münchen

In early February, Stephen and I visited Suz in Munich, and we ate very, very well -- particularly at Samrat. Wonderful multi-course Indian dinner, definitely planning on going back. We also went on a walk in search of the lakes that are supposed to be about 4.5 kilometers from Suz's house. Turns out we were up for about 1 of those 4.5 kilometers before we decided we were too frigid to continue, and needed to go buy provisions for the next morning's large German breakfast instead. We decided to go on a hunt for those lakes again in the summer, when it's not snowing sideways into our faces.

gran canaria: taurito

Like I said before, there are worse places to be in the middle of winter than at a beach resort where it's 20 degrees Celsius.

gran canaria: the interior

As built-up as Gran Canaria's coast is, the interior is still rough and beautiful. We drove up from Maspalomas (which reminded me of Florida, not in a good way), admired Tejeda, where it was frigid!, and had fantastic tapas in the late afternoon in Mogán before making our way back down to the coast at Taurito, where we discovered that we'd booked ourselves into an all-inclusive resort. Gran Canaria vacation: nothing if not surprising.

playa del ingles

  
Not pictured: the vast majority of la Playa del Ingles, which was one of my least favorite beach towns in recent memory. Having said that, I have certainly got no complaints about palm trees and 20 degrees Celsius in January.

skydive gran canaria

The same day Stephen and I ran our first half marathon, we also went skydiving, with Skydive Gran Canaria. Because you know, one big new life experience wasn't enough for one day. It was gut-droppingly terrifying to dangle out the side of a plane, regardless of how many hundreds of times the instructor (to whom I was quite securely strapped) had done so before, but ultimately so, so cool. And discovering from the pictures afterwards that Stephen's upper lip had acted as a parachute of its very own made the whole thing that much better.

happy hot pot

When Amanda does a food party at her house, she does it up right. <3 you, hot pot party.

fly-by nyc

  
I passed through NYC briefly (so briefly!) at the start and the end of my trip to the US for Christmas, to see my friend and former roommate Diana get married to her longtime boyfriend Vilas. So fun! I also got to hang out with Amanda, spend a little while shopping in SoHo, grab lunch with Heather, and have a hot-pot night in Brooklyn. So marvelous.

virginia beach

  
A few shots from Virginia Beach and of my family, from when I was home at Christmas.