{We're Moving! + A Portland Summer List}

If you follow me on Instagram or Twitter, this is old news... But, we're moving home to Portland! We always knew we wanted to live in Amsterdam 2-3 years and somewhere along the way it just became clear that two years would be best for us for a mutltitude of reasons. I can't say enough about the experience of living abroad, especially as a carefree newlywed. We really lived it up and traveled our hearts out, and now it's time to go home. 

This is a little earlier than we were anticipating to move, but Corey got an amazing job offer back home that he would've been crazy to pass up. Luckily I was also able to land a job back home, so things have already started to fall into place. We have plenty to sort out with our move coming up in less than a month... Corey's finishing grad school this week, my in-laws arrive in Amsterdam tomorrow and I'm off to Italy next week. It's going to be a crazy few weeks, but I'm excited to soak up every last second here.

As we deal with our mixed emotions of leaving Amsterdam, we are also getting really excited to return to Portland. To get us a bit more excited, we put together a quick sumer bucket list. It's a work in progress, but so far it's looking like it's going to be one super fun summer in the Pacific Northwest! If you're familiar with the area, I'd love to know... What would you add to the list?

{1} We're planning a weekend at the Allison Inn & Spa to celebrate our 3-year wedding anniversary in August! It looks incredible and I'm so excited for a weekend of pampering in Oregon wine country!

{2} A trip to the Oregon Coast - always a summer must!

{3} A trip to the Portland Art Museum. We haven't been in ages and all our museum trips in Europe inspired us to plan a trip to our local art museum.

{4} Go to a Portland Timbers game (our local soccer team) - there's that European influence again!

{5} Go to the Organic Brewers Fest. We went a couple years ago and had so much fun, we're looking forward to going again!

{6} Visit Smith Rock State Park. We want to expand our horizons and see new places in Oregon - we're both natives and have never been to this beautiful state park. 

{7} A vist to David Hill Winery - the place we said "I do"

{8} Go to the Portland State University Farmers Market. A favorite summer weekend activity!

{9} We want to try at least 5 new restaurants in Portland. A lot of great new places have opened in the last two years and we're excited to give them a try!

{10} Attend an Oregon Zoo Summer Concert. The perfect way to enjoy a beautiful summer night.

{11} Go to Hood River - maybe go for a hike, definitely visit Double Mountain Brewery - who happen to make one of our favorite IPAs :)

{12} Participate in the Color Run on September 7th in Portland. I've heard so many fun stories about these runs around the U.S. and can't wait to finally participate in one!

Do you have a summer bucket list? I'd love to see it! Maybe I'd get some good ideas from it :)

{image credit: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 {me}, 6, 7 {me}, 8 {me}, 9, 10, 11, 12}

{South Africa Day Seven}

Two days in a row! Look at me! hehehe

So, back to the South Africa posts... Our seventh day in South Arica was a fun one! We started our morning with coffee from Deluxe Coffeeworks. If you're into good coffee (we're Portlanders, so you know we are...) then you must stop here if you're ever in Franschhoek. We strolled the adorable downtown (which is basically just one long street) and then headed out for a day of wine tasting. We visited La Motte, Tokara (this one ended up being our favorite), Thelema and La Petite Ferme. There are obviously so many wineries to visit and there were many on our list that we missed, but we loved all the places we went - great wine and amazing views. Couldn't complain!

 {Photos © Liz Denfeld Photography}

{Birthday Weekend in San Sebastian}

First off, hello! Long time no... blog? This weekend, a good friend of mine asked me if I stopped blogging. I took a quick glance at my blog and realized why. No updates in 20 days, and spam comments running rampant on all my recent posts. Oy vey! The good news is, no, I haven't stopped blogging - not intentionally anyways. Life has just been really nuts these days (although it feels like this is just status quo now...) with work and visitors and weekends away. I've been too busy living life to blog about life, which I guess is a good thing! But the truth is, I really and truly miss blogging and I hope to get back to posting more regularly soon...

I have so many posts to catch up on, but for now I just wanted to share some iphone snaps from our awesome time in San Sebastian this past weekend. We were there for my birthday and it was so incredibly special, fun and delicious (because we stuffed ourselves silly with pinxtos and rioja!). 

P.S. For those of you who've asked about what iPhone apps I use to edit my photos - I primarily use Camera+ and Instagram, but for the photos below I used a new-to-me app that is quickly become my favorite called PicTapGo. I highly recommend it! Hope this is helpful :)

{South Africa: Days Five & Six}

Hello, hello! It's been a while, hasn't it? Well, the good news is I wasn't eaten by a lion :)

We got back from our safari 8 days ago. I can't believe we've already been back so long.

I want to continue on with a couple short posts giving a general overview of each day of our stay in SA, then I'll do some more detailed posts on where we stayed, our itinerary, restaurant suggestions, the whole deal. I've already gotten several requests for a detailed itinerary to follow, so I will definitely be working on that!!

On our fifth day in Cape Town we finally got to take things a little slower. We slept in a bit and then made our way up to Table Mountain. We booked our tickets on the gondola ahead of time as we've heard the lines can get pretty long. Luckily there weren't any lines at all! Cape Town is just full of amazing views. We didn't think we'd be up at the top of the mountain long, but of course we ended up taking our time walking around and enjoying the scenery. It was a warm and beautiful day! 

Later that day we ventured over to Camp's Bay - the more "posh" beachside area in Cape Town. We strolled along the beach as we got lost trying to find our restaurant and wished we would have come down earlier and spent the day soaking up the sun (took note for next time!). We ended up getting appetizers and cocktails and watching the sunset at The Bungalow. I must admit, while it was a nice experience, it wasn't really our scene. One of our friends had told us it was very "South of France", but I would have gone further to say it was more Miami. I felt a little out of place, but it wasn't anything a couple drinks couldn't fix :) We ended up seeing a beautiful sunset and having tons of fun. 

On our sixth day in Cape Town we checked out of our amazing hotel (can't wait to tell you more about it!), and drove an hour outside of the city to wine country! We didn't even make time to drop our bags at our guest house as we had lunch reservations we could not be late for! Going into this trip we actually had a lot of recommendations. A meal at Maison was at the top of our friend's list, so we booked weeks in advance to make sure we wouldn't miss out. The second we stepped in we understood why they had said it was their favorite meal of their entire trip. Everything was flawless. The decor, the service, the food, the wine, the grounds. My my my. We ended up spending a good 3+ hours there just making ourselves at home and contemplating never leaving (maybe they wouldn't find us if we hid in their awesome bathrooms?). It was an afternoon to remember. There will definitely be more to come on this place! 

After checking into our cute little guest house in Franschhoek we made our way to Dieu Donne Vineyards to enjoy the view (and a glass of wine of course). I wish my camera could have captured the insane beauty of the landscape. It literally took my breath away. We were so excited to be in wine country and couldn't wait for a full day of tasting the following day! 

 {Photos © Liz Denfeld Photography}

{Quick Update}

Oops! Well, I made it for four days of travel updates and then we lost our wifi connection for a couple days and it's been a whirlwind since then!

Just wanted to check in before we fly up to Kruger National Park for our safari tomorrow, where I'm fairly certain we won't have wifi access (how will I ever survive?! joking. kind of.).

If you're missing me like crazy, you can always check out my Instagram, where I've been keeping up on posting. We even took Bri's advice and created a hashtag for our trip photos (#DenfeldsinSA). You can check those out here!

Thanks for all your great comments on the South Africa posts so far. It's a truly incredible country and we are having the time of our lives!

Excited to post more photos soon, but those will have to wait until we return to Amsterdam! 

Hope everyone has a happy Easter weekend!

{Photo taken at the Knysna Elephant Park}

{South Africa Day Four}

Our fourth day in Cape Town was adventure-filled!

We started the day with a drive to Simon's Town to see the penguins on the beach. 

Did you know you could see hundreds of penguins on a beach in South Africa? Incredible! If you go to Boulder's Beach you can actually stroll in the sand and get right up close to them - as in, inches away! 

The penguins are just the sweetest things and they didn't seem to mind the people around. There are very strict rules that you don't touch them or torment them in any way, so they seemed super happy to just be lounging in the sun. 

I really wanted to take one home, but apparently that's really against the rules. Too bad.

After Simon's Town we drove down the coast a little bit to Kalk Bay. It's a tiny little beach town with not much to it, but our hotel recommended the Harbour House for lunch. We dined on another giant platter of sushi and took in a gorgeous view. 

We barely had time to catch our breath before we went back to the hotel and changed into hiking clothes. We had heard that a sunset hike up Lion's Head was a must, but we didn't know what we were getting ourselves into! This isn't like the hikes we know and love at home. There were several times we were convinced the hike was over because we couldn't see a trail. Well, that's because you had to climb rocks and basically scale the mountain to get to the top. It was intense.

But as you can see, the view at the top was totally worth it.

Quick story on that photo of me standing on the rock with the city below. Corey really didn't want me to get on that rock. But I couldn't resist the amazing photo opportunity. So after 10 minutes of back-and-forth (me insisting it would be fine, Corey insisting I stay right where I was), I got on the rock :) I'd say the photo was worth the risk, right?

We ended this long, fun and exhausting day with an awesome casual dinner at the Royale Eatery (they specialize in burgers and Corey said his rivaled any burger he'd ever had in the States. Score!). Oh, and they also specialize in milkshakes. We shared an out-of-this-world banana and peanut butter milkshake. Hey, I had just scaled a mountain, I deserved it!

 

 {Photos © Liz Denfeld Photography}