So much for being a food blog...

Well, we're 6 posts deep into this alleged food blog and we haven't had a single post that so much as hints at a meal we've eaten in the past two months.

But that doesn't mean we haven't been eating well. Tonight our host Mary made fried pork chops with a pasta and mozzarella salad. She said the recipe called for camembert, but I thought the fresh mozzarella was nice.

And we have had several other meals of note leading up to our departure.

- Sunday Gravy at The Inn at Crippen Creek Farm.

- Lasagne and Flatiron steak at my parents' house.

- Focacetta (fried focaccia dough) at my grandparents' new house.

- Carbonara and focaccia, at Kate and David's apartment, right before our redeye flight. I'm not sure if the bacon was from the Speranzas' pig or just Fletchers, but the eggs were freshly laid on their farm. Homegrown eggs are a much deeper yellow than store-bought, and these seemed to make the carbonara heartier and stickier as well.

So there's some food content for you. Of course, I haven't gotten around to actually taking any pictures of food yet. But I do have this picture of focaccia that looks strikingly like the focaccia we enjoyed the other night. So I've got that going for me. Which is nice.

1st stop: Baltimore

And...... we're off. After a hectic week of packing, cleaning and buying more stuff, we left Tuesday night at midnight for our first stop, Baltimore.

Ah, Baltimore. Known for it's fine, uh, Maryland cuisine. Well, no. Actually we're here because we're visiting our friends Mary and Andy and their 1 year-old son Rowan (aka Bobo).

So, Baltimore! What's it like? This should sum it up nicely:



I'm kidding. Sort of.

Actually, we spent our first day here in DC, at the zoo. I haven't been to a zoo in probably at least 15 years, and it was pretty dang cool. Peep this gorilla:



Impressive, but I don't think he could take this hippo in Animal Survivor.

Tickets booked!

Well, we've finally done it. We booked our tickets for the trip last week and we're just 8 days away from departure.

Here's how it shaped up:

We leave for Baltimore on October 2 to visit our friends Mary and Andy and their ~1 year old son. We'll spend a few days there and then take the train up to Rochester to spend a couple days with Liz's grandparents.

After that, we fly into New York. We spend one night there and then it's off to Milan. We'll be in Italy for 5.5 weeks, and then we catch a flight from Rome to Bangkok (connecting in Doha, Qatar).

We have 10 or 11 weeks in SE Asia, then we fly direct from Bangkok to Los Angeles. From there we go LA---> San Jose (Costa Rica)---> Buenos Aires.

Another 10 weeks or so, then we fly into Cancun. We'll spend close to 3 months in Mexico, mostly in Oaxaca, then fly out of Mexico City back to Portland.

The grand total? Just under $3k each, which is much better than we could have gotten booking tickets individually (we used STA travel).

From now on you can expect much more frequent updates, including pictures.

Still waiting on details

Well, it appears that we're moving forward, despite the loan "hiccup" the other day. We had the VA appraisal today, although I haven't heard any results yet.

And it turns out we may not need a full inspection, pending the results of this appraisal. That would be nice. Even though I'm confident our house is in great condition, there are always a bunch of nitty things the inspector could make people worry about.

Once all this house stuff is in the clear, we can really start to focus on our trip, which is pretty damn exciting. We're still trying to figure out exactly where to go, of course, and we probably won't have everything hammered down until we actually buy the tickets, because we may make some compromises based on price.

Ideally, we would do something like the following:

October to November - Italy (Genoa, Celle Ligure, Florence, Venice, Sicily), Switzerland

December 1-15 - Indonesia (Bali, etc...)

December 16 to March 15 - SE Asia (Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam)

March 16 to June 16 - Argentina (Buenos Aires mostly, some travel around)

June 17 to September 15 - Mexico (Oaxaca)

In addition, Liz wants to go to Morocco during the European portion of our trip, but I'm not as sold on the idea. I'm also thinking I might want to go to Argentina first, and then SE Asia, so we can hit Europe in the Spring and finish out the trip in Mexico. Seems like it might be better for saving money on flights, but again, we'll see.

New header

We're still haggling out the details over what the blog will look like (and be called), but for now I have updated our banner a little bit. The colors are brighter, the font is nicer and the subhead is shorter and simpler.

In other news, we accepted an offer on our house last week. The inspection was supposed to be tomorrow, but apparently our buyers had a hiccup with their loan. Not sure what that means; I thought they were pre-approved.

In any case, we should know more within the next few days. We're planning on buying tickets as soon as the inspection phase is over, so we will have a lot more definite information on our trip at that point. And we will begin updating this blog a lot more frequently with details.

Keep your fingers crossed....

Viva Robusto!

Welcome to our travel blog! We're just getting started; there's a lot to do before we leave on our trip. Let's begin with a quick Q&A session.

Q: Who are you and what the hell are you doing?
A: I'm Dan and this is my wife Liz. We're both from Portland, Oregon. We both have a lot of Italians in our families. We've been married for about 4 years. We're about to take a year off from the daily grind and travel the world.

Q: Oh, I see. A travel blog. What's up with the name?
A: Well, we thought long and hard about what we should name our blog. I thought "turn30ineurope.blogspot.com" would be cool, but there is a 99.9% chance that Liz will turn 30 before we get to Europe, so that sorta blows that idea.

Q: OK, but you still didn't answer my question.
A: Right. We're using the blog to document our upcoming travels, which will include Italy, possibly a little of France and Spain, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia, Argentina, maybe a little Panama and definitely Mexico. Hmm... "Definitely Mexico" would be a cool name for a blog. But I've already registered Viva Robusto... too late I guess. We chose Viva Robusto because it sounds cool and adventurous... it's sort of like Carpe Diem, La Dolce Vita and La Vida Loca all rolled into one.

Q: So what are you gonna do on this trip?
A: We're going to eat a lot of food. We both want to experience the culinary traditions of all the countries we're visiting... from home cooked meals in the Italian countryside to the most expensive Argentinean steakhouses we can afford.

Q: So you're a couple of huge, fat Americans that are going to eat their way around the world?
A: Hey now. We're not fat. Yet.

Q: So what would you say the average blog post will look like?
A: I'd like to document many of the meals we will enjoy, so hopefully I'll be posting a lot of pictures. We'll also share stories about the places we visit, and more pictures. Basically: Pictures of food, stories about food, stories about the people we meet and the places we go. It will be awesome, trust me.


More soon!