It's been a year and we have loved each other for more than a year.
It seems romantic I can say I have loved you at least for more than two years when I fall in love with you for just 380 days. Happy New Year!
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This trip took a lot of preparation. When we weren't married (out of that short period of time), we figured that we should plan a trip during mid-year and travel somewhere in the world. We were set on Vietnam, then the meeting grew bigger and bigger and became a family gathering (from both sides! Now that we're married, this trip was the very first time the both of the families to see each other as in-laws). During this ten-day trip, we decided to do our wedding photography as well without hiring an actual photographer. The list of equipments went on - aside from the obvious (like an DSLR, a tripod, etc), we didn't know wedding photography requires small accessories like veils, wedding gowns (not an extravagant one because it's super hot in Vietnam), bouquets, boutonniere, shoes.. We could buy all these, but we had to practice and supply our own bouquets and boutonniere from local flower shops and stay indoor for half a day and make our own.
Oh, and actually, that was the easy part. Working out every day and toning, eating healthy for the perfect skin for two month was the hardest part. Making the flower crown over Skype video chat at 2am, choosing the perfect nail color because I won't be able to do it (or even if I could, I don't know when I could have done with all these family lunches and dinners), bringing two different sizes of curling irons, preparing for Vietnamese visa for the entry, choosing the matching outfit (super difficult over Skype video chat).. The very last part of Shanghai was the famous Din Tai Fung. Booin talked about this place more than thousand times. Though two of us already exhausted that morning, passionately found the map and the way. She had said you've gotta taste the truffle shaorongbao. I'd already excited to have the one, with an exotic combination of dimsum ingredients. We ordered some appetizers, and a glass of beer. .. one more appetizer(choisam), shrimp shumai, truffle shaorongbao, shrimp fried rice, and a beef noodle. Absolutely enough for two person. We trained our stomach, inside.
A friend of Booin recommended us a gorgeous hotpot restaurant in Shanghai. Fitting it's fame for being the one of the most delicious hotpot restaurant, was crowded more than I've ever experienced. We got a waiting number ticket. A huge display showed us the numbers. They gave us a tiny snack package with cups of tea while waiting for the line. Though it was very hot and somebody expected a bottle of beer, it was cute and good. We had a philosophical chat. We ordered more than the table could contain. The clerk asked again and again you mean it or not familiar with Chinese. We answered again and again we mean it and familiar with hot pot. 2 kinds of meat, 3 kinds of mushrooms, and the other thing like dried tofu made me to order a Chinese whiskey. The red pot(mara) paralyzed my tongue. The whiskey burned it at the same time. Hot pot was hot.
After we had a great dinner, walked along the humid and warm Shanghai street. It was really romantic, booin was happy with mangosteens. We forced living apart right after getting married. So we decided to meet at Shanghai at the end of March, where my booin had something to do. After all the hardest parts, we finally got our precious private time at Shanghai. For us, we got plan to have a hot pot and Din tai pung.
For me, I had got a plan to pop a surprise question to my wife, with aurora machine. We drove through an unknown road to get to this horse farm - we didn't get to see the horses, but three dogs greeted us. Our friends were scared of the dogs though - so we had to lock our friends safely in the cottage and move the luggages. There was supposedly a lake around cottages, but it was so dark that the only thing we could see was three cottages and dogs. While my husband was cooking, I kept checking the aurora app because the chance of seeing the northern light was at 50% tonight. We've been seeing the northern light even at 12%, so 50% was a pretty high chance. In the middle of cooking rice, the horse farm owner knocked on our cottage door, and told us there was northern light out. We all ran outside, and it was the clearest northern light we saw - so far. We kept checking the sky even when we were drinking, and one of our friends spontaneously stepped outside to borrow a camera (because all ours were broken) from a neighbor, and that's when we saw the dancing aurora, like the ones you would see on a youtube video. It went right through the sky above us, and we had to tilt our heads all the way to see it clearly, moving as if there it was a curtain laying on a window of a summer cabin, and zephyr slowly moving the curtain. We were in awe, and forgot that we were standing in icy mud in flip flops to see this breath-taking natural phenomenon.
We went around two peninsulas to get to the second to the last airbnb (and where we saw the best northern light). But seriously, for a European country, I was surprised that the airbnb hosts had to give us GPS coordinates - and not just this one, numerous others that are NOT in Reykjavik kept giving us GPS coordinates, and sometimes to a road that doesn't even exist on maps. There was only one gas station within 30 mile radius, so we decided to stop for gas before going to the horse farm airbnb.
After Akureyri, we started the last leg of the trip - the western side of Iceland. Unfortunately, we didn't have enough time to visit Westfjord - we purposely left that part out because the reviews said the road might get too dangerous to drive (but looking at the weather at the time, I doubt that it would have been too dangerous for us to drive..). The scenery of Western Iceland was surreal. The weather was getting better - increasing the chance to see northern light more. We kept checking the mobile app for northern light to track when would be the best time to go out and see. We expected to see more grass but as we approached to our final airbnb (before Reykjavik), we saw more mountains with snow.
This was one of the first times that we got to sleep at the same airbnb in a row so we all slept in. We were going to go Akureyri and hangout in the town (and maybe find a place to amend my DSLR that completely died), spend a pretty chill day because we were all exhausted. I'm not sure if it's because Northern European countries are known for short labor hours or the shorter days, the shops were closed at around 4pm, and we couldn't do much other than going to a bar. We did drop by at a mall and found out that the liquor stores are open till later (like 6pm), so we made a hasty trip to the liquor store to replenish the alcohol inventory. After we came back, we cooked the steak and scallops with the butter we bought. We did find the husband's one of the favorite wines. And my favorite beer.
Ever since I found out that there is a ski resort in Iceland, I wanted to ride my snowboard on the snow. It was pretty small and we didn't get to visit the ski resort, but it's right in the view when you see Akureyri. The town is probably the second largest in Iceland, and due to all the lights, there is probably a zero chance of seeing northern light here. Our airbnb was across the town, on the hill, and we got to experience the full view in the morning as well. The lock to put the key was stuck and it took all our efforts to pull down the latch, just to get the key out but the room was amazing. One of our friends suggested that we get the famous Icelandic butter (yes, he did look up all the famous things to eat in Iceland even though there were not that many on that list). It was probably the best butter we ever tasted (actually did bring back a few). We've been cooking the entire trip but since we arrived at the airbnb late, we went to a restaurant in Akureyri and had whale meat with pizza.
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