Dreaming of Bruges and Beer

Right about this time last year, I wrote my first posts on our future plans and my exciting first visit to Portland. One year later, we're here and settled. I thought it would be a good idea to revisit the past year and realized that Jesse and I have accomplished a lot! I sat and read through my blog archives this morning and realized that my posts in February last year looked a bit different than they do now. While work, moving boxes, and tape were the focus of my attention last spring, it seems that food and projects (whether for work or pleasure) have dominated my daily routine since my arrival in Portland.

My life has changed a lot since our move and I'm just now starting to feel comfortable with my contributions to our household. Monetarily, I am not contributing in the way I did in D.C., but I am cooking a lot more and we're eating a lot healthier than before. As a result, we feel better, and I've been able to pare down our budget considerably. Also, I realized that instead of obsessing over having a full-time job that I should enjoy my time off and volunteer, continue experimenting with food, and dream about fun things in the future.

So today, that's exactly what I'm doing -- dreaming of fun things in the future. I talked with my good friend, Lauren, on the phone last night. It was good to catch up with all of her news and mine, but it was also wonderful to hear her talk about the trip she is planning to Italy with her husband, Ken, this spring. They're flying into Milan and visiting northern Italy, hitting Venice and Florence along the way. It sounds divine and I can't wait to get all of the details about their travels. It made me think about that trip that Jesse and I have been planning since before our wedding (a trip that we hoped to take as our honeymoon). Since our love was founded on beer and grilled cheese at Toledo Lounge happy hours in the early days of graduate school, we decided that a beer tour of Europe would be the most awesome honeymoon ever. Belgium and Germany produce our favorite brews, so our itinerary is pretty much set -- one week in each country. Of course, life happened and our move to Portland was much more important than a trip overseas. Life is still a bit hectic now to think about a big trip, and neither of us really want to travel to Europe in the summer, so this fall seems like the soonest that we could even think of going anywhere.

However, that hasn't stopped me from doing research on the feasibility of a vacation in September. I checked online and found out that we have enough frequent flyer miles to book round trip tickets to either Brussels or Munich. Throughout our move, we have been very careful to not touch the travel fund that we saved before our wedding, so our two weeks in beer paradise would not really affect my iron-clad budget. This afternoon (after going on a fabric-hunting trip with Anna to make a roman shade for her baby's nursery) I am going to the library and parking myself in the travel section. I'll probably also make a pass through the stacks to see if I can scrounge up a few books for Jesse on Belgian ale.

I know, I know, it's a long shot, but a what's so wrong with a little daydreaming?