3rd Year: In Review

It all started three years ago! We've passed the official anniversary date of Jason's third year working for Southwest Airlines.  At this point, it's getting hard to remember the life of confirmed seats and advanced planning.

This past year was definitely the year of family and friends. We were able to go to so many weddings and other important events for so very little. All in all, we saved over $7,500 last year - although it's pretty much a certainty that many of those trips couldn't have happened at all without SWA.

We've been so blessed with the ability and resources to travel. Thank you to everyone that has made this easier, especially our faithful crew of puppy watchers! We couldn't do it without you!

Here's where we've been able to travel during the past year:

Domestic:

Orlando, FL

Simi Valley, CA

Portland, OR

Albuquerque, NM

Brooklyn, NY

Lawrence, KS
Oklahoma City, OK (2 times)

San Diego, CA

St. Louis, MO

Tampa, FL
New Orleans, LA
Austin, TX

International:

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Mexico City, Mexico

Ambergris Caye and San Ignacio, Belize

Tikal, Guatemala

For our next year, our (always tentative) plans include Japan (Toyko and Kyoto) in the Fall, and Maui, Toronto and either Greece or the UK in the first half of 2015. Domestically, we'd love to revisit some favorites. Click here to see all of our plans.

Here's some of our favorite travel moments from Year 3:

 Wine Tasting near Portland, OR

Heather & Patrick's Wedding in Portland, OR

Exploring Malibu

Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta 

Jenna's Bachelorette Weekend in Brooklyn, NY

Jenna's Wedding in Lawrence, KS 

Anne Frank House in Amsterdam

Thanksgiving Trip to Amsterdam with John & Mal

Brittany's Baby Shower  & Meeting Cora in OKC

On top of the Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacan, Mexico

Running Torrey Pines' trails in San Diego, CA

Snorkeling in the Hol Chan Marine Reserve, Belize

Exploring Tikal, Guatemala 

ATM Caves in Belize

Our Day Exploring the French Quarter & NOLA

Exploring Austin with the family and pup

Thanks Southwest Airlines...we're having a blast! 

Amsterdam {Day 3}

Our last day in Amsterdam, we woke up and headed to Sara's pancakes. We had some sun this morning, so the canals looked spectacular!

Jason's pancake with banana, bacon and cheese.

We all then jumped into a paddleboat to explore the canals up close. We made our way from the Anne Frank House to the Rijksmuseum in about an hour. Jason and John were our lovely chauffeurs and Mallory and I got a relaxing tour. Thanks boys!

Santa (St. Nicholas really) in the canals!

We once again explored the Museumplein and got to watch some ice-skating.

We needed to warm up, so we set up shop inside of a little pub near our place. We spent hours here drinking, playing cards and people watching.



That night, we headed out to the Christmas markets for dinner. Our canal cruise picked up outside of Amsterdam Centraal station, so with our dinners in hand, we headed to the pick up point. The canal cruise was fine, but honestly nothing special. That could have been because it was raining, but it was nothing to write home about.

After the cruise, we headed back to our place to prepare for our journey home. We had an early morning, but we made it home with no problems. We jumped on our nonstop KLM flight and landed in Houston 10 hours later - still smiling! Our plane was super full, but we're pretty lucky with this whole standby thing and even got seats together!

Thanks to John and Mal for being great travel buddies (again). We had a great Thanksgiving weekend exploring a new city! And of course, thanks SWA!

Overall, we loved Amsterdam and had a GREAT time, but we were pretty exhausted. (We actually both ended up with pretty nasty colds after this trip.) So, in conclusion - glad we did this (crazy) trip, but we probably won't again. It also served as our 4th anniversary trip! I'm so thankful to be married to my best friend (and the world's best travel companion).

That's all the travel we're doing this year, but check out where we're tentatively heading in 2014!

Amsterdam {Day 2}

Amsterdam is a fairly small city, so we found that walking was always the easiest way to get around. All the locals have bikes through and we were constantly having to move (or jump) out of the way!

Day 2 started by walking over to Bazar Amsterdam - a North African restaurant. This was in an old converted church, but the décor screamed Moroccan. It was delicious and a good stop between our canal house and the Van Gogh museum.

We wandered around the markets before we made our way to Museumplein.

The Van Gogh Museum was the perfect kind - small, but full of great pieces of art. I liked hearing his story and following along with his artistic progression. I realized why I love his work - his pieces jump off the page by both his use of contrasting colors and his painting technique.



This was one of our favorites, so we got a print and some playing cards of this guy!



That night, we went to Pulitzer Bar in the Nine Streets for drinks. This bar was in the Pulitzer Hotel, which was used as a filming location for Ocean's 12. I might need to go back and watch that movie again now!

After drinks, we went to de Struisvogel for dinner. This restaurant was on our street and served a 3 course dinner for 25 Euro! The restaurant was very cozy and the food was great. I'm still dreaming about my pumpkin soup.



Up Next: Our last day in Amsterdam!