liters of beer + great pretzels = Munich

Gutentag! Munich is awesome, but more on that later in the post.

I have lots to say (as always) so this might be another epic blog. :) Thursday Andrew and I went to that Indian concert thing and it was spectacular. As I'd said, we'd seen them rehearsing, but they were even better doing their “real” thing. They were in a 4x9 square that had lights separating each person and curtains. So each person would “reveal” themselves. At first it was the singer, then the violin-type players, then the drums, etc. The music was unlike anything I'd ever heard. Of course, there were a bunch of hippies around. With that many European people around on a summer night, I was surprised it didn't smell bad. My theory is that maybe the hippies here go against the norm by actually wearing deodorant. Haha. The concert was so impressive that I even bought the CD. That's saying something because I have maybe 10 CDs to my name. It was a nice night...we split a bottle of wine and just got engrossed in the music.

Friday morning we got up early (4:15...ugh! That was 10 PM for you guys...we should have called to say goodnight!) and hopped on the subway to the train station. Stupid us assumed that our train would leave from the main train station, but once we got there, we realized it left from the station across town so we had to hop on a tram. Our getting up in “plenty of time” turned into just barely making it on the train (we have a tendency to cut it close with traveling transportation!) For future reference if any of you come over here with a Eurail Pass, it is not valid in the Czech Republic. We kind of learned that the hard way...it was no big deal, we just had to buy train tickets for our traveling within the country. They weren't too expensive and they were well worth it because Prague is beautiful.

Since we only had a day in the city we made the most of it and walked around the “old town”, “new town” and “lesser town.” We also walked up a humongous hill (and the sun was actually shining and it was actually hot) to the Prague Castle. It was neat...we just walked around it and didn't actually take the tour of it. (We're saving all of our castle touring for Neuschweinstein in a couple days!) We also walked around the square where we stumbled upon a classic car show, which was pretty neat. There were old Jags, BMWs, Rolls Royces, etc. We had dinner at this little bar/restaurant and had some AMAZING beer. It was a dark pilsner and had a sweet, caramel aftertaste. If I can, I am going to try to find it in the states. The restaurant was really good except for the fact that they charged us just to bring bread and condiments to the table...neither of which we ate or used. We found that really odd, but I guess it's just the culture difference.

We had a bad hostel experience (drunk guys talking loudly at 6 AM and not shutting up) and a bit of a hassle traveling (having to buy the tickets, going to the wrong train station twice...we went to the wrong one while trying to leave Prague too. This time it wasn't completely our fault) but we are both very glad we went because it was beautiful.

On to Munich...the train yesterday was packed so we sat in a full cabin. Two of our fellow passengers were 20-something Irish girls who were really nice and good company. We also got to overhear some frat boyish guys talking about their random night in a beer hall. “Dude” and “fuck” were their favorite words. We made a game out of counting how many times they said it within 5 minutes. (Hey, it was a long train ride, we had to amuse ourselves somehow!)

When we got to Munich it was raining yet again. Rain seems to follow us throughout our trip, but we don't let that get us down. It was funny because as soon as we walked out of the train station I saw a big sign for Hacker Pschorr beer, which is the beer that my pappaw used to specially order, so I thought that was really cool. We checked into our hostel and hit the town running. We had dinner at the Augustiner-Keller beer hall, which is allegedly the oldest beer garden in Munich. We split a plate of “traditional” Bavarian food which included: roast duck, suckling pig, pork knuckle, sausage, saurkraut, and a spoonful of veggies. I tried it all and as much as I hate to admit it, the suckling pig was pretty good Pork knuckle was fatty. We also had some good beer (we're in Germany, of course we had good beer!) While I paced myself only drinking half a liter, Andrew had a half liter, then had a liter to top it off. The liter beer steins are bigger than my head and I had to use two hands to pick up his beer!

After our wonderful dinner, we wandered around the city and stumbled into a Gay Pride festival, which was interesting. We continued to wander and walked around just seeing the city for an hour or so then happened to wander into the Hofbrauhaus...Munich's most famous beer hall. Being a Saturday night, we figured we should check it out and see what the big fuss was. (We heard that locals only go there when they're forced to). The place was packed with people. We found a spot in front of the “German” band that was wearing lederhosen, playing tubas and accordians, and drinking liters of beer. A really cool couple from Canada joined us at our table and they seriously were us in 40 years. Greg was a retired government worker who had an undergraduate degree in History and a graduate degree in Geography. Mary was a high school guidance counselor/former middle school teacher. They love to golf, they're not into the museum type traveling. They were just really great company and I think the 4 of us all stayed longer than we'd intended because of the great company. 2 liters of beer (a piece) later, we closed down the place at midnight and came to the hostel and went to bed. Tami, I still plan on having dinner there before we leave and having a fest chicken for you :)

Today was fun. We went to the BMW Welt (which we decided a welt was a high tech show room). It was really neat to see the different things about the cars. We were going to go to the BMW museum, but we decided that we want to take the tour of the plant instead so we are probably going to go back Wednesday to do that since the plant tours are only given during the week. We went to the Deutches Museum of Science and Technology too. Not being museum people, we figured we wouldn't need much time there so we only went about 2 hours before it was supposed to close. The place is huge and our 2 hours only got us through one exhibition hall about Marine Navigation, so we are going to go back tomorrow and probably spend the majority of the day there because there is a whole lot more that we want to see there.

We wandered around the city some more and happened to catch the clock tower “show” at the Rathaus. It was way more impressive than Bern's “famous” clock. We had dinner at the Augustiner Beirhalle. We split a plate of sausages and a plate of cheese and of course had beer to go with it. It was raining when we got done eating, so we decided to come back to our hostel, do some laundry, and hop online.

Munich has definitely been both of our favorite cities so far and we've only been here a day and a half. We still have 2 and a half days to spend here. We may try to go to Oberamagau (?) on Tuesday, but it will just depend on if there's anything here we want to see.

Andrew sends his regards and promises that he'll do the updating next time, he's just being tired and lazy tonight (his words, not mine).

Sorry I don't blog much.

So now that Andrew and Stevie are who knows how many miles away, I guess I'll need to start blogging for myself. Right now I'm on the train from Rome to Florence (I'm pecking this out on the PDA and will post later). After the first attempt at Florence was a bust, I decided to run down to Rome early and try to catch the Wednesday papal address. After the train debacle, I booked new tickets and hostel. That night after everything was booked I found out that the address scheduled for the ninth was canceled on the first. So long story short, I just spent two nights in Rome before I go back in six days for four more.

Even with the cancelled address, I decided not to waste any time in Rome. The train arrived around 6pm, and after a minor fiasco checking in and dropping off my luggage I decided to go for a walk. First I went to the Trevi Fountain and did the obligatory coin toss with some leftover francs. Next up was the Spanish steps, it had an awesome view of the city from the top. Unfortunately for the pictures, the obelisk in front of the church was covered in scaffolding (The major churches and piazzas of Rome seem to be really into ancient Egyptian obelisks). After that, it was the Piazza del Popolo. It was absolutely stunning, an obelisk, twin (giant and ornate) churches, fountains, etc. These churches put almost everything I've seen in the U.S. to shame ...and there were two of them. From there it was to the mausoleum of Augustus, It's so old and covered with trees, it was kind of unimpressive. I might take a tour next week to get a better look. From there I had the St. Angelo Castle in sight, so I headed that way up the Tiber. The castle and the bridges around it were very cool. By that time I wasn't far from St. Peters, so on I went. The whole area had already closed, but I managed to snap some nice pictures. On the way back I managed to stop by Piazza Navona, the Pantheon (to be revisited later), the Vittorio Emanuele II Monument, and Trajan's column. ...It was a long night.

The next morning, it was off to the Vatican Museums. It was about what I expected - absolutely amazing. It was definitely on par with the Louvre and British Museum, although the portrait gallery seemed a bit lacking, but the Sistine Chapel more than made up for that. After about 9hrs there, I headed to an internet café to do the e-mail thing. It was still early so I decided to make a picture taking excursion to the colleseum, as I went to pull out my map, I glanced down the street and there it was. On the way I picked up some gelato, it was amazing. I've had gelato in the states, and some really good ice cream, but nothing prepared me for this. It was so good I felt drunk while I licked the bottom of the little paper bowl. When I got there I was amazed by how huge it was, pictures don't do it justice. Try to imagine Papa Johns stadium plus 10,000 seats, but bigger and in the form of the coliseum, and that might start to give you an idea of scale. Anyways, I roamed around the coliseum and the edge of the forum for a while and headed in.

Today the train for Florence left at 4:00 so I really only had a half of a day. The inside of the forum and coliseum seemed like it would be a good five hours worth of exploring, so I headed back that way. The forum and palatine hill were really cool in a geeky history buff sort of way (I mean this place was the center of western civilization hundreds of years, plus I had watched Julius Caesar in Central Park shortly before I left ...and I've been watching HBO's "Rome" DVD's). The scale of some of the buildings was absolutely mind boggeling, and on top of that was the fact that they've been standing for about 2000 years, give or take a few hundred, and they've survived wars, looting, mining (for marble, etc.), and wholesale demolition. The only buildings which were still mostly intact were the ones turned into churches. It was really hot in Rome, almost no hsade in the historical areas, and definitely no clouds. I've been drinking around three plus litres of water a day to make up for the sweating. I already mentioned the size of the coliseum, but on the inside it was laid out eerily similar to modern stadiums. It wasn't too much of a stretch to imagine what that place sounded like when someone got mauled by a lion (my guess is similar to a touchdown at a big football stadium).

So between the gelato and everything else in Rome, if it were not for Tessa everyone reading this blog would probably never see me again. I'd just get a job as a tour guide and never come back. I've had a few requests for more pictures, so here they are, you may be able to trace my days through the picture order. There's a lot, so you might want to view one album at a time and come back for another one later. By the way, my charger was not agreeing with my camera, so I got a new one in London, it was a great deal. So now I have 10x zoom and 7.1mp for your viewing pleasure. Hope all is well in the Western Hemisphere!


Pictures:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2119361&l=7bcea&id=38301811

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2119363&l=9b9db&id=38301811

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2119547&l=2a465&id=38301811

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2119548&l=a5375&id=38301811

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2119665&l=7470c&id=38301811

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2119674&l=26b83&id=38301811

Enjoy!

Orchestras, Zoos, Markets, oh my!

I'm sitting in Starbucks, yet again. Oh the shame of being so "American" but the frappuccinos are so good and the internet is reliable. We decided that offering Wi-Fi is the only way places like this and McDonald's can lure in American tourists.

Vienna has been a lot o fun, although we've been a tad lazy. We're kind of taking a vacation from our vacation because we've been sleeping in and just being very laid back about what we do. The orchestra the other night was absolutely amazing. They had people singing and the music and the singing brought goose bumps to both of us. It was entertaining with a guy playing anvils and such too. I especially enjoyed watching an old violinist in the front. He was getting into it and you can tell he just felt the music.

Yesterday we wandered around to the market next to our apartment. We have been trying our best to communicate with those who don't speak any English. When we were in the butcher shop, the lady helping us was talking to another customer and nodded her head towards us and said "English" and the customer nodded her head as if that explained everything. We also found a supermarket an got some stuff for dinner and some snacks. Then we went to another larger market where they were selling everything you could think of...meat, fish, cheese, wine, bread, fruit, veggies, spices, nuts, wasabi (which was really cheap..Andrew and I were tempted to buy some) and gelato (which we did get a couple scoops of...it was wonderful!) We ended up only getting our gelato and a bag of dried fruits for train snacking.

We also just wandered around the city for a while. We went to Museum Quarter, which is an area of town that has about 4 or 5 museums. We were burnt out on museums, so we didn't go in any of them, but we did stumble across an Indian orchestra rehearsing for their concert tonight. The rehearsal was awesome, so we're going to the actual concert here in a few hours. We had planned on going to an organ concert at St. Peter's cathedral at 8 last night, but apparently we read the sign wrong the night before and it was actually at 3, but we still toured the cathedral, which was beautiful.

Last night we...well Andrew...cooked dinner. We'd bought some brats and sausages and potatoes, an onion, bread, and stinky feet cheese along with some olive oil. Andrew sauteed them up and we threw the cheese on it and microwaved it for a few minutes then accompanied our dinner with a bottle of wine. It was really really good although the apartment smelled like brats and onions all night....it was well worth a home cooked meal.

Today we went to the Zoo. I know, we can go to any ol' zoo, but this one was the worlds oldest zoo. We had a lot of fun and it really is one of the best zoos that I've been too. You could get incredibly close to the animals. We came at the right time of the year because there were all kinds of baby animals including polar bears and a baby panda. The animals were also pretty active for zoo animals and they had a really good aquarium. This orangutan was funny...it was trying to get a little girl to throw him her ice cream cone. Seriously...it was banging on the glass, then pointing to the ice cream, then pointing to the top of its cage where there were holes. Obviously, that's how other people had fed it. The little girl ran away, it was really cute.

This evening we're going to that Indian concert and then maybe trying to go to the top of the Danube tower. We have seen every city we've been to from a high view, and apparently this tower has the best view of Vienna. We went out there last night, but the place looked dead (although they were supposed to be open until midnight) so we thought we'd try to go out there a bit earlier tonight.

We're also going to pack and clean the apartment tonight because we're going to Prague tomorrow for the day/night. We had an extra day to "play" with (meaning we didn't have a place to stay booked) and instead of staying an extra night in Vienna or in Munich, we decided to hit up another place. We have heard all sorts of great things about Prague from other travelers and it's only 4 hours away. We were going to have to find a place to stay anyway, so why not in the Czech Republic? Our train out of Vienna leaves at 6 tomorrow morning so it will be about noon once we get to the hostel that we are staying in. We can either leave Prague for Munich around 1 on Saturday or around 5. Depending on how much we want to see and do will depend on what time we leave. Our time will be short, so we will probably spend our day just walking around the city.

I have filled up one of my memory cards with pictures which means I've taken about 1100 pictures so far. I haven't figured out a way to "mass store" them, so for now you guys will just have to "deal" with what little we are able to post on here. (I'd post some now, but I'm running short on time). If I figure out a way to upload them quickly and get them to you, I'll let you all know. If not, everyone will just have to come over when we get back for a "vacation picture party". Haha.

Andrew's sitting here napping beside me. He was too tired to update even though it was his "turn" to. He sends everyone his love and he'll probably update next time we are on. We'll have pictures soon and I'll keep you all updated on Prague! There shouldn't be any more "surprises" as far as our travels go after tomorrow (as long as there are no more strikes in other countries).

Keep the comments coming, we love them.

Hello from Austria!

Thats right...I said Austria. Andrew and I are sitting in a Starbucks in Vienna drinking Frappuccinos and trying to decide what to do in this crazy city.

I can hear you thinking "Austria? Vienna? I don't remember them saying anything about going to Austria! What happened to Florence?" Andrew and I actually decided to come to Vienna about 8 AM yesterday morning.

We went to get on our train to Florence and found out that there was a railway strike in Italy and our train had been canceled and that the next train was supposed to run at 11 PM the following night, but we would have to make reservations in the train office at 8 AM Monday morning. Making a long humorous story short (we're limited on time...ask us about it when we get home and we'll be happy to share) we spent the night with 12 Koreans, got very little sleep, and were in line at the train station at 7:30 yesterday morning.

Apparently the Italy strike wasn't going to be over until 9 PM last night and the next train to Florence wasn't until 7:35 this morning. Not wanting to spend another day in Bern (there really wasn't that much to do there...) and waste today to travel from Bern to Florence, Andrew and I decided to come to Vienna. Ray is still heading to Italy, but I think he is skipping Florence. We parted ways a bit sooner than planned, but I think he'll be just fine. At least now he get to see the Pope, which he hadn't been able to do if we had gone to Florence as planned.

So Andrew and I hopped a train to Zurich and from there took a 9 hour trip to Vienna. The train was actually pretty cool. We stumbled upon a car full of 6 person private cabins (like the Hogwarts Express in the Harry Potter movies). We thought the were first class or reserved at first, but then some nice guy let us know they were 2nd class and open to the public. Andrew and I claimed one to ourselves and reclined the seats and essentially made one big bed and slept quite a ways. I didn't sleep as much as I'd liked because of the incredible view of the Swiss Alps. We were riding through them so there were mountains on both sides. I was incredible.

We arrived in Vienna about 11 last night. Before we left, Andrew had booked us an apartment here (it was only about 7 bucks more a night than a hostel). We found the apartment and it is amazing. It's fully furnished, has a small kitchen, a great bathroom. It's almost like we're back at the Mariott in Paris. :) It's just a really cool place and is very close to the city center and to a subway stop.

This morning we've just been roaming around the city. We had lunch in a cantina and bought tickets to an orchestra performance tonight. Apparently they will be playing Mozart and Strauss. We figured there are lots of museums and such that we could visit, but this is a different type of culture that we haven't experienced. We're both pretty excited about that. I think we are going to try to go to the Zoo or Aquarium, the Globe museum (hey, I am traveling with a Geographer!), a hedge maze, and Andrew has mentioned a few other things to me while I've been typing, but I've already forgotten about them.

Since this was a total last minute decision to come here we didn't do any research about this city so we know virtually nothing about it. I think we are going to spend our remaining internet time on Wiki Travel to find out more stuff to do. If any of our loyal readers have been to Vienna and want to give us some ideas, we'd really appreciate it!

Hugs from Vienna!

Pictures

Hey guys...had a few minutes to update while at the train station waiting on our overnight train from Bern to Florence and "hacked" into McDonalds' wireless and wanted to post some pictures. There are more on Andrew's camera that I really like, but it's packed away in his bag somewhere, so you'll get those soon. I'm not sure of the quality of the last 5 because I just randomly picked some (they're coded by number, so I can't actually see what I'm posting, I have to see them on my camera first).

We did go to Lucerne today and it was beautiful. Especially when the clouds cleared and we could see the mountains. We went up on some towers (lots of steep steps...my quads hate me) and I felt like I was on top of the world. More description of today and pictures too coming soon.


















The sparkling tower.


















Great scenery...the guy and the background. :)


















Sparkling tower at dinner.


















Sparkling tower even closer.














Under the tower.















The city of Bern.















More of Bern...see the mountains in the distance?















Ray's on top of the world right now...















The city of Bern from the top of Gurten.















More of the Swiss Alps.















Andrew and me feeling on top of the world...this was actually on top of one of the "small" towers that we climbed.















No wonder Swiss cheese is so great...it comes from sheep-dog cows.















A ginormous mountain and a little of Lucerne.















A view of the mountains from the river. This wasn't even the best view that we got, but it was a pretty good one.



















I really didn't mean to upload this. It was the last picture Andrew took (we may be drinking a bit while waiting on our train). I thought it would be of a mountain.

Blog of "epic" proportions

I'm sitting here in the hostel in Bern (not at McDonald's, surprisingly!) The internet here is being kind of ghetto...I have about 15 pictures that I'm trying to upload while I blog, so we'll see if I am able to get them all or not. I can't really complain about the wireless that we "hacked" into because it is free The hostel charges 1 Swiss Franc (equal to one US dollar) for 10 minutes, and apparently the McDonald's here only let you online for 30 minutes and it is 4 Francs for a medium drink, which is ridiculous.

I haven't updated in a while and since I like to write, this might be pretty long. You may want to get a snack or something. :)

Anyway, the past couple days have been crazy and amazing and just fantastic. Wednesday we went to the Louvre, which to be quite frank, I wasn't overly impressed with. The place was huge and crowded and had a lot of junk. Plus, I was tired and hungry, so that didn't help my temperament much because I'm a bit grumpy when I'm tired and hungry...as my mom can attest to! Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed looking at some of the artwork. Of course we saw the Mona Lisa and some of da Vinci's other works, which were cool. And the Venus di Milo. We spent about 4 hours there and only scratched the surface of the stuff. Ray on the other hand loved the place. He stayed until it closed and they had to kick him out!

Andrew and I came back to the hotel and tried to deal with our "Laundry Woes". Being the conservative travelers that we are, we brought stuff to do laundry in the sink with us. Our first night in the hotel in Paris, we did a load of laundry. We were very proud of ourselves...washed in warm, rinsed in cold, wrung them out, and hung them up to dry. The next morning they were still soaked and that afternoon they were still damp AND were starting to smell. We didn't know what to do with them, so we took the hair dryer to them...it was working, slowly but steadily. Unfortunately, we still had to do ANOTHER load because we had hung some of the first load above the other load and those clothes were wet and icky too. So I washed away on load #2 (not having a clue what to do with them to get them dry) while Andrew dried the first load. After about 15 minutes of this, it hit me to take the iron to them and steam the looming water out. This actually worked, but we got smart with the second load and hung them by the open window and they were dry within hours. but with the first load, I was ready to throw all the clothes out the window and say forget it all. I think we still may do the laundry in the sink, but from now on we'll "splurge" to dry them.

We worked up an appetite doing the manual labor, so about 10 PM, we decided to walk towards the Eiffel Tower and find some food. Every hour, on the hour, they light it up and make it all sparkly and such, so we were able to see that. Then we came across a little alley way with a cheap Chinese restaurant and a PERFECT view of the tower. The food was pretty good, but the view was amazing. I felt like a true Parisian by drinking wine with the Eiffel Tower as a backdrop. It was an amazing sight and by far my favorite experience in Europe thus far. After our "gourmet" Chinese food, we walked down and checked out the tower up close and by that time it was 11 so it sparkled again. It was truly a sight to behold.

Friday morning Andrew and I ventured to Moulin Rouge and explored that district for a little while. We saw some interesting things that we would have never seen in downtown Paris. Next was the Musee' d'Orsay, which I liked much better than the Louvre. It had stuff by Monet, Manet, Renior, Degas and Van Gogh. Not just one or two, but whole collections of their stuff. It was really neat getting to get close and see the actual brush strokes. When we got done there, we went back to that same market that Andrew blogged about in his last post. The were about to close up shop so we quickly grabbed some cheese, wine, and bread and headed towards the Eiffel Tower for a picnic there.

Our picnic was incredible. Apparently we were doing as the Parisians do because we saw several French-speaking families picnicking who had what else, but bread, wine, and cheese. It had just rained so it was a bit chilly (and I was in capris and a polo...I hadn't planned for cool weather because it had been hot the first two days). The sun was out and the sky was blue and it was just a beautiful sight. We watched the sun set on the lawn of the tower (amazing), then got in line and went to the top. I cannot put into words how breathtaking the view from the top of the tower was. Paris is HUGE and I felt like I could see for miles. It was a lot of fun picking out the various landmarks that we had been to and they all looked so tiny...except for the Arc de Triumph, which still looked massive, even from 330 meters in the air. Although it was cold and windy and I was only slightly warmed by the wine from earlier in the night I would not have picked another time to see all of Paris. I'm sitting here sighing and smiling just remembering it from 2 nights ago. The Eiffel Tower is definitely my favorite European landmark so far, although it's not quite as impressive during the day.

All together Paris was a great time and Andrew and I came up with a little analogy for it. "Paris is like a one-night stand...people fall in love with her at night, then in the morning realize how dirty she is and can't wait to leave." Heehee.

Yesterday was an early day of packing and hopping on a train to Bern. It was a 4 hour trip and I slept most of the way, but what little I did see of the Swiss countryside was beautiful. Bern itself is wonderful. It isn't a big city and it's not crowded, which is a big change of pace from Dublin, London, and Paris. The Old Town is one big shopping mall. Seriously...all of these old buildings are filled with hi end shops and stuff. Even the food prices around the area is ridiculous so we have hit up the grocery store quite a bit.

There really aren't many "attractions" in Bern, which I like. They have an old clock tower that is supposed to do all kinds of spiffy things, but we watched it yesterday and it was pretty lame. They also have a bear pit (the city mascot is a bear...apparently it was the first animal that the founder killed when he got here) which was also kind of lame. But the city itself is fantastic. There is a river that runs through it that is BEAUTIFUL...its a bright turquoise and there are no sticks, no dirt, no trash...no anything on it. And the city is full of all kinds of old buildings and such. Today we took a tram ride to Gurten, which is a "mini mountain" just outside the city. It is an actual mountain, but it's a small one. From it on one side you can see all of Bern and the swiss countryside while from the other side you can see snow capped mountains of the Swiss Alps. It was a beautiful day today so the three of us had lunch overlooking the city, then napped with a view of the mountains.

Our train doesn't leave until 11 PM tomorrow (it's overnight to Florence) so I think we may take a day trip to Luzern or Lusanne, which (I think) are both mountain towns. It's overwhelming to think of all the things we've done. As Andrew and I keep saying, we would be completely content if we were to go home now as far as everything that we have gotten to do. What's even more crazy is thinking about all the stuff that we have yet to do. Thank you everyone for keeping up with this and for your comments. As we keep saying, feeling like you all are taking this trip with us makes it even more special and (at least in my case) I always smile reading your comments.

This internet is being too temperamental for me to upload pictures, but I will soon, I promise!

On a side note to my family...its 6 PM Saturday in Etown right now. I'm assuming you all are having the 4th of July shindig and have imagined all of you gathered around the computer reading this, just anxious to hear what I have to say next...I know, I have an active imagination. :) Hope you all don't miss me too much and eat hot dogs and watermelon for me. (I would have had an "American" hot dog for dinner tonight in honor of you guys, but it would have cost 16 bucks). Oh, light a sparkler for me too...and don't listen to any rumors that my asshat sisters may start about me, they aren't true.

I miss you all.

Upon popular request....SOME PICTURES!!!!


The three of us in front of Tower Bridge in London. (If you can't tell by Stevie's hair and shirt, it was a bit windy by the river!)












I'm so talented. :)













Me and Stevie at Kensington Gardens having a picnic, we hired some random Gopher to take our picture.











We stumbled upon this magnificent memorial walking through the park. It's the Albert Memorial, look it up it's pretty neat.

















Me kickin' it with Big Ben, I packed my Fonzie thumbs for the trip. Hhhhheeeeeyyyyy!
















Big Ben was tired of holding it, so he asked Stevie if she would. She's so nice to foreigners.









Big Ben and Parliament at night, say it with me now....ooooohhhhh....aaaaaahhhhhhh















Awesome picture of the London Eye.











Me and Stevie in front of Notre Dame Cathedral. Cheeeeessseeee!














The Eiffel Tower all big a blue at night. It's almost as pretty as Stevie.











How Romantical.













It's the Mona.....you know what it is, and if not, open a book.