinner until about 9 pm! That is not normal for an American like me, who typically eats around 5 or 6. My boyfriend and I would eat about that time, and then get invited out for dinner by my friend and the others who were there for the wedding about 9. We were like.. oh man, we already ate! But we still went and hung out. It is also of mention that in Italy between 1 & 5 pm, almost all shops shut down. You are basically forced to take a break, and then people go back to work between 5 and 8 or 8:30. I would say there are two ways to eat dinner: the casual way and the 7 course dinner way. My friend whose wedding I was there for said that dinner is a smaller meal, and usually consists of meat, potatoes and sometimes salad. 

The casual way may also consist of pizza, and we had a lot of that!

We had this pizza with mozzarella di bufala in Naples. Naples is apparently where tomato sauce was created, and one of the traditional Neapolitan pizzas looks about like this- lots of red sauce and moist mozzarella. In the small town we were staying at the majority of the time for the wedding, no residents knew ANY English because we were not in a very touristy area (the southern point of the heal). The first night we were there, we walked into a Pizzeria and tried to order two slices of pizza with lots of vegetable toppings-- we made idiots of ourselves and they almost made us two huge pizzas instead of just two slices. Wow did we learn a lot. 

On nights that are not so casual, you would typically go out to a restaurant, and I know that when we did this, we were served 7 courses of food, for only 30 euro. Italy has a lot of seafood dishes- it makes sense, because the country has so much coastline. But I don't think Americans typically think of Italian cuisine as containing a lot of seafood. Also at the wedding, there was the 7 course dinner again. The first course were appetizers consisting of meats, cheeses and crackers, among other things, followed by a pasta dish that contained mussels from Calabria, a ravioli pasta dish, a seafood dish that had fish and shrimp, and I believe there were more pasta dishes, followed by wedding cake for dessert, of course. I must say I was very impressed by these elaborate dinners, but it was just so much food! 

Pasta with mussels- delizioso!

The fish dish

Dessert: Gelato! There were so many gelato shops around. I had to stop myself from eating too much- but hey it's vacation! Right? ;)

Gelato at Valentino's on my birthday

There are so many varieties of gelato to choose from, and you are typically expected to pick at least two flavors to go together, so Trevor always got strawberry and lemon, and I got chocolate and coffee flavors. Yum. We also ate some tiramisu while in Naples. 

I wish I could just blog about this whole trip, but that would take forever! We had such a great experience there, between experiencing the culture and seeing all the amazing sights Italy has to offer. Can't wait to go back!