year two

I am currently on the plane back to Philadelphia for my second (and final) year of business school.  I cannot believe how fast the first year went by – simply unreal.  Looking forward to another year of adventures.  Now that I am back in school, I am back to blogging more regularly.

la and napa!

Before starting year two at Wharton, I headed back to California for a bit to visit home and go to napa with friends.  I didn’t take a bunch of pictures at home, but it was nice seeing family – despite how short my time at home actually was.

One of my friends from school, Taryn, came to LA and then we drove up north to meet two of our other friends from school, Monica and Kristen, for a girls trip to Napa.  In Napa, we went to wineries (including the Napa Tasting Room (a bunch of small wineries showcase their wines there), Pride Vineyards, Keenan, Mumm and Goosecross .  We also ate excessive amounts of local cheese and tomatoes, ate at the Farmstead, Ad Hoc and OxBow Market.  We decided Pride was our favorite winery by far!  Highly recommend that if you go there.  Each place we went to was a totally different experience.  Highlights describing each winery below

• Napa tasting room we stood at the counter and tried 3 different wines from smaller and new wineries
• Pride we got a tour of their property and caves and tasted many delicious wines.  Their property is on the Sonoma/napa county line and thus their wines have grapes from both counties.  Also being in the mountains their grapes are about 3-4 weeks behind those in the valley
•  Keenan we sat inside at a table (they are redoing their facility) and tasted many different wines, got great advice from the lady giving the tasting and she even brought us lots of cheese!
• Mumm wonderful views from outside porch and bubbles.
• Goosecross we learned that the vineyard was recently purchased by the coors family as an investment opportunity.  The lady, 5^th generation in coors family, was generous in letting us try many wines and explained the whole wine making processes to us

  

After a great few days, we dropped Monica and Kristen off in San Fran and headed back down the coast.  We stopped at a really cute strawberry farm off the road and picked fresh strawberries and got some delicious treats from their store.  The guy working at the trailer selling other goods, recommended a beach a few miles down the road so we stopped there – it was gorgeous.  We walked over the railroad tracks (stopped for obligatory picture) and down a small hill and we ended up at a wonderful beach where I even found a starfish.  We stayed in carmel for the night and then the next morning continued down the 1 after doing the 17 mile drive in carmel.  On the way down we saw elephant seals on the beach – such a treat. 

Overall, nice being home in the sunshine!  

cleveland

I just got back from a trip to Cleveland to visit my college teammate Michele.  It was great catching up with her, meeting her husband Mike and her son, Nolan. 

They live in Westlake, ohio, which I thought was kinda funny being from Westlake and all.  Anyhow, they gave me a tour of “the mistake by the lake” which was pretty cute – lots of buildings with character.  We also ate at Melt, which was featured on diners, drive-ins and dives or some food network show.  The food was filling and flavorful.  I got some Italian sandwich which had garlic bread as the “bread part” with meatballs, cheese, and mozzarella sticks on the inside.  Needless to say, I could not finish my meal. 

Overall, great seeing her and fun quick trip to cleveland!

summer in the city

This summer I spent in nyc.  Wont dwell on details, because it is hard to describe a whole summer in a few sentences, but it was great being back in the city again.  Enjoyed catching up with old friends, seeing my cousins regularly and walking around the city.  The summer included everything from yankee games, weddings, learning about the digital media industry, cooking my first challah and Shabbat dinner (see pic!), pool parties, happy hours and more.  Ive included some pictures below – but have to say I wasn’t as good at taking pictures after the vacay.  Will be better this coming year.

switzerland

From Kili, I flew to Zurich to meet one of my friends from college, john, in Switzerland.  John was in Europe for a wedding, and I had time before my internship started, so we picked the one country in Europe neither of us had been to – Switzerland.  I had not done a ton of planning for this portion of the trip since I was kinda going on the fly for the rest of my trip and planning week 5 of my adventure seemed a little overwhelming.  

We met in interlakken as we both had the objective of doing adventure sports while we were in Switzerland.  First, we went bungee jumping – I am pretty sure the guy had to push me off the ledge.  I was the first one to go in the group and so I had to stand on the end of the plank waiting for them to finish setting everything up – I had too much time to think about it and looked down one too many times and was starting to psych myself out.  I was thinking who in their right mind would jump into a canyon with water flowing at the bottom not seeing if the rope actually worked (at least everyone behind me got to see that it worked on me!).  the first few seconds were horrifying during the free fall but by the time you came to peace with the free fall portion, the rope caught and you knew you would be safe.  Since the canyon was taller than it was wide, we could not jump the whole length because if there was any wind you could hit the side and die.  So after we were part way down they lowered us the remaining distance to a guy who was standing on a platform at the bottom who unhooked us and put us on solid ground.  

During our time in interlakken (two days in total) we also did canyoning (which is essentially going down water from the mountains  by jumping, floating, and other maneuvers.  The water was freezing but the wet suits definitely helped a good amount.  The bungee and canyoning we originally signed up for were closed because of weather (still had snow! And frozen over water) so we did the alternatives which were not as extreme.  We also went paragliding – which gave an awesome view of the city of interlakken and the surrounding mountains.  We had fondue one night – which was delicious, but then again who can go wrong with cheese.

Given that the weather started to get pretty rainy, we decided our next location based on where the weather would be nice – so we went to lugano, a swiss city near the border of Italy.  Unlike interlakken where the primarly language was german, the primary language in lugano was Italian.  Lugano is a cute lake front town with surrounding mountains.  The train ride there was beautiful through the mountains and the very green and snowy country side (sounds odd I know, but different parts looked different).  In lugano, we walked around the town, took a boat ride in the middle of one of those foot paddle boats (like you are riding a bike) – which was nice until the steering wheel broke off and we were stuck going in circles.  After a failure to fix the boat in the middle of the lake, we finally flagged down little kids on a motorized boat and they went to get us help – thank god.  

They didn’t speak English but I think our hand gestures of broken boat were enough of a clue to them that something was wrong and we needed help.  In lugano, we also took a cable car (which they called something different and I don’t remember anymore) up to the top of one of the hills/mountains so we could walk around at the top – seemed like a popular activity there and provided some amazing views of the countryside.  Saturday afternoon we headed back to Zurich as our flights were out of zurich the next morning.  We had another great meal at some restaurant by the hotel.

The airport experience on the way back was unique.  They claimed they couldn’t find my ticket so I had to buy a new one on the spot – thank you again United/US Airways/Lufthansa.  Great way to finish off an otherwise wonderful 5 week vacation.

safari

After our Kilimanjaro adventure and requisite shower, we woke up early the next morning and headed west to go see some big game!  We first went to lake manyara where we saw animals like hippos, giraffes, elephants, zebras, baboons, wharthogs, monkeys, birds and more. You always hear about how close the animals get in safarais, but totally different when you are there.  Especially when they come in your vehicle!  We were at a rest stop before driving to the crater for the night and I accidently left the door open (I didn’t realize it was a big deal).  A couple minutes later we had a visitor in our jeep with us – the problem was the three humans (including myself) were in the back and the baboon had entered in the front and the one open door.  Quite a few screams later, one of the African guides came over and forced him out through a different door he opened.  The guide later explained that the baboons are not afraid of white people, only black people. His words, not mine.  I know the pictures are more interesting than my verbiage here, so I will keep the text short.

From lake manyara, we drove to the ngorongoro crater where we spent the night prior to an early start  the next morning to see more wildlife.  As this would be our last night as a group, we had closing activities which included “awards” for people and a visor giving ceremony from the earthtreks guides where each person gave an earthtreks visor to someone else and said why they deserved it.  It was a nice way to wrap up our time together as a large group.

The next day we headed out early to see the wildlife wake up in the crater.  We saw even more animals – in larger volumes than the previous day, including elephants, lions, flamingos, ostriches, zebras, wildebeests, wharthogs, hippos, birds, gazelles, hyenas and more.  Simply amazing.  However, the highlight of the day was definitely the lion eating the wildebeest.