Has it been a year already?

Hard to believe that almost one year ago to the day, we moved to Zurich.  The assignment was for one year and man has this year flown by.  We tried to see and do as much as we could exploring Zurich, Switzerland and the rest of Europe.  And I’d have to say that we’ve done a pretty good job.  But Europe is a big place and there is just so much more to see.  I feel like it's just the tip of the iceberg.  So what I’m basically saying is that one year was not long enough to live in Europe and that’s why we’ve decided to stay at least one more year.  The only catch is that we weren’t able to stay in Zurich (there were some office space issues for me at Google) so we’re off to Paris!  I have basically localized here and will become a French employee at Google.  Eventhough I’m heading to the Google Paris office I will still be doing the same exact job as I have been doing all year.  I’ll just come off of assignment and become a local employee.  

Nate’s company continues to be extremely flexible with him and his job so he had no problem transferring to the Thomson Reuters Paris office as well.  In fact, they probably welcomed it since it’s most likely more expensive for them to employ him here in Switzerland.  In any case, they are flexible which really works out well for us.  

Here’s the situation, I now have my French visa and am moving to Paris on Saturday, June 30.  Just a week away!  Nate’s company is processing his French visa for him and was a little bit slower in the process.  Therefore Nate is just waiting on one more approval before he can go pick up his visa at the French Consulate in Geneva.  It’s possible that this could all happen next week, which would be great as Nate could then come out there with me.  But if not, I’m thinking he should only be a week behind me.  

And then once we get to Paris, the fun part of moving to a new country begins.  We will be in temporary housing for up to 60 days so will start looking for an apartment (luckily we have the help of a home search consultant), we need to get our residence visas, open a bank account, apply for a social security number, etc.  The fun doesn’t end.  We look forward to being settled so that we can start to fully enjoy Paris!

We are both extremely excited for this opportunity to live in and explore Paris and get to know it as a local.  We are sad to leave Zurich and would have been just as happy to stay here.  But I suppose things happen for a reason and now our European adventure continues in Paris.  

We have loved Zurich though and Switzerland in general.  As we may have mentioned in previous posts, you can’t beat the quality of life here.  Nate calls it the country club.  It’s clean, the air is fresh, everything is so organized and on time, the mountains are super close (Nate will definitely miss being just an hour away from skiing).....overall it’s an absolutely wonderful place to live.  Paris should be an interesting change.  For one thing, I keep hearing how the French hate the Americans and refuse to speak English.  The Google Paris office is definitely less International than Zurich so there will probably be less English and more French spoken among the cubes.  That’s ok though.  We are in it for the experience and are ready to immerse ourselves in everything French.  In fact, we have both already started Rosetta Stone.  Nate at least took some French in college where I’ve never had any classes in it.  We are hoping to get to a conversational level at the minimum and not embarrass ourselves.  We shall see.

In any case, Paris here we come!!!  Let the adventure continue!  

Auf Wiedersehen Zurich and Bonjour Paris!

Bachelorette Party in Milan

A friend of mine on my team at work is getting married at the end of August and us girls on the team thought it would be fun to do a bachelorette party for her.  So we headed to Milan for the night last weekend.  There were five of us girls in total traveling together (meeting up with one other girl in Milan) and our plan was to head out on the train early Saturday morning, shop during the day, have a nice dinner and go out that night.  Then we would relax a bit on Sunday and head home in the afternoon.  However, a landslide that happened about a week before we left, which damaged the train track between Zurich and Milan, altered our journey just a bit.  What was supposed to be a 3 hour and 45 minute train ride turned into a 5 hour train ride.  The real kicker in that whole thing wasn’t really the added time but the fact that we had to take 2 trains, a bus and then 3 trains to get to Milan on what was supposed to be a direct train to Milan (why they couldn’t make it just one train, a bus and then one more train was beyond us).  In any case, we arrived a little later than expected, checked in to the hotel, grabbed some lunch and before we knew it, it was 3:00.  So we were off to do some shopping for just a couple of hours (I wasn’t quite as successful as I was in Florence).  We got all dolled up and had a great dinner that night, went out for drinks after and made it to bed around 4am.  Needless to say, we were not up early the next day.  When we finally did get up, we had another great Italian meal and were off to the train station. I feel like I blinked and the weekend was already over. But eventhough it was overall a whirlwind trip to Milan, it was well worth it as it was lots of fun just hanging out with the girls.
 
I could definitely go back to Milan just to have a chance to explore a few of the neighborhoods a bit more as well as the Duomo (it was so massive and impressive from the outside).  Eventhough I only got a small glimpse of the shopping, I think it was better in Florence.  If nothing else Florence seemed to be a bit more charming.  In any case though, perhaps I can make it back there someday with Nate and together we can see more of Milan with a bit more time.

Santa Margherita Ligure

It was about a month or so ago that Nate and I started talking about where we should go for this past weekend.  It was a three day weekend for us here in Zurich (Whit Monday) and probably one of the last ones for a while since it seems the public holidays here are mostly front loaded to the first half of the year.  Therefore we definitely had to take advantage.  
We ended up choosing this small Italian town called Santa Margherita Ligure located in the Italian Riviera and it turns out we were thoroughly pleased with our choice.  It is a cute little town located on the water with enough going on where it’s not boring (definitely has restaurants and shops to choose from) but yet not a big city.  We stayed at the Hotel Villa Anita which no doubt added to our love of this small town.  It’s a small hotel run by a mother and her son and they are just the nicest people ever.  You feel like you are staying at a family member’s house.  Our room also had a lovely terrace with a view of the Italian hills and a small glimpse of the water.  Absolutely serene!

This is what greeted us when we arrived to our room

After a flight to Genoa followed by a short 30 minute train ride to Santa Margherita Ligure, we arrived at our hotel. I had pre-ordered a ham plate, cheese plate, mixed salad and bottle of wine and they had the table on our terrace all set up for us.  It felt like heaven!  We fell in love instantly with this town, the hotel and everything around us.  We enjoyed a lovely evening sitting on our terrace enjoying some good food and wine.

The next day we didn’t have any set plans so decided to just casually explore the town.  We strolled along the waterfront and took in the Italian beauty all around us.  We stopped for a coffee and hot chocolate, strolled some more looking at the shops, a church, piazzas and then stopped again for a delicious pizza for lunch.  The day was perfect!  The weather was warm (although not quite hot yet) and we were on no particular timeline.  That evening we enjoyed happy hour on our terrace with a bottle of wine that Nate procured from a little wine shop down from our hotel, dinner at a restaurant not far from that wine shop followed by a nightcap of limoncello on our terrace.  Again, just absolutely amazing and so peaceful!

Santa Margherita Ligure is actually located quite close to Portofino and I had read ahead of time that you can take a hike from one to the other.  So this is what we decided to do on Sunday.  Afterall, you hear so much about Portofino that we had to go check it out.  Not to mention, a little exercise is always good too.  So we headed out and actually took a walk along the water all the way to Portofino.  It’s 5km total and was such a pretty walk.

Portofino

We ended up in Portofino just in time for a lovely lunch looking out at the harbor.  I must say though, I wasn’t all that impressed with Portofino overall.  It was extremely small and felt kind of touristy (with those touristy prices too).  There just didn’t feel like there was much to do around there.  We had lunch, walked around for a short bit and then hopped on a ferry for a 15 minute ride back to Santa Margherita.  

For our last night there we enjoyed happy hour on our terrace (of course) and then headed into town to a restaurant recommended by Daniela at the hotel that had a lovely view of the water.  We enjoyed one more Italian meal (pasta and fresh fish) and discussed how we must come back.  We made all sorts of promises to ourselves to come back in the next few months sometime and stay for more than 3 days.  I hope we can do it!!!  People sometimes ask us what our favorite place has been that we’ve visited and I know Santa Margherita Ligure will certainly rate high on that list for me.