Wedding Weekends with Polaroids

It only make sense to group the Polaroids from these two trips together: both were trips to “San” cities (San Antonio, San Francisco) for weddings of my two beautiful, tall, blonde friends, both marrying men named Michael.

One thing I’ve learned about his camera: Joseph is much better at using it than I am! Who would have thought? His pictures turn out great, while mine are either under- or over-exposed!

I love playing around with toy cameras, even if it means each photo costs a couple dollars ;) And you can’t beat the size and weight, especially compared to my normal SLR and DSLR.

San Antonio:

San Francisco area:

We had the most amazing macarons in Northern California! The pistachio macaron pictured above was from Bouchon Bakery.

A Small Town in Italy in 2008

I’m organizing the photos on my computer, which mostly means feeling frustrated at myself for not deleting extra pictures as I went along (Seriously, Alyssa? 75 pictures of a piece of cake?). But it also means I’m taking a trip down memory lane to when we lived in Italy from 2007-2010.

I found these photos of a geocaching trip we took one day in June of 2008. By that time I was already so used to where we lived I’d stopped taking as many photos. Stumbling upon these after living in Texas for the past few years I am in awe–I’d forgotten just how beautiful Northern Italy was.

This was a 15 minute drive from our apartment. I can’t believe I ever grew accustomed to this!

We stumbled upon this tiny church in the middle of nowhere. It was built in the 8th Century. I still remember the smell when I pressed my face up to the little window to see inside.

Washington DC: Day 2

I figured it’s time for another post about our recent trip to DC. Yesterday Joseph asked, “Did we fly somewhere recently? I feel like we did, but I can’t remember.” He’s already forgetting the trip we took just a couple months ago–further proving my point that I need to take lots of photos of our travels!

Photographing our trips is what began me on the path to becoming serious about photography. I bought a DSLR years ago so I could try to document our time living in Europe. And I’m so glad I did, even if the photos weren’t so great the first few years–I still look through those photos often.

We started the day one of the best ways possible, in my opinion–breakfast of a bagel with lox!

After breakfast we visited Ford’s Theatre and the home across the street where Lincoln died, the Peterson House. The rooms remain as they were when at the time of Lincoln’s death and are very eerie. On the upper levels of the house are a few really well-done exhibits. A large spiral staircase is flanked around this gigantic stack of books written about Lincoln.

As we were walking towards the Mall we were stopped by security. All the locals were annoyed, but we waited around about 10 minutes to see the presidential motorcade driving down Pennsylvania Avenue!

The motorcade interrupted our schedule a bit, so we had to rush through the National Air and Space Museum. It was really exciting, though! I about died when I saw one of Amelia Earhart’s planes and Sally Ride’s uniform.

During school I wrote at least three research essays about Amelia Earhart. We got to choose our topic, and I remember writing two about her in middle school and at least one more in high school. It wasn’t at all laziness on my part–I was just fascinated!

Next up: a tour of the Capitol. We scheduled this tour ahead of time, so we didn’t have to wait in the long lines.

Gorgeous, yeah? After the Capitol tour we went to the Library of Congress, where for the second or third time that day I felt I was going to die of excitement. Special collections heaven!!! I already made a blog post dedicated to it!

Since this post is a bit light, I thought I’d include photos of our hotel. Finding a place to stay wasn’t easy. We were insistent on staying in the city, but prices are so high! We ended up at the Morrison Clark Inn in Chinatown. It was lovely and a quick walk to the subway station. Seriously, after a day there we started thinking how nice it would be to live in the area. Then we looked at real estate prices and changed our minds!

The Morrison Clark Inn is a Victorian mansion built in 1864 and is the only inn in DC listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It was charming and reminded me of the equally quaint hotel we stayed in in Paris.

Washington DC: Day 1

Our first morning in DC we headed to the National Mall at 9am and had some time to walk around before the museums were open. It was nice and quiet at that time in the morning!

We could have stayed in DC for a month and still have places to visit. I planned our three days there a week in advance, with everything scheduled to the hour.

The first museum our list was the National Gallery of Art, and we broke the itinerary. We stayed for thee hours and still felt rushed. The museum is absolutely incredible! The collection is amazing, and the way everything is assembled is incredible. This is the first time I’ve gone through a museum and felt like I got a thorough walk through history and artistic development. And the architecture of the building, designs of the rooms, and layout of the art… just… wow. Every time I turned around the view of the next room took my breath away. So, so beautiful.

Next up: The National Museum of Natural History, followed by the Museum of American History (though I didn’t take any photos there)

We spent the rest of the day at the memorials around the Mall before heading to our hotel and changing for dinner. It was a lot of walking. We should have rented bikes!

Visiting the Library of Congress

Joseph and I took a wonderful vacation to Washington DC last week. Before I finish sorting through the hundreds of photos I took, I just have to share my favorite stop on the trip, the Library of Congress.

I was really excited for the visit due to my background in working with special collections. But once I walked into the building I was completely blown away by something different entirely–it is breathtakingly beautiful!