nashville

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Ebert and I are headin' to Nashville for the weekend. We'll be visiting some friends who recently moved there from LA. It's great having friends from our LA days, which seems like a lifetime ago, on the same side of the country as we are. We're hoping the drive is easy so we can visit them often. They just had a baby too, so we're super excited to meet their little guy. This will be my first time in Nashville. Any suggestions on things to do and places to eat?

Checking one more thing off the list. Summer…you're absolutely the best!

poland highlights - part two

I can't believe that a month ago today Ebert and I were arriving in Krakow. I can, however, believe that it's taken me this long to share more photos from our trip. There's always some reason for a delay. Eventually I'll stop procrastinating and just get to it.

Anyway, this is the first picture I took in Krakow and it's the distance I traveled on a bus from the plane to the terminal. Enough said, right?

Our friends live in Chrzanow- a small town about 45 minutes outside of Krakow.

This is the main market square and several different views of it from our hotel room. Depending on the time of day, and I'm sure the weather, it was either really busy or really quiet. The nice thing about the square is that there are two outdoor restaurants serving beer and food. You can see the huge umbrellas of one of the restaurants in the following pictures. The other restaurant also had gigantic umbrellas and, from the first picture, is up the stairs to the right. I really should have taken a panoramic of the entire square. Looking back on all my pictures I wish I would have taken more pictures in general, but at the time I thought I was taking plenty. It's funny how that works- I want to see every detail from pictures and not just rely on the images from my memories.

This is a view of the square from the other restaurant.

The streets of Chrzanow. I just love the pops of color in this photo.

A quaint garden we came across on a walk.

Friends since they were 7-years old.

The park. As you can see from the picture the park is very green and full of these lush, tall trees. The funny thing is that they have this beautiful park but you aren't allowed to walk on the grass…

You have to walk on the cobblestone path. There are a crazy amount of pigeons in the trees so this is probably a good thing. It's still pretty to walk thru though.

There are only two hotel options in Chrzanow. We stayed at the Hotel Platan, conveniently located right in the main square. It was clean, comfortable, very affordable and served a delicious European style continental breakfast. We would definitely recommend this hotel to anyone staying in the area.

I could go for this refreshing summer beer right now. It finally got warm enough to sit out on the square. Ebert and I could have spent all afternoon under those umbrellas just drinking beer, reading, and people watching.

These two I tell you…I just loving seeing them together.

Wujek (uncle in Polish and what Gabi affectionately called Ebert) could always make Gabi laugh.

And just look at her smile!

Next up…highlights of our time in Krakow!

raw food cleanse: day 3

I finished my 3-day raw food cleanse Friday night. I decided to end it Friday night rather than Saturday morning because Ebert and I had an impromptu date night. We went out to dinner and then saw a friend in a play. I didn't want to rush back into eating "normally" right away so we dined at a vegan restaurant called Native Foods. We've eaten there before and the food is really tasty. I don't feel bad about ending the cleanse early because I still ate very clean even though I did have some cooked food - there was seitan in my salad, as well as some cooked veggies and we did order a side of sweet potato fries and they were oh so good. I didn't eat any animal product, sugar, or drink alcohol so I feel pretty great about that. Like I mentioned the other day the only thing I really missed was being able to eat cooked food. Ok, and maybe I missed drinking a little bit. It's not that I drink excessively, it's just nice to have a cocktail or a glass of wine at night.

I won't go into detail about what I ate on Day 3 because basically it was the same as Day 1 and Day 2. I didn't feel like making a variety of food since I was only doing a 3-day cleanse, it was much simpler to eat a variation of the same thing. Besides not eating cooked food this cleanse was not that different from how I eat on a regular basis. I think I would need to do a longer cleanse to see definite changes. It did feel great though to commit to something and finish it. I would like to continue to focus on eating more healthy, this is always a goal of mine. I feel like I go through cycles of taking really good care of my body and then other times just not caring at all. I would like a healthy body through a good diet and exercise to be a constant. That's definitely a goal of mine this year.