3 raleigh: lunching with rachel stewart

As promised, I'm going to be featuring what's going on in the Raleigh area more on the blog! I thought it would be great to start of with a lunch date with my friend Rachel Stewart. We went to lunch a while back at this super cute grille called Rock Harbor Grille. The food was amazing! It's located just southwest of downtown in Apex. A little out of the city limits, but worth the trip.





I loved the tin tiled ceiling...


...Rachel being fabulous as usual!


Rock Harbor specializes in seafood, and this plate did not disappoint!


I was excited to see that they had a good selection of local craft beers too. I forgot which beer I'm drinking in this photo tho, oops!


And I had this amazing salmon burger with fire roasted tomatos, pesto and melty provolone cheese. So good!

By the way Rachel has a new collection up on her site! It is inspired by her favorite sci-fi novelist Octavia Spencer. I love the statement pieces, because they are a great way to dress up a simple outfit in this humid hot weather without adding more clothing.




Check out the rest of Rachel's new collection HERE.

7 italian halloween

Halloween isn't celebrated widely here in Italy because of the overwhelming Catholic population. They celebrate All Saints and All Souls day which are November 1st and 2nd. But, there are tons of American students here who bring the tradition into Florence. We found decorations at the dollar store and since it was Becca's birthday, we had a little party at my apartment! It turned out so well!! More people than we anticipated came and they came with lots of good food and a lot of wine too! It was really a group effort which made it even more fun. Most of us didn't dress up in costume, but since we were hosting, my roommates and I dressed nicely. I think Becca had the best time out of everybody which is great, since it was her birthday! Then after we stuffed ourselves with food we left the apartment to check out this Jazz Club not too far from our apartment. It was too cute!! They had a full band which was cool, and they played all these old American Soul songs all night: Aretha, Tina, James... even the Isley Brothers. We'll definitely go back! Anyway, here's some photographic evidence....

hot girls


food!


my roommates. this is so, THEM haha


i have no idea...


becca's birthday crepe!


minnie mouse and the cutest couple in Florence


Jazz Club and Han!


by the time we left for the Jazz Club,
Becca was LEANING... lol



chris, wasted Becca, Han and the band at the Jazz club!
it was really that dark, it was fantastic!


overall it was a great night... ciao! ;)

6 southern italy part 2: amalfi coast

My weekend was so great I had to break it up over two posts! After we left Pompeii on Saturday we headed down to the town of Veco Equense. This was such a cute little town and we used the free time we had to walk around and eventually have some great seafood. For the rest of the night we just hung out in our gorgeous hotel and Becca read Tarot cards for some of the other girls... we drank cheap red wine out of the plastic hotel cups (real classy!)... it was a good time!

driving into veco equense...

our perfect little hotel...

veco equense at night!

seafood!! the fried calamari and shrimp was so good! i was extra greedy and did not share a bit. lol mackenzie was scared of the shrimp. HA!

later that night....

me being stealthy in the corner,
drinking wine out of a plastic cup,
in my hoodie dress,
slightly resembling a gnome...

views from our rooms the next morning...

me! excited about another day of great weather on the coast.

The next day we moved along to Sorrento where we spent the rest of the afternoon! Sorrento is a gorgeous town with amazing views of the Amalfi coast. Unfortunately, I couldn't really capture all the beauty from the bus ride in but here are a few flicks from the city center and the bay.

view of sorrento from the port! (click for better quality)




I wish everybody who is seeing this could have been there too... These towns were amazingly beautiful and the weather was spectacular. Now I'm back in Florence where its raining and getting cold! Hope you enjoyed the pictures...
Ciao ;)