Europe Adventures

Turin, Italy

2008-10-08T02:40:00.001-07:00

October 3-5

We awoke well rested after a night in of watching TV and drinking Italian wine. Breakfast was downstairs at the hostel, and was really quite nice. We had cereal, bread, fresh fruit, juice, coffee, and yogurt. We even smuggled a couple individual size packages of Nutella back with us. Back up to the room to shower and pack up for our journey to our first farm.

Being we were both out of clean clothes, we thought we better do some laundry before catching a train. The hostel directed us to a place called "free shop" where they had a washer and dryer. We killed time between loads surfing the internet back at the hostel. The dryer didn't quite dry completely, but we packed up our clothes and planned on air drying them at the farm. It was just a short tram ride from the hostel to the train station we needed to depart from.

The train ride to the station near the farm was short and uneventful, about 25 minutes. Once again we had some troubles using a phone in Europe trying to call the farm to pick us up as they said to do, so we went into the small cafe at the train station for help. Inside was a nice older gentleman who made the call for us, and asked us a few questions about where we were from. He was quite surprised to hear we came all the way from the USA to stay at a tiny little farm town in northern Italy. We waited for about 20 minutes, and our ride arrived. We both assumed it was the farm owner, but it turns out another girl from England doing what we were, and a girl from New Zealand who we think works for the farm on a full time basis. The drive to the farm was pretty, in the distance were the French Alps, and we passed through a couple cute little villages. They pointed out a big new church that was recently built to honor Saint Bosco. A few moments later we were entering the gate of the farm.

We were immediately greeted by the 3 farm dogs, a german shepherd and 2 wire hair hounds of some sorts. They were quite impressed when one of them jumped up on Charlie to be pet, as she has been known not to open up to new people very fast. We were shown where our room was above the kitchen or lab as they called it, where we left our bags and were given a quick tour. The big kitchen/lab was where they did lots of canning of products that were sold at markets, and next to it was a store room that looked like it was a store at one time. Inside the main house we were shown the family kitchen and living areas, the computer room, and dining area. Also attached to the house was the agrotoursimo, which was a bed and breakfast and small restaurant. After the tour we were given a while to get our beds situated and unpacked. We also took this time to hang our laundry that was still a bit damp from the morning.

We met up with the other 2 workers after getting somewhat settled and given our first task. We had to cut up peppers into about 1 inch slices, then soak them in a vinegar solution for about 20 minutes, then arrange them into jars with the skin facing outwards. Then they were topped off with olive oil, and the jars sterilized and sealed up. We did that for a bit over an hour and ran out of peppers. Before dinner, which is eaten at about 830 pm here, we were told to gather up a couple trays of walnuts and hazelnuts from the trees in the garden on the hill above the house. Finding the walnuts was easy, but the hazelnuts were a lot harder to find as many of them had been eaten by animals or birds. Afterwards, we cleaned up and went into the main house for dinner.

It was just the four of us workers eating tonight, as both the owners were not home. Our meal consisted of some leftover pasta with tomato sauce from lunch, sauteed mushrooms, bread, and some of the peppers we cut up sauteed in oil with a bit of onions and salt. The peppers were the sweetest peppers either of us had ever had, almost hard to believe we were eating a pepper. They told us that it was a type of pepper only grown in this part of Italy, and were called pepperoni peppers. The pizza topping has a different name here in Italy and is more akin to salami. It's a little strange eating so late and then going off to bed on a full stomach, but ... when in Italy.

The room we stayed in was quite cold even with the heater going.

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To be very honest with everyone the organic farming experience was not what we were hoping for. Instead of going on about what we didn't like, we'll just say that we knew this was not right for us.

We worked the next day which turned out to be almost 10 hours including harvesting all the vegetables and berries before the frost. Dinner that night was very good, we can't say we didn't eat well at the farm.

Sunday morning we had plans to tell the others we were leaving. We didn't want to make it sound like we didn't like it there so we tried to be vague on our reasons. We still ended up working with peppers all morning (not nearly as bad as the 2nd day working with chili peppers that burned through our gloves). After our mid morning cafe break we told them it was time to go. The afternoon was really not very pleasant. but really nothing to speak of. We got a ride to the train station by the husband who we thought was really nice and if he spoke a bit more english we would have had a lot of fun with.

We can sum up our feelings like this.... we were both in a place in our lives that we felt we needed to explore, change, and maybe experience a new way of life. While nearly all of our journey was special we came to know one true fact. We searched for a different way of life, what we thought would maybe even be a better way of life, but all that time we searched we only confirmed that we already had everything we needed in the world. Family and friends and a home. The memories and life experiences will last forever and we now make the decision together to return back home with full hearts and gratitude.

Milan, Italy to Turin, Italy

2008-10-08T02:39:00.001-07:00

Thursday October, 2

Nothing novel about this rainy morning. We seem to bring rain with us at least one day in each city we stay in. We are sad to leave our very nice and very affordable hotel (that is listed as a hostel). We left our bags at the front with the friendly owner and set out in search of internet to see if the 1st farm had written us back about coming 3 days early.

It's funny how we have absolutely no concern about leaving our bags at hotels/hostels. The computer, passports, money and tickets are always with us so if someone really wants our dirty clothes... have at it. If we lost our bags we certainly could make due.

We walked about 10 blocks to a place we saw online yesterday on a "free wi fi" site. The walk seemed to take a long time in the rain. When we got there we found we still had an hour before they opened. We went across the street to a cafe to spend a bit of time before we went to the "real cafe." We ordered a total of 4 cafe machiatos, 2 cream filled croissants and then noticed a free little snack buffet. We were all over that!! Chips and salsa, guac, olives, italian pretzels, pickles and cake to name a few things. When the other cafe opened up we ordered two mini italian sandwiches and two sodas. The farm did email back saying they could not take us till Friday. So we decided to go to Turin a day early. We found a hotel there cheaper than a hostel that had wi fi. Finally we don't have to spend time searching for wifi to confirm this and that.

After booking the hotel we went back to retrieve our bags and walk to the underground. This underground subway was also very easy to use like London. A one way ticket is only 1 euro and an all day unlimited only 3 euros.

Finding tickets turned out to be a bit of a hassle but in the end we got two second (boo) class tickets to Turin leaving at 2:15 pm. Ciao Milan. A beautiful city that we felt severely underdressed for.

Turin well.... they hosted they Olympics once, but I think most cities in Europe could almost claim that.

Our hostel was really an other hotel in disguise! Complete with robes, towels and slippers.... and our OWN private bathroom–we may never leave. The hotel also had wifi but only in the common area. We pulled our classic trick of shopping at the market and staying in. I have to admit we watched tv for hours. Well not really watched tv but it was on in the background and since it was in all Italian we made up our own story line to Survivor Italy. We met a few "kids" from Canada in the common area that were heading out clubbing later. Heather wonders who really goes clubbing anymore??

Milan, Italy to Turin, Italy

2008-10-06T01:18:00.000-07:00

Milan Italy-Duomo, Aquariums, and Bracelets

2008-10-05T11:20:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, October 1

After our fun filled night in, we were happy to sleep in until almost 10am. On our agenda for the day was see the famous cathedral or duomo as it's called in Italian, find internet, and possibly see the fashion district. A real normal shower was a welcome treat. Our wonderful hotel host gave us a map of the city showing all the sites along with the subway routes. We walked about 3 blocks to the nearest subway station, paid 3 euros for a barging priced 24 hour pass, and hopped aboard towards the cathedral.

Immediately after walking up the stairs to the street level, we were hit up by a mob of people selling things. Heather escaped, but Charlie was not so lucky as he had a bracelet tied to his wrist faster than he could walk away. The man said it was free and for good luck and even complimented being with someone as beautiful as Heather. The stairs came up right next door to the cathedral on street level. We knew it was going to be big and impressive, but it was hard to take it all in at once. Its the 3rd largest church in the world after St. Peters in Vatican City and one in Spain, and the 2nd largest gothic style church in the world after the one in Seville Spain. Work began on it in the late 1300's and it wasn't fully finished until the early 1800s when Napoleon ordered it finished when he had conquered Milan.

We walked around the side of it to the entrance and after a brief search of our backpack, we were inside. The first thing we noticed was how dark it was inside. Even with the HUGE stained glass windows and recently added flood lights, its quite dark for a while until your eyes adjust. Once we were in a few feet, we got an idea just how big this cathedral is. Its a big like the Louvre in Paris, you can tell someone how big it is all day long, but it will still be bigger than your expecting. Its also one of the few churches we've been in where you get such a overwhelming good feeling inside. We talked afterwards about how those who tour it for the architectural reason, just how much they miss out on the spiritual feeling in there.

Walking in and looking up towards the ceiling can really make you feel small. It was probably close to 100 feet, with massive stone pillars supporting the structure. We made our way to the back of the church, admiring all of the stained glass windows. Looking towards the altar, it appears to be miles away. We walked along the side of the pews towards the front of the church, stopping to admire all the stone carvings along the way. There was a line for confession, and also a list of all the cardinals that have run the church dating back to when it was built. Above the altar are many paintings, some of which had to be 20 feet by 20 feet, along with 2 huge organs. Also on the side of it is a newer modern organ that appears to be used more frequently. We've heard some of the huge old organs literally have miles of piping and can take over 5 years to restore. This cathedral was under a bit of restoration as we'll get into later. They had the very front of the church roped off so only groups could tour it for about the next half hour, so we decided to come back to that, instead we went downstairs. They had a room full of artifacts that was 1 euro to get into, which we skipped, and instead saw the remains of one of the cardinals dating from sometime in the 1500s. It almost looked fake, as he was still in some sort of suit.

Back upstairs, we decided to leave the church for a bit and come back after trying to find internet. We had no luck at the usual places like coffee shops and McDonalds, and in fact have started to get strange looks asking if there is wi-fi to be had. Its defiantly harder to find internet the further south we've some, Italy in particular. With no luck, we headed back to the cathedral to see what we missed earlier.

Back inside, we did a quick walk through of the front part that was roped off before, and found we really didn't miss much. There was a cardinal robe behind a glass case, and a few statues. Back outside we went to check out the roof.

Charlie decided to walk up the stairs thinking he'd get some good pictures along the way, while Heather opted for the elevator. To his disappointment all he got was a walk up about 300 some stairs, although he did beat the elevator to the top Heather was in as it only holds about 4 people at a time. Up on the roof is where the true amazement of just how much went into making this amazing church really hit us. There are countless statues of saints all along the roof, endless intricate little details carved into the pillars, the incredible walkway designed into the roof, not to mention the view up there. We find it impossible to imagine a person designing and building this mighty cathedral, we were sure only God himself were capable of something this grand. In a day and age where using a computer to design all the symmetry and molds necessary to make all the details, and to get all the measurements right so everything comes out right in the end, we couldn't imagine how it didn't take 100 years just to draw out the plans for this. There was restoration work going on on the roof of some of the statues and arches, which we figured is pretty much a full time deal with a building of this size and age.

After the church we decided to go wander in search of internet and lunch. Along our way Heather spotted a water fountain with a hippo face for a spout, so she had to get a picture of it. Much to our suprise after poking her head in the building attached to it, she found a free aquarium we could tour! We were both happy that not only was it free, but something fun and different to see. It was set up in a large circle, with many different stations with different types of aquatic life and fish. Everything from a mountain stream to a coral reef was in there. It put a smile on our faces to see it all. We made one more pass through and noticed an outdoor area so we stepped out and found some cute turtles we took pictures of.

Onto our mission of finding internet. We stopped in a few cafes and asked around and they all pointed us to the subway station, as there are pay internet sites in most of the stations. We gave in and went in one to pay for 15 minutes worth to find free wi-fi on a site that shows places that have it. It was basically 3 computers and some payphones in a large closet, and Charlie about passed out towards the end from the stuffy air and smell of people who haven't showered in a while. It smelled a bit like bad Indian food in there. We found some a couple subway stops up the line at a cafe, so off we went.

We came upon Roca's cafe, happy to see a free wi-fi sticker in the window. It was a cozy place with a bar area and half a dozen tables. We took a table and ordered some much missed chips and salsa, and a couple drinks. After surfing the net for a while, we got hungry and ordered a pizza with cheese, tomatoes, and lettuce, and also a grilled ham and tomato panini with plans to stay a while as we quite enjoyed the atmosphere. We ate and got caught up on emails, and also found a cafe up the road from our hotel with wi-fi for us to use the next day. As it got dark, we called it a night, and took the subway back to our hotel where we sat up and talked for a bit before falling asleep.

Venice, Italy to Milan, Italy - Fashion Capitol of the World

2008-10-03T02:28:00.001-07:00

Tuesday, September 30

Another very strange night of sleep in our bunk bed hall with curtains. We got up around 7:30 am to catch our last first class train to Milan, Italy. Charlie was in charge of giving the key back to "Christmas Eve" as we named her. She instructed him to eat breakfast before we left but we had a good excuse to skip out of it today.

Our last ride in first class treated us well. We had an entire 6 person car to ourselves complete with closed door. Heather went in search of the bathroom to find 2nd class packed with people sitting and standing in the halls... kind of sort of made us feel bad with 4 extra seats, but not too bad since we were forced to pay for 1st class!?! We snacked the train ride away with banana and nutella sandwiches, yum! The scenery was nice, very typical northern italy.

We are always surprised to see how much graffiti europe has. It's actually quite sad in some of the old beautiful cities to see it scarred this way.

We arrived in Milan around 1pm and stepped in to a huge grand train station. The ceilings in the main lobby must have been 60' feet tall and all with carvings and wonderful architecture. If this is what the train station looked like we were very impressed. And within 2 minutes of walking outside we saw a super model doing a fashion shoot. Heather rolled her eyes and said... "really they are out everywhere?!" The model looked to weigh about 80 lbs and most of that being her 2' tall hair and another 5 lbs of make up. Okay enough of that, maybe we will find her a sammich to eat so she doesn't waste away.

We had rough directions to find the hostel that included a bus ride. In our directions it stated we bought the ticket on the bus. Turns out we scammed a free ride in the end... ha ha.

Milan 0, Heather Charlie 1

The bus dropped us off right at our hostel which to our great great happy surprised turned out to be a 1 star hotel. I think a one star hotel in Italy is a bit nicer than any 1 star in the states. We had a huge private balcony that over looks fountains, landscaped yards and other buildings in the square. Our our complaint would be that they seem to stick a bid-ay in any spare space in Europe... we say ick to that.

Charlie tried to take a quick nap as he's been feeling very worn down and a bit sick the last few days while Heather read. A bit later we took off explore the area around our hostel. We usually like to stick close the first night since we don't have a great idea of the streets and getting lost would probably involve a costly taxi ride home. We ate lunch at a little cafe which we were the only customers there. Charlie had penne puntensca, and Heather had the old stand by of spaghetti carbonarra. We did our usual routine of "find free wi fi" with no luck. No Starbucks in Italy and our old reliable McDonnalds required you to have a cell phone to get a text message with the code to use the wi fi. No good to us, we haven't used a phone in over a month. It was hard to get a good feel of the city being it was a cloudy day. But it wasn't hard to tell that fashion was #1 here.

Deciding a night in might be more fun than wondering around. We went back to the hotel asked for directions to the market and headed out again. To give the report of the cost of tiramisu: 1.55 Euros for a single. (if you remember that's how we gauge the price of a city). We browsed the store, which is one of our favorite things to do, looking at funny foods we dont have in the states and marveling at their fresh fish selection that may have been swimming hours ago. Our winning menu included mini croissants, paper thin italian salami, fresh buffalo mozzarella, two bottles of italian wine (under 3.50 for both!!!!) and of course: a bar of chocolate and another jar of nutella.

We had a great night in! The owner of the hotel was nice enough to give us a few classy plastic cups to drink our fine wine out of. We spent hours drinking, eating, laughing and eventually having our own dance party with iTunes playing in the background.

Questions about traveling

2008-10-03T02:23:00.000-07:00

In our last month of traveling, we have noticed a few things that we can't help but ask why?????

1. Why do people attempt to record on video their whole vacation?

Do they honestly think they will go back and watch it all? Or worse, show it to everyone they know? And how about the guy we saw videotaping his gondola ride in Venice? Did he not know he missed his whole ride trying to catch it all on film?

2. Why do certain people get photographed in front of EVERY statue they come across?

Are they that narcissistic? Do they need proof down the road they actually saw it? We have followed groups around museums and churches that stop in front of anything of importance and each take turns getting a picture of them with it.

3. Can someone come up with a standard of toilet in the world?

We've been in 8 countries and seen probably a dozen styles of toilets, each getting weirder than the previous one. They range from a pull cord to flush hanging from the ceiling, to being a hole on the floor. Along this line, showers are just as odd.

4. Why do people take photos with a cell phone?

Its one thing if you take a picture to send someone right away, but once again, we've followed people taking all their pictures with their phone.

5. Who is watching Australia and Asia?

To be truthful, its really cool that their cultures are into encouraging traveling like they do, but we often wonder if there's anyone left in these areas.

6. When did they start making washing machines that require a masters degree in engineering to figure out?

This mostly applies to the ones in England that are a combo washer/drier in one. Call us dumb, but we had better luck figuring out the ones in foreign languages.

7. When did we miss the line that was handing out free SLR cameras?

We walk around nervous enough with our little canon point and shoots that we'll be mugged or lose them. These people are everywhere with giant lenses that cost more than our entire trip.

8. Can they pick a language in Belgium?

French or Dutch... you can't have both!!!

9. Who is responsible for the red hair coloring in Europe?

We've mostly noticed this on women over the age of about 45, but none of them are even close to being red. They are an ungodly color not found in nature. We even have a game going to see who can count the most bad red hair dye jobs in a day.

10. Why can Europeans make a potato chip with 3, yes 3, ingredients, and it takes US companies about 20?

Venice, Italy-Here a church, there a church, everywhere a church-church

2008-10-01T08:33:00.000-07:00

We were awoken by the runner of the hostel who we have dubbed "christmas eve" (of avenue Q fame for those not in the know) at about 9:15 am to her basically telling us we had to go eat breakfast. We had planned on sleeping in a bit, but maybe a bit of food isn't such a bad idea. We weren't really sure where to go in this maze of rooms, last night she said something we thought was downstairs, but Heather wasn't too excited about eating with the spider-webs, but as it turns out, it was upstairs. Walking through the hostel we wondered what lotto we lost getting the "room" behind the curtain, when there were 3 very large double bed rooms on our floor, all set up nice with furniture. After a bowl of corn-flakes, we went back down to shower and get ready for the day.

We really had no particular sights to see or places to go, so we just set out in a random direction to see what we come upon. We should note that walking around Venice you begin to feel like a rat in a maze looking for the cheese. There are a million streets and back alleyways to get lost on. About every other couple we saw was stopped, looking at their map. They say locals get lost here too, which we can easily believe.

Venice 1, Heather & Charlie 0.

After walking for an hour or so and passing many churches and crossing many bridges, we found a little square in front of a church and got our first Italian gelatto. We noticed there was a man behind the counter making it, to which Heather said " I like that man." We sat on a bench in front of the church and enjoyed it, looking at the map deciding where to wander. We thought we should head towards San Marco as it is the biggest tourist draw in the city with lots to see. We must have walked over an hour, making a few wrong turns on the way and consulting the map many times, we finally found it. San Marco consists of the basilica of San Marco, the old mayors home which is now a museum, a watchtower, and many shops along the huge sea front area. We thought we'd wander a bit along the shore and find some lunch before seeing the sights. We walked along the shore for quite a while checking out all the menus of the restaurants. Many restaurants in Italy charge extra for table service, usually 10% to 15% and sometimes a cover of 1 or 2 euros per person. As you can about imagine the places on the shore of Venice were quite expensive, so we thought we'd be best finding a place off a side alleyway which are usually much cheaper and many don't charge a cover or service charge. Walking up the shore we came upon a large yacht that had to be close to 150 feet long, and a bit up the dock, a sailboat even larger. We couldn't begin to imagine what they cost. We crossed over the Bridge of Sighs, which we thought had some sort of romantic story behind its name, but it turns out it was along the path to the old prison, and the prisoners were the ones doing the sighing as they crossed it many years ago.

We wandered back off the shore a bit and found a small cafe to eat lunch at. Heather got tortolini with procuetto and Charlie got a cheese pizza. Heather had a glass of wine with hers, while Charlie found a new flavor of fanta he likes, lime. After enjoying lunch, we headed back towards the square outside San Marco's basilica. We tried getting in, but were turned away at the door because we had a backpack, so Heather decided to walk along the shops while Charlie took a peek inside. It turned out to be rather disappointing inside, but very beautiful. There were no pictures allowed to be taken inside, but they basically had a roped off path through the church you could walk on. If you wanted to go up to the 2nd level to get a view outside it was an outrageous 4 euros, and to see the treasury room it was another 2 euros. The entire church ceiling was done in a beautiful gold mosaic, and was probably one of the more beautiful churches we've been to, but the cost to go upstairs and the quick path the shuffled everyone through kind of soured the experience. We are more used to being able wander around and take our time touring churches everywhere else in Europe.

After a bit we thought we'd head back to the hostel to clean up a bit and plan out our evening. We did get lost again and ended up on the complete wrong side of one of the islands than we thought, so out came the map and we headed towards the Rialto bridge, the biggest and main bridge across the grand canal. The street was lined with shops and markets, and also many black market dealings of handbags and sunglasses. They had many high-end name bags and glasses they were trying to sell to all the tourists, and would drop from 35 to 15 euros in an instant on the price of what should be a many hundred dollar bag. We still aren't sure if they were all real or stolen or made from the scraps at the factory. Whatever the story, they would have them all spread on the ground on a sheet, with someone on lookout for the police, and when they came walking by, they would gather the bags and run down the street till the police passed, and then found a new place to set up shop. Charlie may be looking for some black market sunglasses in Milan since he lost his in London. Heather just tried to stay away from the hand bags in general.

After a 2 hour walk, we finally found the hostel. We checked email and cleaned up a bit before heading back out in search of dinner. We took a new direction in hopes of finding something new, but we settled on a small cafe again where this time Heather ordered a pizza, and Charlie got a seafood risotto. We dined over a bottle of wine enjoying our final night in beautiful Venice. Heather ordered up an after dinner drink called Lemoncello, and it came in 2 rather large shot glasses rather than small ones as she's had before. We sat for a while and ate a bowl of nuts and a plate of chips that the server thought we needed to snack on while we relaxed.

On the way back to the hostel, we came upon the place we ate last night, with the same piano player playing again tonight, so we stopped by for a glass of wine. We listened to a few songs and started making our way back. On the corner where we had to turn there was a large crowd gathered, so we stopped to see what was going on. Turns out there was a band playing, and they were really quite good, hence the crowd. They even had someone selling their cd as they played. We stayed for a few songs before heading in to call it a night, we have plans to get up early before we get shooed into the breakfast room so we can catch our 9am train to Milan.

Innsbruck, Austria to Venice, Italy

2008-10-01T08:31:00.000-07:00

Sunday, September 28

We switched bunks last night mostly to share the burden of the bad one. We think the pillow may be full of wood-chips, even folded over 3 times it felt terrible. We were not sure of the check out time but house keeping came knocking on the door to shoe us out rather rudely. Heather still had her hair in a towel and neither of us were dressed but we made in out in under 10 minutes before we got another slap on the wrist.

The walk to the train station was all down hill, woo hoo. Charlie said many times he'd love to live in a mountain town like Innsbruck. Innsbruck hosted the 1964 and 1976 Olympics, taking it from a very small town to a thriving city. The waters here were the same bright turquoise as in Switzerland. We made a stop at the laundry-mat to check our email (being the ONLY free wi-fi we could find in town). Getting an other 10 cent gelatto was on both of our minds but we decided a lunch might be a better choice.

The train ride from Innsbruck to Venice was beautiful (like they all are). We passed under 2-3 mountain tunnels that kept us in the dark for several minutes. This train was all cabins, three seats on each side that faced each other. Everyone was quite until the cougher got on. We hope we didn't catch anything from him.

When the train got close to Venice we got out of our seats and watched out the window in the hall. It looked like a city floating in the middle of the sea.

First order of business after getting off the train was to find our hostel, actually it's called "Francesca's Bed and Breakfast"... but stay tuned for more. The walk was very nice, almost too much to take in. We had been in two canal cities before this: Bruges and Amsterdam, but nothing like this. No cars on the streets, not even bicycles just tons of people walking and pushing their way along. Our directions were not the best so we got lost once, an older italian woman who Heather deemed "Sofia Petrillo" from the Golden Girls gave us a very very long winded directions in Italian... we just kept nodding like we had any idea what she was saying no matter how loud she spoke. A few more turns and we found the place... urrr maybe!?

The ground floor was exposed brick, and not the pretty kind... dirty with cement steps that were uneven with 100s of years of smoothing down from shoes. We made our way upstairs and found Francesca to be a married asian couple. Hmm that's sort of different. Our room if you can call it that, was merely a hall way between rooms with a curtain we could pull around the bunk bed. We thought, oh well they must all be little icky rooms like this.... oh no the next morning we learned different. But the place did have a computer to use for internet but no wi fi.

Our first attempt at exploring Venice was kept pretty close to where we stayed. Venice is unlike any city we'd been to, getting lost was unavoidable. Venice is uncommonly romantic so just strolling down the streets, and up and down canal bridges was really amazing. It was nearly dark already so not a great time to get pictures. Typical Venetian food consists of sardines, vinegar and onions... we will try to avoid that. We had dinner in a open square with an italian man playing piano (mostly American love song covers). Our first meal in Italy!! Heather had gnocchi with gorgonzola and Charlie had an artichoke pizza. We toasted our first meal with italian wine and enjoyed every last bit. One tiny fact about pizza in Europe is it's never cut, you just eat it with a fork and knife.

Yes the traditional gondola guys were around but the rides are so expensive we thought we better think about it a little more... besides it's still a romantic city.

Off to bed at our crazy little place.

Innsbruck, Austria-Lazy Day in the Mountains

2008-10-01T08:30:00.001-07:00

Saturday, September 27

Being 2 very wore out travelers, we took full advantage of being able to sleep in. After waking a bit after 10, we lazily took showers and dressed ourselves for the day. First on the agenda was laundry, as it had been about 4 days again. We made the 10 minute stroll down the hill and found the Laundromat. We did our famous, stuff all of our clothes into one load trick we've mastered on this trip, and made our way up the road to the supermarket in hopes of finding lunch.

Our purchases included some chocolates (Heather), a bottle of Fanta, bread, a jar of nutella, and some bananas in hopes they would help our achy muscles. Heather also got some much needed hair products. We enjoyed our picnic lunch in the park, and found that nutella and bananas are one of the greatest combinations on Earth. They are especially yummy in sandwich form. Neither of us are sure if we'll ever go back to normal peanut butter again, although nutella is much cheaper here in Europe than in the states. After about 30 minutes we headed back to switch our clothes to the drier, and just rested on the comfy couch until they were dry. Making the trek back up the hill carrying groceries and 2 bags of laundry made us kind of tired, so we did the smart thing and napped for about 45 minutes after we got back. I know, we've had a pretty rough day so far.

About 3pm we thought we'd better get out and see some of this beautiful town. We walked back down the hill and crossed yet another bright turquoise colored river. There was a cute puppy running along side of us before crossing who was chasing a blowing leaf, and when he tried to grab it his back legs swung too far out and he fell over, it was really cute and funny. We stopped for a moment on the bridge to take some pictures and take in the beauty of the mountains. We decided we'd wander town to try and find some internet, which we should say is quite hard to find the past few days here in Austria. After asking around a bit, we were told to go to another Laundromat that had pay internet. Along the way Heather found the cheapest gelato yet, 10 cents!!! We were sure the guy read his sign wrong, we thought it was a 7 instead of a 1, but who are we to argue! We'll try again tomorrow for sure.

After getting to the Laundromat, we scammed some free wi-fi instead of paying, in the words of Borat, "great success!!" We caught up on our blog, and did some emails over the next half hour. Beings it was almost 5pm, we thought we'd better find some dinner. We wandered past a chinese restaurant, something both of us have been craving for weeks, but found they didn't open til 530, so we wandered up the street a bit to kill time before they opened.

We were back promptly at 5:30 at took a seat at a booth near the window overlooking a street on the old part of town. We should add this restaurant was on the 2nd floor, like many restaurants are here in Austria. We ordered some wonton soup, chicken with cashews and noodles with chicken. We took our time and ate family style, savoring every bite of food we'd been missing for so long. We took our time eating and enjoying everything, and sat in there for about 2 hours. It was nice to take time to enjoy a nice long meal for a change.

After eating we walked around a street in the old part of town, doing some window shopping, and enjoying a very pleasant evening. We walked past one of Europes big, old cathedrals, and might check it out tomorrow if we get a chance before leaving. We made our way back to the hostel to relax for the evening and try to get rid of our worn out feeling, and to maybe put our clean laundry back in our backpacks.

Salzburg to Innsbruck, Austria

2008-09-27T07:42:00.001-07:00

Friday, September 26

We missed breakfast with Thomas and Jeanie (the other couch surfer) but from the look Thomas gave us the night before he was not very interested in scrambled eggs. We used some peppers from last night and mystery austrian cheese and enjoyed a hot breakfast!

We said our good byes to our gracious host Thomas before he left for work and invited him to come to St Paul anytime to stay with us. Next we packed up and headed to the train station.

It seems like it's been weeks since we've had internet, honestly only like 24 hours at this point. We looked in vain for a place while we waited for our train to Innsbruck, Austria but found nothing.

At this point it's a clear sign if the train is running even 5 minutes late there will be trouble. Instead of trying to fight our way in first class for seats together we decided to sit in the dinning car the entire time. The 2 hour ride turned in to 2.5 because.... well they don't know but in the middle of a forest we stopped for quite a while. We had shared a tortelloni cheese pasta with a red sauce, honestly it's just train food that's microwaved but we thought it was pretty good. We sat at a table with a man from Bulgaria who wanted to hear all about our travels. He shared some good advise for seeing some of the islands around Venice and saying that 5 months in Italy won't even be long enough. One tip we liked was to go to the cheapest pizza place in italy and order the cheapest thing on the menu, it's bound to be the best. We don't know what his logic was for that thought but we didn't argue.

We arrived in Innsbruck around 3:30 pm. After making a reservation for our Sunday train to Venice we attempted to figure out where our hostel is. After consulting three taxi drivers who pulled out their own maps (never a good sign) we got a ride from them instead of taking the wrong bus and wasting 2 hours.

Honestly a pretty uneventful day. The highlight was the train ride and all the snow capped mountains.

We checked in to the hostel and the host told us we'd be in separate rooms boys/girls. I guess some girl from Japan called and said she's only stay in an all girls room so that screwed up everyone's sleeping arrangements. But the host offered us a private room with a lock for only 4 more Euros a night. SOLD!! Heather joked we were probably on the top level... oh no the lady said: "your room in the attic." Of course it was.

The room is actually really big and nice and with only two full flights of stairs it's hardly even a climb at all.

If we haven't mentioned it before the farther south we travel... the stranger the bathrooms get. There may be something interesting to report on the shower tomorrow.

After a nice nap we headed out for food and had two pizzas. They were very good but we are out of energy to describe them :)

So this is Heather & Charlie signing off for tonight.... hoping we'll find some internet to post some new blogs soon.

Salzburg, Austria - Rain, Churches and Food

2008-09-27T07:40:00.000-07:00

What else is there in Europe? All joking aside, we awoke a bit after 8 to have breakfast with our host and the other american guest he had. Thomas went all out and made us a feast of bread, jams, cheese, more of the great salami, and juice. We chatted over breakfast some, and then set out for the day a bit before ten when he headed off to work. It was a light drizzle as we set out with no particular place to go other than to explore Sazburg. Thomas used to be a tour guide in the castle, and gave us some ideas of places to go.

We wandered our way towards the river and crossed it, finding that much of the festival had been taken down, with only a few craft stands still up. Our first stop was the Franciscan church. Thomas had said this church was quite dark inside, and he was right. We wondered how many candles they had to light before electricity to be able to see in here. The only windows were towards the front of the church, way up high, so the back half was like being in the dark. One thing we noticed is the giant columns in the middle were made of concrete instead of marble like so many others we'd seen. There was also someone playing the giant organ the whole time we were in there, which was fun to hear. One random fact about this church was that its basically next door to the Salzburg Cathedral, but while that was destroyed in WW2, this one didn't receive any damage.

Next we walked along the cliff side as Thomas had said there were caves the church used to use to hide people or things. All we could find was a place that used caves as sort of a conference or party room area, so we were a bit bummed out as cave exploring would have been fun on this rainy day. We then wandered up and down a street closed off to cars that has many high-end shops. It was fun to window shop even if we couldn't afford any of it. Also on this street is the birthplace of Mozart. We poked our noses in the main entrance, saw a large crowd, and noticed it cost more than the Louvre to tour, so we passed, not before snapping a few pics of the outside though.

Being it was about noon, we made our way to the republic cafe where we ate yesterday. We thought we would spend a few hours there having lunch and using the only internet we could find in Salzburg. We found a table near the window and each ordered a beer. For lunch Charlie got a panini style pork sandwich with cheese, tomato, and a chili cocktail sauce, served with a side salad. Heather ordered a delicious smoked duck breast with white rice with black sesame seeds. It was served with tropical fruit like pineapple, mango, pomegranate seeds with a yummy honey glaze sauce over it. The duck tasted more like a steak than chicken, and wasn't greasy or gamey in the least. We sat and enjoyed our food and messed around on the internet while it poured like crazy outside.

When we saw a break in the rain we headed out again towards St. Peters Abbey. We made a quick pass through the church and headed outside to the cemetery, whos likeness was used as a set in The Sound of Music. We were kind of surprised how new some of the gravestones were as this church was quite old. We imagine the oldest ones were in the catacombs in the mountainside we didn't tour. We started walking towards the main area of the city again, and stopped off at an Irish pub for a bit while we waited some rain out. About 4:30 pm we thought we'd head back towards Mirabell garden as Heather saw a scarf there she wanted to buy, and then head back to Thomas's apartment. Much to her disappointment, they had sold the blue one she wanted, so we kept walking. We walked back towards Thomas', and looked for a supermarket near his place, as we had said we'd cook him and his other guest dinner tonight.

We weren't too impressed with the Lidl store, so we went to the market up the road about a block. One thing we should add is we haven't quite figured out how to get a shopping cart yet here, as it involves paying 1 euro as sort of a deposit on the cart, and unlocking it from all the others, so we went without one. The other American girl staying there is a vegetarian so we came up with making a vegetable risotto with grilled cheese, tomato, and pepper sandwiches. We bought all our ingredients and headed back to our hosts apartment a few blocks away. Back at the apartment, Charlie got to cooking the risotto, which really is a labor of love as it involves standing at the stove in front of it for a good 25 minutes, as Heather got everything for the sandwiches ready to toast. The food turned out to be a wonderful hit, and we enjoyed it and good conversation over our meal.

After dinner we each took a much needed hot shower after being out in the rain all day, then settled in the living room with Thomas and Jeanie from Baltimore to relax. We were excited to see there was an American baseball game on tv, the Tigers and Devil Rays were playing. It was fun talking to Thomas about baseball and college football, as he's a big fan of both. We'd both noticed this was the first time in over 3 weeks we'd actually been sitting down relaxing in front of a tv. We took turns working on the blog and when the game was over we decided it was bedtime, as we were both quite tired.

Salzburg, Austria - Mother Superior was not kidding when she said "Climb every mountain"

2008-09-27T07:35:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, September 24

If it hasn't already been said Haus Linder is much more than a hostel, a high end bed and breakfast would be a better way to put it. Off our balcony we had a panoramic view of Salzburg, not a bad way to start the day. The breakfast was very good but again... no hot food. We were the only ones in there besides the owner who made us a nice breakfast of breakfast rolls with jams, cheese, juice, coffee, and the best salami we'd had. It was sliced super thin and had a nice peppery flavor. She and her family were off to church service as it was a local holiday celebrating St. Rupert, also the name of her husband she told us. He was the founder of Salzburg and it's a huge deal... we didn't know how huge just yet. We went back to the room to shower and pack up. Our room had a private shower that was kind of funny, it was like stepping into the closet with a bi-fold, sliding door.

When our hosts returned, we thought it was time to pay for our night and head out for the day. Heather opened the door and said "holy blonde kids!" She had her grandkids upstairs with her in the kitchen, about five or six of them, all blonde haired. One of the girls was eating chocolate and offered one to Heather, who is never one to turn down a chocolate. Heather also got put to work for a moment working the phones with an australian guy on the line our host could not understand. After a walk back down the hill and hopping on the train we were off to the main area of town.

We arrived back at the main station and put our backpacks into a storage locker for the day. With a map in hand we set off to find the Mirabell gardens, made famous in the movie The Sound of Music during the "Do Ri Me" song. Along the way what did we find? If you guessed gelato you'd be right. Much to our suprise its the cheapest yet, 80 cents for a cone. We were sold. Charlie got a chocolate flavor and Heather got cookies. Apparently cookies means every good flavor you can think of because this cone was unreal. This was another one of those flavors we could spend paragraphs describing and still not really do it justice.

We came upon the enterance to Mirabell park, and at first, weren't that impressed. Walking up a small hill reveled a beautiful rose garden, and down a few stairs, a huge well maintained flower garden. The Mirabell Garten was pristine. Most interesting was a house on the grounds that one of the archbishops built for his secret wife (naughty, naughty). Oh and they had 15 children!!

Crossing over the Salzach river bridge we happened on a HUGE festival! It was of course the St Rupert's day festival. It took up all the streets with food, drinks, beer tents, and rides including a REAL pony merry-go-round. We sampled a few things like pastries, real honey in various flavors and plum schnapps. We toured the beautiful Dom de Salzburg cathedral, dedicated to St Rupert and St Virgil. The cathedral was bombed and mostly destroyed in WW2 reopening May 1, 1959, seeing the renovations were beautiful. We both really liked this church in a way we couldn't explain, it just felt special.

Next item on the list: The Sound of Music. Yes, Heather has been singing constantly! We found out the tours were 37 Euros... a bit out of our price range. We decided to try to see as much of the sites from the movie on foot.

We ended up walking too far around the hill/mountain and realized we were close to the Nonnburg Abby. This was really quite a hike up the hill but we were not about a to let a guy in his 70s in front of us beat us up!! The abby was very small and honestly not that recognizable from the movie. But how often do nun's lie so we believed that it was what they said. Next we just kept heading up the hill looking for "the thing that does the walking for you" to get up to the top and see the Hohensalzburg castle. Well seems we were much further up than we thought, we were too high up to catch them and had to walk all the way up... this was something we vowed NOT to do because too much walking makes us useless at night and for getting up in the morning. Ughh this was hard, by far the hardest "climb every mountain" we've done. However far you think the climb is when you see the pictures just add 30 minutes of 90 degree grade climbing and you'll be in our shoes.

The castle was very interesting and we had high hopes because this was our first castle. We found the only way to go through the actual castle was to go on a guided tour. We were given little devises that described what we saw in each room. The first room was pictures of all the archbishops who had lived in the castle over time and models of the castle as it was added to over the years. On to the torture chamber! Oh this is going to be exciting right?!?! Nahh it's just called that, no one was ever tortured there, just shackled. Torture is a way to get a confession out and no one could be convicted unless they confessed to a crime, so with no court in this castle: no torture. Up a lot of spiral stairs to the very top of the castle to a look out point. Wow we thought we had good views this morning at the B&B, this was breath taking. There were a few clouds around the mountains but the pictures will speak for themselves. Next we walked down a very long hall that lead us to an old organ. This organ was in a room to itself and was used to wake up the people in the castle, not really to be played... actually it didn't even have a keyboard. It should be noted that this is not a "King and Queen" castle, just one for archbishops. Okay so we turned in our little things that talked and thought... ummm that's all we got to see? We weren't the only ones feeling a bit short changed. We wondered more into other building and saw some of the bishops bedroom chambers, an example of a kitchen and other artifacts. We also again thought it would be so much more interested if it had still be set up in the original form. We found out later the castle had been taken over and looted by Napoleon and it's rumor that the art and furniture had been used in fires to keep warm. It's also rumored that if you tour some french museums you might see a thing or two that does in fact belong to Austria. The castle we should also add was freezing! Charlie enjoyed looking at cannons (total boy thing to do). There was a kind of strange area that had a marionette museum. If you ask us, they are creepy but we paid to get in and looked at everything to get our money's worth. We took advantage of the "machine that does the walking for us" down the mountain. Ughh it was packed and made even more packed by two older germans squeezing in who maybe hadn't been introduced to the concept of soap. It was a long 60 seconds down the mountain.

It was nearly 3pm and we were starving. Salzburg seems to be a very reasonably priced town until you are starving and can't find anything that is either open in the mid-day break or in our price range. We settled on a place called Republic which had free wi-fi and beer, prefect. We each had a wiezen beer. Ok we are going to talk about food again so be ready. Charlie had a chicken and chili sauce wrap with a great mixed salad. Heather had a pasta that was a bit of a surprised when it was set down. The spaghetti pasta was nearly black. It was dyed with squids ink which gave it a really rich/light flavor. The pasta was topped with... we're not sure but it tasted like if you combined a tomato/potato/pumpkin with a crisp piece of fried thin cheese and a chili sauce. Yum, we love new food and this was too good not to welcomed into the clean plate club.

After eating it was back to the festival to see what's new to eat and drink. Heather asked a nice looking couple what they were drinking and they only could say "the best." Better try that then. It was kind of like a fruity pink sparkling liquor/juice. A bit too sweet for our taste but fun to try a glass of. With a bavarian pretzel in tow we headed back to the train station to pick up our bags and head over to our Austrian host's place.

Getting our bags out the locker was a little drama because the machine broke and we had to describe what was in there but it turned out fine. We're now off to find Thomas' place (our Austrian host) which we decided on by looking at the map "didn't look too far." Actually it wasn't too far this time but the but you can double your journey with backpacks on. We got a bit confused by the way the number of the building and apartment were written in the address: 20/9... which is which?? We went to the wrong place with a woman who would open her door to us but assured us Thomas was not there... guess we looked a bit sketchy since it was pouring out. We did then find Thomas' place but with some issues with the door bell we sat outside his apartment from 7pm-8pm. Finally we left him a note saying to contact us and headed back into town not having a clue where to sleep tonight. As we got about a block away footsteps came from behind and an out of breath Thomas said.... "are you Heather and Charlie?"

Thomas had been out on his balcony and not heard us ring or knock on the door but when we finally gave up and walked away in the rain he saw us and chased us down. We couldn't be more relieved or impressed by his HUGE brand new apartment. Everything was custom and gorgeous, pretty impressive for a single guy. We sat up and talked a while over a beer. We had our own room!!! Later that night another girl from the US came and took the couch but we didnt meet her till the morning.

Being cold, soaking wet and very grateful to have a place to stay we slept quite well.

Dachau, Germany and the train to Austria

2008-09-24T07:25:00.002-07:00

Tuesday, September 23

We awoke about an hour and a half later than we had planned, guess thats what we get for not setting an alarm, but we were ok with getting a slightly late start. We got up and showered and headed out to the train station to see Dachau Concentration Camp.

Its about a 20 minute train ride to the village and from there about a 10 minute bus ride to the concentration camp site. Neither of us really knew Dachau was a village as well. After misreading the bus schedule and getting off 2 stops too early, we made it to the entrance of the camp. Walking down the gravel path was almost like being in a park as it was very well maintained. Along the way there were signs depicting events that took place and what used to be along the pathway. Right before the main entrance there was a bit of the original cobblestone road leading in, and a small fragment of the original railway leading to the camp.

We entered the camp through the original gate in the building that was the ss officers headquarters. The gate door was the original one with the phrase "Arbeit Macht Frei" or Work Brings Freedom. The gate opens up to the main camp yard. It was a HUGE yard, with all of the original buildings that surrounded it intact, although restored. The first part of the museum was in the main building of the camp. It started off in the room where the prisoners were processed. They had a few of the original desks used, and a uniform issued to those in the camp. All through the main building there were videos, artifacts and many reader boards telling the history of the camp, events leading up to ww2, who they brought to the camp, and what went on at Dachau. Dachau was the first concentration camp the Nazi's built in 1933, and is the only camp that was used the full duration of the war. Dachau wasn't built to be an extermanation camp, but as a work camp. It's built on an old amunition plant left over from ww1. The first prisoners were responsible for tearing down what was left of that and then building up the camp that functioned from 1933 to 1945. Dachau was an all mens prison up until the end of the war when the nazi's started evacuating other camps and moving them to Dachau among others. The majority of the prisoners were Jews, but it also held political prisoners, POW's, and gypsies.

The other rooms in the main building consisted of the kitchen, shower room, and other processing areas. While it was great to have so much information up to read and pictures to see, it would have been nice if they had some of this building set up like it was in use, much like the way we thought the Anne Frank house should have been. Nonetheless it was a very powerful experience going through the building. In the shower room they had set up a table where they used to whip people if they did anything against the rules. The rules included things such as having a dried spot of water on the bowl you ate out of. Parts of Dachau were kept spotless during the war as it was frequently used to show their camps were being kept in order and prisoners here worked to the bone to keep it that way, but outside of certain areas it was a whole other story. In the doctors areas experiments were carried out on prisoners. They would submerge people in freezing water to find out what organs shut down first in hypothermia or put them in a pressure room until death then see how the brain was effected by it. Just going through that room knowing what happend there is enough to make hairs stand up. Exiting the main building into the yard, we walked across to one of the bunkhouses.

Inside one of the bunkhouses they had set it up to how it was during its use. It was amazing to see rows and rows of wooden "beds" crammed into a room. The camp was set up to house 6,000 prisoners, at its peak it held over 60,000, but it usually had somewhere between 12,000 and 32,000. They say at times the prisoners would have as many as 5 or 6 in one bed. There was also one of the washrooms in place and a bathroom. We were also told that during the war the windows were chalked over so nobody could see outside. Even though the rooms had been restored some years ago, it wasn't hard to imagine the horrible living condidions.

Next we walked out among the foundations of the probably 30 or so bunkhouses that weren't standing anymore, to the back of the camp where there were chapels built after the war. Walking a bit further into the woods we came upon the crematoriums. The first one we went in was the newer, larger one. The first room was a waiting room before the gas chamber. This is where the prisoners were told they were going into a shower room to keep them calm, and told to give their clothes up to the ss guards. Next we went into the gas chamber room disguised as a shower. The walls of this room were over a foot thick, and there was special plumbing into the showerheads where the gas came out. The room was used to kill up to 150 people at a time in about 20 minutes. Standing in this room took an emotional tole on us both. The next room was the cremation room itself. There were four large cremators, each capable of holding three people at a time. In front of them were hooks hanging from the celing where people were hung and killed before being cremated if they were not among the ones gassed. The final room was where the dead bodies were stored, waiting to be cremated. There was a picture up from when the US forces liberated the camp of the room full of bodies. We both left that building speechless and quite shaky. There really is an eery evil feeling going through that building just knowing all the unspeakable things that occured inside. Heather said she never wanted to feel or see what she felt in the room ever again. They say the numbers killed at Dachau was somewhere between 25,000 and 45,000. Nowhere near some of the extermanation camps such as Auchwitz that was rumored to have murdered between 750,000 and 1 million, but shocking nonetheless. After the liberation of the camp, the US soldiers forced the citizens of Dachau village to tour the camp, to witness the horror happening in their own backyard.

Next we walked along a trail that led us by where the ashes of thousands of unknowns were buried, and to the infamous pistol range that served as an execution site as well. One time 92 russian POWs were killed at one time. This site was disturbing in its own right as they had made a drainage ditch for blood that ran out of those who were shot. After walking past a couple memorial sites, we started back towards the main building. Before leaving, we went through the prison bunker, where political prisoners were held, such as one man who tried assasonating Hitler on a visit to Munich. We both were kind of suprised to find a prison within a prison. Most of the rooms were about 8 feet by 8 feet with a small window high on the wall, and a small opening on the door. There were a couple rooms for solitary confinement in the dark. There it was said they would get water and a pound of bread to last them 3 days in the dark, with a prisoner meal every 4th day, which never amounted to much. Still, life in here was probably a bit better than in the main camp if that is possible.

After that it was time to head back. Neither of us really said much for a bit as we were trying to take all of what we'd just seen in and were both pretty effected by the past few hours. We couldn't imagine what the soldiers who found and liberated this camp went through, as some of them even snapped and executed around 30 ss guards. Its really hard to imagine that not that many years ago this site was home to one of the most evil events in history, but it really ties together some of the feelings we had visiting Omaha beach.

We took the train back to our hosts apartment to pack up and said our goodbyes. We will miss staying with Florian and Andreas, as we had a great time staying with them and getting to know them. We hope someday we can host them in the US. We would love to show them around the twin cities, and take them to Valleyfair, as Andreas especially is fond of rides. Before we left, Andreas had us take a shot of "schnapps", which he said is how they say goodbye. Of course we knew he was making this up, but we did anyways. We arrived just in time at the train station to catch the next train to Salzburg Austria. The Train ride was beautiful as we made our way to the mountains once again. Coming into Salzburg we caught a glimpse of the castle we want to tour, and Heather sang "the hills are alive with the sound of music" waiting for our city train to the hostel.

The only directions we had to the hostel were go left up the hill out of the train stop,then make a left on the road the hostel is on. They should really change "up the hill" to climb the Bavarian Alps. It seemed like we walked a mile up the mountain, having to take a break part way up. The hostel is more a bed and breakfast really. There is a stunning view of Salzburg from atop this hill, and our room is gorgeous as well. We debated walking down the hill to explore, but thought it would be better to call it an early night and save the energy for tomorrow. After all, we do have lots of dancing in flower covered hills to do and sing our hearts out.

Munich, Germany - If it's at the train station: we will eat it.

2008-09-24T07:25:00.001-07:00

Monday, September 22

We had grand plans of visiting Dachau but unfortunatly they are closed on Mondays. What to do, what to do???

First of all: Sleep in.

Then: Lay around and hang out with the fun german guys

Next: Catch up on emails.

Ok enough of that.

We did get somewhat productive!! We did our laundry which if we do not do every 4-5 days will will be arrested for public nudity. While that was brewing we walked down to the grocery store. Of course it was raining, freezing and we had no umbrella. But no big deal, it wasn't as bad as the walk home one night in Amsterdam. We were in search of a traditional german meal but with no restaurants open Charlie was in charge of cooking. We still are shocked by the low prices in Munich, only 15 US dollars for a bottle of grand marnier ... that's about 1/2 off. We got some german brats, sour kraut, tiny potatoes and the best mustards in the world, yum! Oh I should add it's our duty as american's (and our loyal blog readers) to try as much chocolate as we can in each country.

We got back to Florian's and cooked a great meal, did a lot of planning for the days ahead when we'd be traveling to Austria and Italy.

A little later in the afternoon we decided going back to Oktoberfest was a capitol idea! So on the train we hopped. We made a quick stop at a store called C&A which is maybe like a big Old Navy or GAP. Heather got a red fleece because she was freezing.

As promised we went to a church. Not just any church: St Paul's Cathedral! After a few days in Germany it was very much in order. The church was very different, clean whites and almost no colors but still very nice.

Ok on to Oktoberfest again. It was a completely different crowd this time. We walked in to the paramedics strapping a young (we assume american) man to a stretcher who had enough to drink till oktoberfest of 2010. Mostly we wanted to try out some of the great food we had passed up the first time we came. Kaiserschmarrn was in order to start with as you read in our earlier blog we haven't been able to stop thinking about it. Heather even took a picture of the menu so we'd remember the name. Yum it was heaven, like a toasted pancakes with sweet raisins topped with powdered sugar. If that didn't nearly melt in our mouth there was a creamy apple sauce on the side with cherries. We each had a liter off beer taking our total count up to 11 liters from the other day. While we enjoyed our dessert we saw another guy giving "the bums rush" out the door and thrown on the street. Better luck next year buddy.

We took a stole down the main drag of Oktoberfest stopping to get some candied cashews and laughing at anyone who thinks rides are a good idea after even having 1 liter of beer.

Oh and we found something that really puts the "about a foot long" hot dog to shame at the Mn State fair: The ONE METER brat. Yes you heard right, 3 feet of brat goodness. No we didn't get it but did drool over it.

Our favorite tent was the Lowenbrau tent with the lion the roared and took a swig of beer after his roar. We split one beer there just to say we'd been there and called it a day before we started dancing on tables and making more international friends.

So back to the train station. Here we are in the magical train station finding ourselves hungry (yet again). Heather had a scoop of amaretto gelato, charlie had a fruit and cream one... and the trouble began. It's like once we started eating we were addicted... everything was wonderful and finally cheap! We found chocolate filled croissants, waffle filled raspberries and cream cheese, mini spring rolls... oh my!

After enough stuffing ourselves we got on the train and headed back to Florian and Andreas apartments. Florian was out for the night seeing a band but Andreas was up and ready for fun. Andreas is going to school for engineering and spends most of his time at home "learning" which we think is really cute. Before we left he said, "make sure you drink beer in Germany." Yes as if we would forget to do that. So we finally drank our 12% world's best and most rare trappist monk beer. All we can really say is yes, it does live up the hype. We'd like to save the other for our "best meal ever" in Italy. We shared some of our beer with Andreas who was happy then to share more of his beer with us. The hours past and we laughed the night away. We showed pictures of our dogs and families from back home and asked him more questions about those crazy german drinking songs. Asking about german drinking songs turned into him getting out the songs and all of us singing along... including the huge germans hits: Country Roads and Hey Baby.

As long as we live we will never forget one of Andreas stories. He is on a table tennis team that goes on a yearly trip up to the mountains. Andreas had a special job and shirt: he had to teach the younger guys how to drink hard liquor. Well as you can imagine the story just got funnier and he brought out his computer to show us all the pictures to go along with it. He said the next day on the way back it was tradition for them to keep drinking. He said once he "lost his mind" and remembers nothing but what his friends told him, including how he was dropped off at his parents house and he said: "they were not impressed." We laughed so hard and so long as this that the neighbor downstairs came up to tell us to be quiet. Soon the neighbor was laughing too. We both thought... yeah I doubt our parents would be "impressed" with us if we came home in that state.

But the silver lining to his story is after that day he does not drink hard liquor anymore. Except: mixed drinks and anything under 20%... we also had a very good laugh about this.

Andreas told us about german schnapps which is NOTHING like american schnapps. This is not sweet and will nearly kill you we think cause most likely was made in a bathtub of sorts. We declined shots which was a good thing and headed off to bed where we laughed for another 20 minutes recalling the stories Andreas had shared with us.

Heather said, "Can we please take him home, he's so cute and he won't be any trouble... I'll take care of him, I promise!!!!"

Munich...Food for thought

2008-09-24T07:24:00.000-07:00

Sunday, September 21

Oktoberfest and lots of traveling took its toll on us. We didn't get up until about 11am. We spent a couple hours drinking water to re-hydrate ourselves and catching up on emails. We went through our pictures of oktoberfest and had a good laugh remembering all the fun times the night before.

We set out in search of food in the middle of the afternoon, wandering to what looked like a business district, but the few places we came across weren't open, so we started walking in the direction of the Aldi supermarket. Apparently everything in this suburb of Munich shuts down on sunday, much like downtown St. Paul. We decided to catch the train into downtown Munich and search for something there.

Exiting the train station, we took off across the street in search of anything we could find. Apparently the train station is in the Indian/Middle East part of the city, as every restaurant we saw for about 3 square blocks sold nothing but falafel and kababs. We settled on a place that had a heated indoor sit down area as most of them were just outside seating. Heather would have preferred to eat in the machine that cooks the gyro meat, but that is probably frowned upon. We ordered up some sort of beef gyro type sandwich and an order of fries. The sandwich was delicious, of course, so we finished our sodas in the heated restaurant and decided to walk back towards the station.

We poked back in a little connivence type store we saw on the way, and somehow, we were hungry again. This time we got a brat with the yummy mustard on it and some sort of berry pastry. We stood at a little bar type area customers could eat at and enjoyed our 2nd meal of the day. We both love how they serve brats on a delicious toasted baguette. Neither of us spoke while we ate.

Back inside the train station we stumbled upon something wonderful, the food court. The Germans know how to make a food court. Its not the typical type consisting of fast food chains and mall style chinese food, oh no. What they have resembles the taste of the globe buffet at the Rio in Las Vegas. And its cheap. First things first, we got some apricot gelato. Again, it was cheap, only 1 euro (normally 3-4 euros). We enjoyed it while we walked through deciding our next purchases. We drooled over a huge bakery area with many great looking pastry's, a chinese food station, served on actual china plates with some food made to order, a huge sandwich bar, pizzas, pretzels, and also a small grocery area.

After finishing the gelato it was time for more for more food. Apparently a long day at octoberfest will make you hungry. Next up was a pretzel Heather had had her eye on, cut in half like a bagel with butter and chives spread on it. You'd think we'd have had enough by now after eating about 3 meals, but the bakery area caught our eye on the walk back to our subway. Charlie was caught dead in his tracks by one particular pastry, one filled with the famed Bavarian cream. We purchased one and giggled our way over to table and dove in. It can best be described as the best glazed krispy creme donut on the planet filled with the best cream on the planet. Neither of us said a word while eating it, just enjoyed it. When it was all gone, we even felt bad for throwing away the bag it came in because it had a little bit of cream smeared on it. We thought we better get back on the train back to our host's home before we became obese.

Back at the house we messed around online a bit and called it an early night. All in all a great day of recovery.

DISCLAIMER

2008-09-21T11:55:00.000-07:00

We promise we are doing something cultural soon or at the least going to church.

Munich, Germany - Oktoberfest 9/5,000,000 beers

2008-09-21T11:44:00.000-07:00

What a great night's sleep! The cupboard under the stairs was amazing. We both think we get a lot better rest when we're not in a hostel, big shock right?

A day that starts the same as most, the evil alarm goes off and we fight it for a good hour. After we clean up it's off to Oktoberfest. Looking back we really doubt we needed ANY direction on how to get there: follow anyone dressed in traditional german get up. Florian wasn't really interested in going so he told us the train station to get out at. On my gosh we crammed like cattle onto this train full of fest-goers.

When we rode the escalator up we were smack in the middle of the fest, no worries about finding our way. Oktoberfest is so much more than we expected. It's like the Minnesota state fair minus the animals and 100 times the beer. When they say beer tent they don't mean tent, they mean really nice buildings with tables as long as the eye could see. It was wonderful! We aren't sure who would want to go on rides they had there (really big carnival ones) cause just watching how fast they were going was enough to make our head spin.

We both felt a bit embarrassed by any american man under 30, you could spot them just acting like idiots... typical college boys.

First day of Oktoberfest goes something like this.... at 11:30 a big big parade goes down the street with each brewery having a band and a bringing all their kegs to their respective tents. It's really amazing to see, even the horses are dressed up to the 9s. 6-7 breweries run the tents or beirgartens and only serve their beer in there. Getting in is the trick. You need a reservation made in at least February and those are spendy IF you can even get one. We of course did not have one and just tried our luck.

Beer is beer right? Well that's what we said for the day, we took off our beer snob hats and sort of slummed it. All the beers here are light in color lagers, really nothing exciting with a lot of taste but oh well :) With beers coming in 1 liter glasses weighing around 5 pounds, not much to stick our noses up at.

All said and done, we made it out of Oktoberfest very cheap. If you think you need to make table reservations early you might want to look for a hotel for Oktoberfest a few years ahead of time and then still expect to pay a second mortgage. Ahh but we are cheap,... ugh I mean smart. Since we are staying for free with Florian and it's free to get into the fest and the tents really all you need to do is buy beer and food. Beer and food were not bad priced, around 8 euros for a 1 liter of beer (about 38 ounces or more than 3 cans of beer) and 1/2 meter brats on baguettes only 4 euros. Those brats kind of put our state fair foot longs to shame, not to mention the delicious mustard that goes on them. It was a really smooth, creamy dijon style that was a bit sweet.

We walked around eating a brat, corn on the cob and a small bag of popcorn. I think food is a universal language. Without a word we were exchanging homemade pretzels for popcorn and raising our glasses in a toast with friendly italian men.

At the time we didn't know it, but we got in a tent and witnessed the tapping of the first keg, but as young fools here for the first time, we left the tent in search of.... we don't know really?! This was also where we first saw the women who served beer carrying our 10 or 12 liters of beer at a time! We were very impressed with their strength and ability to weave through the mobs of people without spilling.

Now onto serious business trying to get into a tent! We would like to add that it was unseasonably cold this day too, Charlie is quite the gentleman and gave his vest to Heather (aka the freeze baby). We stood in line at a few different gartens but no one was getting in, they were full up (even a 20 euro handshake didn't work for one guy). One of our favorites had a giant lion over the entrance growling the name of the brewer and taking a swig from his giant beer mug. The best we could do was get a table outside a garten and make more friends. We found two spots and jumped on them fast. We sat with a german couple, another german man and on the end a few guys from New York. The german woman was very nice in answering all of our oktoberfest questions and translating the menu. One of the traditional foods to get is 1/2 a chicken. We probably should have eaten more than splitting a brat and popcorn earlier. The german couple ordered a wonderful looking desert made of apples and raisins and like a fried donut covered in powdered sugar. We aren't sure of the name of it, but we regret not getting one, and might go back monday night just to eat food.

Our first liter of oktoberfest beer!!! (the previous beer was only a 1/2 liter) There was much toasting, and all those drinking songs we heard on the train were everywhere too. We probably sat out there an hour or two. The only thing to complain about at Oktoberfest would be the lines for the bathroom. Heather was gone for over 40 minutes once... and we guess they could exist somewhere we didn't see but we could not find the "vomit-torium" as we read somewhere. While sitting outside the table next to us was full of italian men who gave us cheese and crackers, and Heather stole a bite of brat. After they left some younger kids from florida sat down, and we made friends with them and exchanged travel stories and suggestions (including the wonderful bar in Brussels).

Because of the weather we think a lot of people didn't show up the first day and around mid afternoon we caught a break and weaseling inside to the WONDERFUL HEATED Paulander beirgarten. Again, more friends to be made. And yes things may get a bit fuzzy. We kept saying how great it would be to have all our friends and family here at this celebration. Inside there are long wood tables and benches. The benches are really not for sitting on, everyone stood on them arm in arm and danced for the rest of the night. The next few hours were filled with beers and laughter. Our table was occupied by a woman from Austria and 2 younger girls, one assuming to be her daughter, a man from turkey, and a german couple. Heather was trying to play love connection with the austrian woman and the turkish man, who promptly told her they just met 3 hours ago! Like stated earlier, the benches were merely a suggestion to sit on, their real purpose was to stand on and sing and dance. We were waiting for them to break, as they would bow a lot in the middle with 5-6 people standing and dancing on them at a time. Not to mention they got very slippery with all the beer being sloshed around and spilled on them. One thing we liked was all the covers of older american songs. We heard Frank Sinatras "new york", sweet home alabama, summer of 69, and of course country roads take me home many many times. The next few hours were spent dancing on tables and benches, singing, drinking beer, and making friends from all over the world. One thing we did notice was we looked like the funny ones not dressed up, so we made a promise to dress up next time we go. Something like 80% or more of the people were dressed up in traditional clothing.

All good things must come to an end, and drinking hours are fairly short here...9am til 1030pm, so we found our way back to the subway and caught the next train back to our host home. Waiting for the train Heather took a seat next to a german man named Didi, who shared his snacks with her. She's good at looking hungry or thirsty to strangers if it involves anything free. When we got back, Florian and his roommate Andreas were quite proud of us for living through our first unsupervised oktoberfest, finding our way back, and for each consuming 4.5 liters of beer. We had heard that during oktoberfest, 5 million liters of beer our consumed, so we felt proud to drink 9 of those 5 million. We declined their offer for one more before bed. It was only about 1030pm, but it had been an eventful day, so sleep was much welcomed. We cant wait for next year!!!!

Munich, Germany - All Aboard!

2008-09-21T06:07:00.001-07:00

Friday, September 19

7:30am came way too fast. It was a short nights sleep in a room with 20 people. At first the light was on until Heather got up and shut it off, multiple people snoring, and somewhere around 2 or 3 am 2 girls came into the room, one speaking softly, and one basically yelling, with the entire room telling her to be quiet. We got out of bed, ate some breakfast and made plans to just sleep on the 5 hour train ride to Munich. We made sure we had change for the "machine that walks for us" to get us up the hill while carrying our backpacks. At the train station we hopped on the first train for the hour trip to Zurich where we would have a one hour layover to catch the next train to Munich.

In Zurich we walked across the street to McDonalds to use the internet while we waited. Heather bought a happy meal of chicken nuggets and curry sauce, and we worked on the blog a bit and checked email. We should say we only go to McDonalds because they are a sure place for free internet, provided you by something. So we usually go and split a soda. We can assure you we are not dining at all the McDonalds in Europe. We got on our next train, and much to our surprise we had a private 6 person cabin all to ourselves!! For those paying attention, we should have taken notice when we sat on the train in the station for about half an hour, before being told we had to move to a different car because of one of the second class cars not having electricity, so they had to split the train and take a couple cars out of the train. Luckily we got our own private cabin again, where we promptly shut the curtains and napped for about an hour. At a stop along the Switzerland-German border we found ourselves sitting once again for about an hour. We really did not get a good explanation of what happened other than our engine had left the train and were either waiting for a new one to come along, or they would put the people on our train on the next one coming by. At about 2:45pm, the next train came along, and all the people on our train now attempted find seating on a near full train. We tried getting our seats in first class since we had reserved seats on the last train, but to no avail, so we found ourselves wandering the train in search of seats. We walked through the dining car, where it seemed some pre-partying for oktoberfest was going on, so we kinda hung out near the kitchen for a few minutes, hoping for a seat to open up. Shortly after an older couple got up and we quickly took their spots with some guys maybe in their mid 30's on their way to oktoberfest. We had NO idea what we were getting into here.

We sat down and ordered a beer and began talking and introducing ourselves, and really in Europe you introduce yourself by your country, names are optional. There was a group of about 40 Swiss men (bankers) on their way to party in Munich, and one guy from Australia traveling on his own. We soon found our new friends to be quiet fun and entertaining. One of them had an ipod hooked up to some speakers they were blasting what we now know are German drinking songs, and the entire group was singing along. We felt kind of bad for an older gentleman who was dressed up in a suit eating a very nice meal, next to 40 plus party goers. He proved to be a very good sport though, and even got a hug later on in the train ride. The next 3 hours on the train were kind of a blur and a lot to take in, so forgive us if we jump around a little. Most of these guys had been to Oktoberfest many times before, except for one, who claims it was his first one. The australian guy had been there once last year. They told us stories of past experiences, what to expect there, and different traditions that go on there.

One we asked about was we'd noticed all of them putting some kind of brown powder on the backs of their hands and snorting it. We assumed it wasn't any type of hard drug, as they were doing it right in the open on a packed train, and also they were fairly respectable people when not partying on trains. They said it was powdered tobacco, and was a Bavarian thing to do, especially at oktoberfest, and really wasn't any worse than smoking a cigarette. At one point a guy in a red t-shirt bumped into the waiter, causing him to spill his tray and break a glass. The waiter looked quite mad, and we thought maybe he'd put an end to the fun everyone was having, but he turned out to be a good sport, and later on he posed for pictures and chatted with everyone. The same waiter who went from crabby to friendly at the drop of a bottle was running his own deals for sur.e, the price of beers shifted all through the ride and at one point a conversation went something like this:
Heather - "We'd like to order two more beers."
Waiter - "No more beers, all out!"
Heather - "Really!?! No beers?"
Waiter - "No beers, all gone!"
Heather - "Are you sure?"
Waiter - "Fine we have beer in cans."

Towards the last hour of the train ride there was quite a party going. The ipod stereo had made its way to our table somehow. We found it VERY funny that a huge hit here was a remake of the John Denver song "country roads". There was also a song Heather dubbed "the german macarena", which we're assuming told a story of cowboys as the dance involved swinging a lasso and shooting pistols and scanning the horizon for indians. We could be way off on this as we are just going by hand gestures as we didn't know the words.

Like our other train journeys... we arrived in Munich an hour late missing the meeting with our german host Florian. As the 100's of people piled off the train we stumbled along with our heavy packs and tried to make heads or tails of this new city and find the city train to Florians. Trains where pretty easy to use here which was good because we may have only been running on a few brain cells. Since we've been planning train troubles into our journey we were prepared with directions on how to find Florian's house. He only lived maybe 50 meters from the station, and of course we could do nothing but apologize for our lateness.

Florian was great! He lives in a two bedroom apartment, of course on the top floor with his room mate Andreas. Florian is still in college studying English and Sports so communications was really easy for all of us. Like a good german host he offered us a beer right away but we'd had about enough for a while. He showed us where we will be stayed. Has everyone read Harry Potter? Good. You'll know what we mean when we reference the cupboard under the stairs. It was private... no it was perfect! A lot of thought went into decorating this room. The low slanted wall/ceiling had dark blue wallpaper with glow-in-the-dark stars, the floors were a bunch of mattresses pushed together to make one, a discoball, lava lamp and polar bear type fur blanket, million pillows and bean bag chair made us laugh and smile :)

After we settled we took a walk with Florian to the local grocery store, picked up some cheap dinner and headed back. WOW the prices here are 1/4 of what we paid in Switzerland. Oh and we have solid way to gage how expensive a city is. We always go check out the tiramisu for two at the grocery store... whatever price that is will tell you all we need to know.

Back at Florian's we all had a nice german beer (oh hell, why not?). We talked for a while then we made our dinner. Spaetzle (a sort of potato pasta), red sauce, sliced chicken, and three triangles of soft cheese made us a meal fit for royalty. We did our usual "oh we'll never eat all this" and of course almost licked the bowl clean.

We are off to bed in our cool room because tomorrow it's time for Oktoberfest!! And from our friends on the train we learned you need to get there early if you want a chance at getting in a tent.

Interlaken, Switzerland - Yo Da Lay He Hoo!

2008-09-18T07:15:00.001-07:00

And yes, if you are wondering we've talked about the game on The Price is Right many times about the little climber who falls of the cliff if you over bid.

Okay, with that said. I think we have gathered enough information to correctly say that all hostel breakfast are the same. Not bad, not good, just the same. We had breakfast at the hostel with high hopes of some hot food, no dice.

After filling on european cereal we took as Heather calls it, "the machine that does the walking for you" up the very steep mountain/hill into the center of Bern. At the train station we were sad to see they were no longer giving out free ice cream like the day before. The train to Interlaken from Bern is only about 50 minutes. Charlie wrote yesterday's blog while Heather read. The journey was beautiful. Many times we'd point out the window, then our jaws would hang slack at the sight of these mighty mountains and turquoise lakes on both sides. So far Switzerland has two very excited fans.

Interlaken was taken off the trip plan but happily added back on a few days ago when Berlin was cut out. Interlaken is a small town surrounded by two mountains and two lakes. (Hence the name Interlaken) The Aare River flows through the town. Interlaken is located between Lake Brienz to the east and Lake Thun to the west in the area called Bödeli, however the main attraction is probably the magnificent Jungfrau mountain (4158m). The town couldn't have been more traditional Swiss and we were very very happy!

First we wondered the town looking at all the little outdoors, ski and snowboard stores. After a while we decided it would be a good thing to try to find one of these two huge lakes. We had no map this time so headed off in a direction we thought logically made sense for a lake to be. Along the way we saw cute Swiss chalets, Swiss watch shops and made friends with two goats named Julie and Marco. We were noticing the town getting a bit more country as we headed toward more farm country. In the distance we could hear wind chimes on a few houses... how cute. Heather made a smart remark about: "it's probably a bunch of roaming cows with bells around their necks." You guessed it, she was right on. We had a good laugh watching these very noisy cows wonder around while we took some pictures.

Thinking the cows meant we'd gone too far we headed back to town to see our two friends the goats and look for lunch. Neither of us our sure how normal people eat in this town, it's unbelievably expensive!! Average meal was about 35-40 Swiss franks per plate.. yikes no thanks. We found some reasonable food to share and two new Swiss beers to add to our list.

The city was so beautiful with it's small town old world charm and snow capped mountains. We walked quite a ways down the river to one of the lakes. We must have sat down in silence for almost 1/2 hour just enjoying this peaceful place.

On our walk back we imagined what this city would be like in all the different seasons. Para-gliding was a big attraction this time of year, it was fun to watch all the people circle the city and land in the center park.

On the train ride back we walked through the dining car. It was a lot like the one on White Christmas... too bad we don't have any Swiss franks or it would have been fun to sit down for a snack.

Charlie is not feeling the best, well honestly both of us are extremely tired! We make our way back down the big hill/mountain to our hostel to find out where our new room is. Turns out we'll be in a BIG room, 20 beds.... yikes. Charlie took a long nap hoping to recoup a bit while Heather got ready and did some planning for the next few stops.

Hungry as usual we head back up the big hill/mountain. One of the nicest things about Europe is the spontaneous little things that are always going on that we've just stumbled into. We followed our ears to the sounds of a choir singing. A traditional Swiss choir was singing in the main square all dressed in tradition costumes. One song was even complete with yodeling which made us both smile from ear to ear.

Too tired to really enjoy a meal out we did our traditional stop at the co-op for some bread and meat to go with our cheese from the picnic the day before. We took our meal back down to the hostel and ate while listen to a pretty intense football game on tv.

With an early train to catch to Munich, Germany in the morning we hit the hay. Draw your own conclusions of how much sleep we got in a room with 20 people coming and going all night. Ughh.

Bern Switzerland...Bear pits, bicycles, and beauty

2008-09-18T07:15:00.000-07:00

Sleep is such a wonderful thing. The past few weeks of hectic travel caught up to us, and luckily we were able to catch up on some much needed sleep. About 12 hours worth to be precise. We awoke around 1130 am, sleeping through breakfast, but that was fine by us. First on the agenda was laundry. Thankfully our hostel had a washer and drier, and we were at the end of our weeks worth of clothes. After changing euros for swiss francs from a nice man in line at the lunch room, we were set. After showering and changing into clean clothes we were off to explore.

We've found it a bit chilly here in Bern, probably due to the elevation, as we are just north of the Swiss Alps. Bern is a stunningly beautiful city. Lush green hills, old world charm, and the river running through town is the brightest, light turquoise color you could imagine. Our hostel is situated right on the river, at the bottom of a hill/cliff below the main part of town, which means we must walk up a very steep grade. There is also a gondola you can take up it, but it wasn't in operation, which disappointed Heather as she wanted to take the machine that "does the walking for us". First stop after trekking up the hill was the train station to make sure we have seats on the train to Munich. The ticket clerk was very friendly, chatting to us about oktoberfest and how busy the trains get to Munich during that time. With seats reserved for us, it was off to explore.

We were quite hungry at this point as it was almost 3pm, so we wandered into the local coop supermarket. Actually it was more than a supermarket, on the main level it was a department type store, with the supermarket on the lower level. This was the largest supermarket we'd been to yet in Europe, as most were just small corner market type places or specialty shops like bakery's. First part of the store was a large deli area with hot prepared food, all of which area awesome. The rest of the store was set up like any other supermarket. First stop was the cheese for some of that famous swiss cheese. Heather wanted to get a few slices of a few different varieties of cheese so she stood in line. We should add when you think swiss cheese in the states you think of white sliced cheese with holes right? Well at this cheese deli in the store, there were maybe 30 varieties of swiss white cheese. The older woman slicing the cheese didn't speak much english so was having a hard time understanding Heather, when an older gentleman in line offered to help. He was very kind and happy to assist Heather in her quest for sampling swiss cheeses, and he picked out 3 types that we would enjoy. We were very grateful for his help and thanked him, and he wished us a good day. Along with the cheese we got a bag of crackers, an apple, a small chunk of wonderful bread, a bar of swiss chocolate, a hot noodle/potato dish, and what we would describe as a small meatloaf. We wandered into the train station to find a place to eat it, as the station here is like a shopping mall inside, tons of stores and restaurants/food courts. First food court we sat in we didn't realize belonged to one of the fast food chains, and we were kindly told "picnic no good!" We wanted to say our picnic was very good, but we got the hint and packed up and moved on to another place. On the way past the main schedule, there were people handing out free ice cream cones!! yes free!! We each scored a free strawberry ice cream cone, which we had to eat before the rest of our meal in fear of it melting. We settled down in the waiting room for trains and finished our delicious first meal in Switzerland.

After eating we started walking down some of the cobblestone streets, and came upon one of a few places where you can rent bicycles for free, you just need to leave a deposit. We thought this would be a great was to get around so we signed the forms and peddled away. We took a brief stop at the Munster Cathedral, but it was just closing up so we didn't make it inside. Up the road aways was the infamous Bern bear pits. The brown bear is the official animal of Bern, so they have 5 or so in a mini zoo like setting on the edge of town. Only one was outside walking around while we were there, so we snapped a couple pictures of him. We wondered to ourselves if all of them got to growling and making bear noises if the whole town could hear them? We peddled off to return our bikes and on to starbucks to use the internet. On the walk back from starbucks we ran into some kids playing in one of the many fountains. They were taking turns running through, and were absolutly soaked. We were sure they would get hypothermia soon. We also came upon 2 older men playing chess on a large chess board made of stone on the edge of a market square. There was a good crowd gathered around them, watching them move the big wooden pieces. One of the men was quite colorful and made funny expressions every time his opponent made a move. Upon arriving back at the hostel room we found we had a new roommate. The Neighbors cat had taken up residence on Heather's bed. We weren't sure at first if our roommates had snuck it in, or if it came in the open window, so we walked to reception to inquire. He told us it was the neighbors cat after giving a brief discription, so bak to the room we went where we turned him loose outside. We took it easy that evening, charlie took a nap while Heather read and played online. About 9pm we wandered off in search of dinner, and were guided to a small pizza place by the hostel staff.

It was a cozy little neighborhood type place where there were maybe a dozen people watching a football (soccer) game on tv. We sat down in one of the 8 or so tables and ordered a beer and some pasta. The 2 men working there must have been father/son, and we're super nice and great hosts. Soon after we sat down the place really filled up, there were about 20 people in there and it seemed packed. All there to watch the game, kind of cool we thought as it was like being in an place in the twin cities with everyone there rooting on the twins or the wild. About 10:30 we were quite tired and walked a the couple blocks back to the hostel in search of one more good nights sleep, with intentions of getting up for breakfast and heading to Interlaken for a day trip.

Comments

2008-09-17T08:56:00.002-07:00

We live for people leaving comments are so sad you "have" to sign up for gmail to do so. Grrr, well if you want leave us comments. So far Lindsay Lenzen is the comment queen.

Charlie is taking a rest now, travel really hits us hard once and a while.

H & C

Paris - Last Day on to..... ??!?!?!?!?

2008-09-17T08:56:00.001-07:00

A rocky start to the morning with the evil little alarm waking us up at 6:30am. Something must have shifted from warm summer nights to fall in Paris, we both froze in our sleep. A cold shower was really no help but did the trick of waking us up. Heather stashed as much bread, butter and cherry jam from our last free Paris breakfast as she could in a ziplock bag and we were off to catch a taxi to the train station and Berlin, Germany.

Neither of us were looking forward really to an 8 hour train ride to Berlin. Be careful what you wish for. We got to the ticket window to find all trains to Berlin booked, the best they could give us was an over night which would get us into Berlin the next morning at 4am. Ummm no thanks, over night trains were a HUGE extra fee because you needed to book a sleeping cabin plus pay an additional fee to cross countries. But this didn't get us down. We knew this trip was about flexibility. We went off to do some internet research of where can we go ASAP. The ticket people at the train station must love us. We went back about an hour later with the question "where can we go ASAP?" ... the answer.... Bern, Switzerland! We had planned to travel to Bern (pronounced more like a mix of Barn and Burn) but not till about 9 days later. So good buy-bye Berlin... perhaps another trip.

Really not much to report from today. We got our tickets which did not leave Paris till 5pm and headed to the south train station on yet ANOTHER taxi. After lugging our bags a few blocks we both broke down and decided to get a locker at the station (no bargain there). With our 358 lb backpacks safely stowed we could explore a new region of Paris.

Ok let's be honest, all we did was eat great food, try amazing french wine and count the hours down till we headed out. So a few bottles of wine, a cappuccino, a plate of spaghetti Bolognese, tomato tar-tar and shrimp, creme brule and many baskets of french bread later it's time to head out. Heather got an impromptu french lesson when she tried to order another beer in 1/2 french and 1/2 english. They two waiters were nice enough coach her and make her say it 3 times before they would let her order!!

By the way, we've both done very well with our limited language skills... thank God most of Europe speaks very very good English!!

First class never felt so fine!! We had facing seats with a table between us. Heather napped away the better part of the trip. But of course we were smart and brought our own snacks from the grocery store not to mention a bottle of nice french wine that we paid a little under 2 euros for.

It is NOT a lie when they say that wine/beer is cheaper than water and soda in Europe. And big congrats to anyone who has success ordering regular "free" tap water at a restaurant... it's only happened once for us.

A four hour train ride wasn't long enough, we both were tired and could have used a bit more sleep. We got outside at the train station in Bern, Switzerland and found it to be quite chilly. The walk to the hostel was a bit more challenging in the dark. We found it in about 10 minutes and were happy this place didn't have 5-7 floors. We got checked in and then checked ourselves into bed for a long long night of sleep!

France - Day trip to Normandy/Omaha Beach

2008-09-17T08:56:00.000-07:00

After hitting the snooze button on the alarm twice, we rolled out of bed at about 830am, another early morning in Paris. We quick dressed and walked down to the kitchen to scam some free breakfast of cereal, fruit cocktail, toast, hot chocolate and coffee. Back up to the room, this time on the 4th floor, to pack our bags and store them for the day. We had no trouble finding a cab this morning, unlike last night, to take us to St Lazarus train station for the train to Bayeux, France. We got ourselves situated in some very comfy first class seats, these first class eurail passes might just pay for themselves. The train ride was a bit rough and Heather napped for a bit. The ride was a lot like going back in time, many of the farm places and villages look like very little has ever changed. We passed through Caen, which was almost completely destroyed in ww2, and was now a modern looking city.

Upon arrival to Bayeux, we crossed the parking lot to the bus pickup spot. There was nobody in the ticket office over noon hour, we couldnt make heads or tails of the schedule as it was in French and in no logical order we could stumble our way through. We should have taken this as a sign, but to our luck a bus came up and stopped and we asked the driver what time the bus 70 left for Omaha beach. Finding we had a bit over an hour wait, we walked into town to find lunch. Bayeux is home to a HUGE cathedral, and also the worlds largest tapestry, some 70 meters long....thats a bit over 200 feet long for those not on the metric system. It was done to show William the conquorer taking over the region back in about 1067, so its also quite old. We chose not to see it as it cost about 7 euros, and decided on lunch instead. We found a little cafe just inside the village and ordered an order of fries and kind of a pizza sandwich with tomatoes, ham, and cheese. On the walk back to the station we found some cheap ice cream cones we enjoyed on the walk back. There's something about the ice cream here in its soft creamy goodness, nothing like the usually hard ice cream in the states. Walking the streets of the town they hang flags of all the allied forces that liberated the area from the Germans in ww2. Kind of cool to see they are still thankful for it, and also I'd imagine they are up because this seems to be a huge tourist town as its close to all things Normandy related. We finally caught our bus to the Cemetary, which turned out to be about a 25 minute ride on a very crazy bus that would make about anyone sick from all the roundabouts and fast turns. (Yes including Heather)

We arrived at the cemetery with about 2 hours to spend. The first thing we noticed was this place is immaculate. Absolutly spotless. The grass is bright green and maintained better than any golf course. All the trees and shrubs were neatly trimmed. There were gardens of beautiful flowers and plants. The headstones were shining white and spotless marble. Very impressive for being over 50 years old and being exposed to the rainy/foggy weather the area can get. Our day here was perfect weather, sun shining, few clouds, and a nice, but a bit cool breeze coming off the ocean. We made our way around the edge of the cemetery a bit where there was a huge plaque depicting the various beaches that were invaded and where the troops of each country had landed. This was at the top of the hill overlooking the beach itself, and they have a walking path down to the beach. They say plan on 10 minutes walk down, and 20 back, so we decided to do this first. The trail kind of zig zags down the hill onto the beach through the brush, which was a lot thicker than imagined. The beach itself is beautiful. The calming sounds of the waves coming ashore, the fine grains of sand that run on for miles in each direction. A bit to the northwest you could see point du hoc, but for some reason today there were no tours of that site. Looking up the hill towards the memorial site it was hard to imagine what took place here in june of 1944. It really puts things into perspective just how brave the soldiers were who took this beach and the others near it. The walk back up took about 20 minutes as said, with one break on a bench to rest our weary feet.

The next area was the cemetery itself. Like much of what we've seen on our trip, its hard to put this into words. Its the final resting place of over 9000 US soldiers that gave their lives for freedom in ww2. Walking through you feel emotions like awe, thankfulness, patriotic and proud. Like we said, the place is immaculate. Any way you look at the headstones, in any direction, they are in perfect rows. We checked out the various statues around the grounds, and also the chapel on site. We walked back towards the visitor center and passed through the memorial and the garden of the missing, which shows all the names of the missing in action in the region. Inside the visitor center you had to pass though a metal detector, which we thought was silly because it looked like just a few plaques, but soon saw a stairwell going downstairs. It was full of various soldiers uniforms, weapons, things they carried with them, and tools they used. They had 2 areas where films were being shown with stories being told by those who fought in the battle, along with story boards of what happend leading up to the invasion and also the aftermath.

With about 15 minutes before the bus was scheduled to come, we headed back outside to catch it. About 20 minutes after the bus was supposed to be there we got a bit worried, so we went back to the visitor center to find out how we can get back to Bayeux since it looked like the bus didn't come since we were 2 of 4 people that got off at this stop. We figured they thought it wasn't worth their time for just 4 people and just flat out didn't come. We never saw the other 2 people that got off with us so they must have found other means back to where they were going.

Luckily for us the man working the information desk was an American who offered us a ride when he was off at 6pm. He was very nice and very knowledable about the history of the region, neither of us got more than a few words in the whole ride back, we're guessing he was happy to have 2 people interested in the history of the region to speak to. Turns out he lived in Minneapolis for about 3 years in the uptown area, again small world. After a nice ride back to the station and meeting yet another great person, we sat and waited an hour for the next train to Paris.

We arrived back to Paris to the hostel to find we are now in room 145. We thought great, we dont have to walk up 5 flights of stairs!! Wrong!!! apparently that room is on the 4th floor, room 5, the one is meaningless somehow. So back up the stairs we go to get some much needed sleep.

Paris - Chocolate Croissant dreams in the city of lights!

2008-09-15T14:14:00.000-07:00

Bon Jour! It's one thing to wake up in a new city or even a new country everyday but something hits hard and fast when you wake up and your first thought is: "I'm in Paris!"

A happy night of sleep behind us with our friendly roommates was wonderful. We trekked down the "7.5" flights of stairs and ladders to a french breakfast at the hostel. Granola, toasts, jams, yogurt, juice, hot chocolate and lattes.

Our day began by walking a few blocks to the louvre. I know we said "its huge" but there is no way to even really understand it's size until you've seen it. Compared to all other museums we've seen this one was a bargain. Only 9 euros to enter the most impressive museum in the world! We made lots of references to the movie and book "The DiVinci Code" but sadly we did not run into Tom Hanks. It's sunday morning and just a little bit after the Louvre opened, time to get the big one out of the way before the mob really hits: Mona Lisa. It wasn't hard to find even though with tons of wings, multi-levels, twists and turns everywhere you just follow the crowd. We were prepared for this Mona Lisa to be quite small, perhaps over prepared. Actually we both thought it was a lot larger than we expected. Her knowing secret eyes did follow us. It's one thing to try to get the perfect picture but actually standing there without a camera in front of your face is most important. We saw impressive the Venus De-Milo statue (the one with no arms). Even Napoleon's apartment was set up to walk through... that's what we're in the market for, a dining room table that seats 40. Everything about the Louvre was beautiful, even the ceilings where priceless works of art. It's not an exaggeration that you could spend 2 or more days and not see everything. But with time ticking away in Paris we stayed a little less than 3 hours and got a really good taste.

Since we are now experts at walking and figuring out a new city's streets in less than a few hours we took off for the Eiffel Tower on foot. With the same logic as the night before "if we can see it we can walk to it" we arrived about an hour later. It was very nice walk down the Siene River with many street artist selling drawings, bus tours on one side and boat tours on the other. I'm sure we'll rant about what we think about people who pay 30+ euros to go on a bus tour (grr). The day was perfect, a cool breeze in the air and a clear sky. The Eiffel Tower was brilliant to say the least. To travel up the elevators was around 8 euros and a long wait in line, we felt just a special sitting under it and enjoying the view. We walked down the park took a few amazing pictures. We encountered our first "street scam" but Charlie was lucky enough to have read about it before so we just kept walking. We saw the building across the park where Napoleon was buried but didn't know that until a few hours later or we would have gone in.

We both feel the exact same thing in Paris: under dressed. If we could wear a sign around all day with an apology for our un-fanciness we certainly would. How do these woman walk for hours on cobblestone streets in 4" high heels?! The fashion here is just unreal, anything goes and does. Heather does herself a great curiosity everyday but not going into any store that sells shoes or handbags.

It's said in Paris: sleep on the street, skip the museums but: EAT EAT EAT. Will do! We had lunch a block from the Eiffel tower at a place called Le Dome. We met two different friendly american couples that we shared our travel stories with. Two young men in the Air Force living in Germany had rented a car to come to Paris for the day and the other was a couple from Phili. I'm sure every one is quite sick of hearing " (fill in the blank) was the best or most delicious ever" but here we go again. In Paris it was time to take a break from beer and drink wine! The salad we ordered can only be described as eye candy. The freshest tomato slices, thick round cuts of buffalo mozzarella, fresh herbs all layered in olive oil and a hidden green salad underneath. With a dish of crusty french bread we were in heaven. We ate slowly and enjoyed every bite, how many times in our life will eat a lunch like this on the park by the Eiffel tower.

Paris is visually beautiful, that is understood but with all beauty there can be some hidden secrets.
In the mid 1700, Paris they need stones to build the city, so tunnels deep underground where dug out and the mining began. Around the late 1700 some problems arose: namely the plague (not to mention bodies were not buried deep enough and eroding). Paris was running out of places to bury all their dead. They needed a means to an end. It was decided to respectfully move all the bodies out of the graves and transport them under Paris. Some 6-7 million people were exhumed and moved by cart down the streets flanked by priest blessing them. So began: The Catacombs.

After lunch we grabbed a taxi across the street smartly knowing the walk was too far and our time in Paris was valuable. Our taxi driver turned out to be the "Ulrich" of Paris. He told us history of Paris, beautiful points of interest to see including a white cathedral on a hill with panoramic views, how to get good deals on lunch specials and Napoleon's tomb. We must say that French, English, Dutch, Belgium... everyone in Europe is almost uncomfortably friendly. Our kind driver told us stories of his own trip to the Catacombs, by the end we felt like friends.

The Catacombs can only let in 200 at a time so the wait outside was about 10 minutes long. The entrance we went in wasn't more than a door on a normal looking street. We thought about telling the ticket woman we were american teachers to get a 3 euro discount but decided not to when the guy in front of us got caught doing the same trick. It was 156 stairs down in a tiny twisting staircase that was so dark and never seemed to end. We stepped in to eery silence. We knew from very old pictures that these tours used to be done only by candle light. If you've ever been in a haunted house you know the feeling of something scary could be lurking around any corner. The passages were short and narrow. Water dripped from the ceiling making the smooth stone floors slick. The walk hundreds of feet below Paris' beautiful streets was about 45 minutes. The first half showed the history of the mining. Many many dark corners where blocked off with barred doors. We probably only were able to view a very small part of the entire system down there. We came into the first room with the dead. It was so surreal. Hauntingly silent. The bones were stacked so neatly. No flash photography was allowed. A few places in the catacombs had alters for prayer. Some of the skulls had bullet holes in the heads, we wondered what story went with each bone. Many famous poets, nobles, artists and actors are in the catacombs. During the walk many of their stories were displayed. Anyone caught stealing bones from this place is taken directly to the police. At the end we climbed an even more narrow set of spiral stairs up about 80 steps. We hadn't seen the sun in a while and walking outdoors was quite a shock not to mention we had no idea where we where exiting. As usual we followed the ragged out of breath crowd.

On a side note: bathrooms are NOT free in europe. We said we would never pay... Heather broke down in Brussels and forked up the 1/2 euro. You'd think since we paid all that money for our rail pass at least the bathrooms at the station would be free?!?! Nope not even at McDonalds.

Another side note: Dogs are welcome about everywhere. This is great news for us since we are big time animal lovers! Does your dog want to ride the train? What about go out to dinner? An extra seat at the table for your pooch? No problem!

Charlie is the map man! He figured out where we were and what looked like about 6-7 blocks from Notre Dame. Like ALL sites in Paris it's much farther than it looks. We walked nearly and hour hoping to hear those famous bells ring. One block away we got distracted by a market on the street and had to stop for a snack. Typical Paris mimes did their act for a few coins. Notre Dame was beautiful like we knew it would be. It sits on a small island in the Siene river. We walked inside bypassing the "visitors line" to the "mass line"... hey we're catholic we get special treatment right??? One thing we've noticed about every church is they don't have pews, just chairs that sometimes hook together, very strange. We sat for a few minutes, said a prayer then walked around. We were nearly pushed down by security as a crazy guy jumped on the alter and started shouting something in french... we are sure he's off to the guillotine later. Heather lit a candle for her cousin Christopher and sent good thoughts and prayers his way. Back outside we just missed the last group that was allowed to climb to the top and tour, oh well we have been up and down enough stairs. With the bells of Notre Dame ringing we headed back toward the Lourve and our hostel.

We walked past the UGLIST modern art museum, it looked inside out. Heather refused to take a picture worried it might break her camera. We are surprised Paris puts up with it. We were moved to a different private room tonight on the 4th floor. Ok who is paying attention that really means floor....??? We cleaned up in or "private room" with two bunk beds but still had a shared shower/bathroom with the floor.

The plan tonight was to see Moulin Rouge... a big dream of Heather's. Finding a cab in Paris is a little harder than one would think. Cabs dont just pull over on the side of the street when you hail them, you have to be next to a "taxi" sign. Step one, find a taxi sign. We asked some friendly french police on roller blades and they directed us a few blocks down. (if we could have walked we would have... way too far) After an hour of unsuccessful attempts and hailing cabs full of people we gave up and started walking back to the hostel, wouldn't you know it one pulls up. At this point we are both very happy and a little sick of standing around. Pulling into Moulin Rouge was NOT what Heather thought it would be. Kind of like seeing Michalgelo's david in paper mache. Heather nearly told the cab driver he brought us to the wrong Moulin Rouge. Not much to see on this sketchy part of town, the show looked terrible and the only thing worse was the price. We walked around for about 20 minutes decided we didnt like this part of town... cut our loses and grabbed a cab back home. On the walk back we finally had dinner at a little place on the corner that was still serving food at 10:30pm on a Sunday night. Nothing a few glasses of french red wine, a tarragon salad with avocados and crawfish tails and one of mixed greens and crisped goat cheese and procuitto wouldn't cure.

One thing we've noticed about Paris, you can't swing a baguette in this town with out hitting at least two jack russell terriers. EVERYONE has one... they must come free when you move to town. Darn cute dogs!!

But all in all for being in Paris a little over 24 hours we'd seen:
- The Louvre
- The Eiffel Tower day/night
- Notre Dame
- The Catacombs
- Champs Eylsis
- The Arc de Triumph
- Moulin Rouge
- Napoleon's grave
- The Pantheon

and MUCH more!!!

So off to bed we go, even with Heather's heart broken a little by Moulin Rouge the day was made for us.

H & C

Goodbye Bruges.....Hello Paris!!

2008-09-15T14:12:00.000-07:00

We awoke in Bruges after the worst nights sleep either of us have had in probably months, not by our own doing this time. Our crazy german roommate and 3 Japanese roommates made for quite the evening. We had good intentions of going to bed at 10, but were kept awake by the German snoring loud enough to wake the dead and talking to himself, and the Japanese boys coming back very late, very intoxicated. One of the japanese guys even yelled out in his sleep once, "i'm drunking!" At one point one of them had the hiccups for well over an hour, he also being the one who immediately threw up breakfast and went back to bed. Lovely.

After showering and checking our luggage for the morning, we went off to find breakfast and to see a few sites we had yet to see. First stop was the madonna and child statue by Michalenglo, which is one of the few works done by him on display outside of Italy. Its kept in a beautiful church that recieved it as a donation in the 1800's. Next on the agenda was breakfast. We tried the 2nd of the competing "frites" stands, this time with meat sauce on them. It was more of a delicious savory beef gravey, and really went well with the fries. Next stop was the supermarket for snacks for the train to Paris, which consisted of ketchup flavor chips, chocolate covered waffles, a bar of belgian chocolate, and a giant bottle of fanta, all for the low price of 5.95!! On the way back to the hostel to get the bags Heather wanted to stop off and get some hot chocolate at a chocolate bar that had 44 flavors of the drink. She decided on a cinnamon flavor that came in a tall glass, with little sides of sugar, cool water, and the best whipped cream either of us had ever had. We wondered if we could order just a large glass of the cream. The hot chocolate would form a skim type crust over it if you let it sit for a moment, yum!! After collecting our belongings it was off to the train station to catch our ride to Paris.

The train first brought us the hour back to Brussels, then switched trains to a high speed train to Paris, which would take a bit over an hour. When they say high speed, they mean it! We passed some time playing cards, poker this time, and enjoying our snacks. The French ticket clerk noticed our passports were from the US and asked us where we were from. When we replied St. Paul, he told us he had relatives that live in Wisconsin about 3 hours from the cities and that he was traveling there in about 2 months for deer hunting. Small world. Our train dropped us off at Paris Nord station, which turned out to be in a bit of a sketchy part of town, as witnessed by the police and armed soldiers having roped off most of the station and not letting anyone in for a period of time, which we never did learn why. We attempted to find a subway to our hostel but were offered no help by the woman behind the counter, so we took a cab instead. Our room was on the 5th floor, which in Europe means the 6th, and of course no lift, so up the stairs we went then up a spiral stairs. In our room we discovered we had a loft, so we took that, up the ladder we went. So we are officially on the 7 1/2 floor on the 5th floor if that makes sense. After a quick clean up we wandered out to make the most of our first night in Paris.

We walked about 3 blocks and came upon a very large building and questioned what it was. Walking around the side of it, it grew larger and noticed that it was the Louvre museum. We wandered into a large square that is completely undescribible how large it was and stood in awe. Looking through a gate we could see the famed glass pyramid, so we walked towards it. Walking around the Louvre we caught our first glimpse of the Eiffel tower, and got that same good feeling we got in London upon first seeing the bridge. The sun was just setting so it was just starting to light up blue for the night, it was a beautiful sight to see. Walking up to the glass pyramid was a jaw-dropping experience. It was a beautiful night out, the sun was just setting, and the glowing light off the glass and fountains was incredibly inspiring.

Up ahead we saw the arch de triumph in the distance so we decided to walk towards it. It didnt look more than maybe a mile away trying to judge its size with the monuments near us, but as we got walking it became another story. One of the monuments we walked by was an Egyptian Obylisk that is 3200 years old and was given as a gift to France. Easily the oldest object either of has ever seen. It was located at the site of the infamous guillotine that beheaded so many aristocrats. We walked up the champs elysee (Heather thinks this is the most beautiful word in the world) for at least an hour, wondering if we'd ever reach it. It was long and tiring but how could we complain? We were in Paris on an absolutely perfect night, walking up one of the most famous streets in the world. It was lined with any high end fashion name you could imagine, countless restaurants, and of course the disney store we checked out real quick to see the Wall-E stuff. The arch ended up being about 5 times larger than we thought from the distance, a very cool site to see, and one of the most famous landmarks in Paris. Everything we saw the first night blew us away, the city is simply stunning and impossible to put into words all the beauty here. To say Paris citizens are proud of their city is an understatement, and they have every right to be.

On the long walk back, we stopped at a little cafe next to the Louvre to rest our feet and grab a quick bite to eat. Charlie ordered a salmon baguette while Heather got a cheese crepe. Like everything we've had in Europe, it was amazingly fresh, and the cheese in the crepe was unlike anything we'd ever had. So rich and creamy, we wondered what kind of cheese it was, figuring it was one that we'd never had nor heard of. Quizzing the waiter about it, it turns out it was Swiss cheese!! We figure there must be some magical Swiss cheese in Switzerland we'll have to look for.

We walked back to the hostel, up "5" flights of torturous stairs, and climbed the ladder up to our beds, thankful for quiet roommates and being able to rest our tired feet for the night.

Au revoir!

Bruges - We hardly knew thee

2008-09-13T02:13:00.001-07:00

A slow and rocky start to the morning with happy thoughts of last night still too fresh in our minds. Of course we missed free breakfast but two slices of white toast hardly seems worth missing sleep over. We cleaned up in our private hostel and stored our bags in the luggage room in reception.

Oh course it had started POURING outside. We said many times it's a very good thing we found the world's best bar the night before because Brussels really lacked in some "charm" areas. Ok so it's weather, what can you do? We headed out to find some breakfast/lunch. We walked all around the city in the cool old-timey part but found everything to cost somewhere between one arm and one leg. After 30 minutes of walking in the rain, being soaked we spotted a little sandwich shop called Frappies. More food heaven!! We split a smoked salmon veggie sandwich and a waffle dipped in belgium chocolate. I have no idea what they do the the mayo in Belgium but it's amazing!! The smokey salmon flavor and crisp veggies on fresh baked whole grain bread is just what our bodies needed after a night of beer, beer, beer.

We feel we could devote an entire blog section to the belgium waffle. Trust us, there is nothing even remotely close to this in the world. The crisp outer layer is made even more delicious with hard grains of caramelized sugars. Don't even think it might be dry! The chocolate was unworldy!! Why someone hasn't had the brilliant idea to bring the real waffles over to the states is beyond us. There is just nothing better and a million ways to eat them.

Ok enough about the waffle. We collected our bags and attempted to wait out the rain. Finally we just packed up and walked the mile to the train station. This train ride was a breeze compared the last. Only and hour from Brussels to the sleepy little town of Bruges.

When walking into town there is an eery silence, like you are honestly stepping back in time to the middle ages. We walked a good 1/2 mile before we saw signs of life on the cobble stone streets. This is what Europe is about, a town that looks nearly unchanged in hundreds and hundreds of years.

With a great map in hand we found our hostel very quickly. One great thing about Bruges is it's a walking town, no need for buses ever. Any place you want to go is never more than a 10 minute walk. We walked down an ally then between two building to get to the back door of our hostel/restaurant.

We explored the town taking pictures everywhere we went. Bruges is a canal city and called the Venice of the north, truly beautiful. First stop: try the famous Belgium fries! We split a small with "cocktail sauce" which is ketchup/mayo/whiskey.... yum they were outstanding. There are two famous fry businesses next to each other that compete to be named the best. We'll try the other in the morning and get back to you.

Next on to a church, it's been a few days. We went to the famous Holy Blood Chapel. . Everyday this shiny vial is taken out of its safe and put on a pillow to be worshiped. we got a first hand look at it up close, quite exciting! The little cylinder was taken on a crusade to Jerusalem in the 12th century, and true catholics believe it's full of Jesus blood.

We had a big mission for this trip. Find the most rare and number one best beer in the world. It's made by Trappist monks and you can only get it by calling ahead to the "beer hotline" where if you are very very lucky you can set a date to come and buy one case. The beer is so rare that on the black market it goes anywhere from $30 a bottle and up. But selling it for profit is very very frowned on by the monks who only make this beer to "support being monks." So this adventure was going to be a day trip out of Bruges and probably going to leave us coming up empty handed. As luck would have it we wondered into an amazing store and started talking to the shop keeper about the process of getting the beer and his thoughts. Low and behold he happened to have some!!!! We paid for 3 bottles. One for each of us and one for Jon back in Minnesota. After showing us the old wood crates the monks still use to deliver beer and taking a bunch of pictures we were set. The shop keeper was so kind and helpful (like almost everyone we've run into) and provided wrapping for the bottle of beer and a safe way to ship the bottle to the US. We walked out of there Heather carrying the bottled boxed up and Charlie carrying the two beers in a small backpack. We walked like we were holding new born babies. Our hands were nearly shaking. One short trip to the post office and off goes our little treasure. So we have our two beers hidden in our bags trying to find a way to get them cold and enjoy them. Perhaps we could wait to drink them till we are in Naples and eat the world's best pizza (we have a lead on that too).

With our shiny free map we got a great lead on spaghetti for 3 euros each. We thought this was too good to be true. Good night... where are these small european portions we've heard so much about?? The woman who took our order asked " can I put cheese on it." Heather had to bite her tongue not to say, "is the pope catholic?" HUGE meals, HUGE!! Wonderful sauce, fresh herbs, meat and nearly 1/2 a pound of cheese on each. Yum!

Walking was a good idea after that for at least an hour to keep us from going into a food coma. Mostly we've been sharing small meals to save money so eating something so huge was a lot to handle.

We toured the Crown Plaza basement because it's: cool and free. Basically it's a huge hotel that was built on top of a church but the foundation was keep the same. And because there was going to be some sort of reception there a big tray of Belgium chocolate was laid out.... yes Heather grabbed a handful and ran. This chocolate was amazing, it was like nothing before. The taste was closer to eating a rich moist piece of cake that melted away. Heaven. One of the best chocolate tips is to buy the chocolate at the market it's the same stuff as in the really fancy shops but not in cute shapes.

A lot of the time on our trip is spent trying to find free wifi. This town has really been a challenge. We kept being directed to internet cafes.... as if we would PAY to use the internet!?!

We saw some of the funny little sites like a cannon that is in the middle of a sidewalk upside down, no one knows the story but it's been that way for hundreds of years. We were too late to see Michaelgelo's Madonna, perhaps in the morning before we head to Paris.

What city would be complete without a trip to an icecream shop. With so many flavors in a language we don't speak it was hard to decide. The shop girl was very nice and gave us a lot of samples. Charlie had some really tasty berry sorbet and Heather had.... well she had no idea but it was yellow with a pink swirl here and there.

One more stop back at the hostel to grab some warmer clothes then out to drink our one beer in Bruges. The last night really caught up with us and we are short on sleep so we called it an early night. No internet here tonight, we are in a very cute hostel with a German guy who needs to put on some pants.... and quit talking to himself about mosquitos.

We LOVE Bruges, a midevil town with a heart of gold. We both feel our mom's would love it here... perhaps they will come with us next time.

H & C

Brussels Day 1 - Surprise we're lost! (we heart Ulrich) - UPDATED

2008-09-13T02:12:00.001-07:00

We have to quote this directly out of the Brussels map:
"Brussels is ugly, and we love it. And if we don't love it, we live with it. So don't be surprised that we built a terrible apartment block next to an Art Nouveau jewel or a pseudo-classic monstrosity in front of the Central Station."

That sums it up. We feel more like we are in downtown Minneapolis. (our opinion will change later)

Number one thing that is really really really made us lost (from the map):
"Although most speak French in Brussels, Dutch is also an official language (as you see from the double street names.) -- That would by why we got lost and even with asking a travel agent AND a cab driver they still could not get us the 4 blocks it ended up being from our Hotel to the Hostel. Not to mention it was sunny and about 85 degrees out, so much for our showers this morning.

Trying to order a side of famous Belgian fries with our sandwich we shared for lunch got us this response :IMPOSSIBLE!! Guess we didn't spend enough to deserve their fancy pants fries.

Waffles are different here than we thought:
"A real Brussels waffle is square, and Liegeiosu is round and carmelised You put sugar on top of the a Brussels one, and nothing on a Liegeous (the sugar is baked into it.) And if you really want to look like a tourist, order extra chocolate or strawberry.

Waffles are sold everywhere from vending machines to street vendors... do we dare eat one with out syrup??

Mid afternoon we decided to be different and try McDonalds in Europe. We had heard rumors you could order a beer there, and it turned out to be true in Brussels. Heather ordered one with her McChicken, while Charlie got the "Royal Cheese Delux". Just like they say in Pulp fiction. One thing we didn't like was you have to pay extra for condiments like ketchup or mayo for fries, which was an outrageous .50 cents in euros, about 75 cents in US for a container of either. We did however like the mayo already on the burger and chicken, as it was a bit more salty than we were used to.

After cleaning ourselves up, and doing a load of much needed laundry, we headed out to see if Brussels could redeem itself with us. Armed with a great tourist map we got from the hostel, we headed out with high hopes. After walking a few blocks Brussels transformed from a very modern city to something we both expected when we thought of midevil europe. We wandered into what Victor Hugo called " the most beautiful square in the world." The square was surrounded on 2 sides by a huge gothic style church and a palace with the other 2 sides composed of shops and restaurants. After stopping to admire the beauty of it and take some pictures, we took off in the direction of the famous Manneke Pis, or the little boy peeing statue. It was much smaller than one would think, at the most 2 feet tall, and he was dressed up in a rather silly outfit. Apparently there is a museum where you can see 800 some outfits he's worn in the past.

After doing the required "touristy" things, we headed off to find Belgiums real treasure...beer! Our map named a place called Delerium that claimed to have the best selection anywhere, which we found tucked away in an ally not far from the square. Little did we know its actually about 4 different bars in one, as we sat upstairs at the tap beer bar, which had a decent selection of local beers on tap, probably 25 or so. As Heather was looking through the menu, Charlie wandered off downstairs to see what was up there....soon coming back upstairs telling Heather to "pack it up sally, we're going downstairs!" We had stumbled into beer lovers heaven. Over 2,000 beers from around the world. Yes, over 2,000. The menu was the size of a phone book, we had no idea where to begin. There was a disclaimer that they don't serve "industrial" beer, and the staff will try to talk you out of ordering something pedestrian. Would we ever leave?? Is this the greatest bar on Earth??

The place itself was quite impressive as well. On the celing there were drink trays from hundreds of different brewers from around the world. Behind the bar customers could leave a signed dollar bill from their country to leave their mark, and we noticed a few from the University of Minnesota, Winona Minnesota and Wisconsin. There were maybe 12 or 15 chairs at the bar, the rest of the seating was at huge wooden beer kegs with stools. We arrived about 7pm and there was a small crowd there, but soon picked up when a group of 40 came down the stairs and took over about 5 tables. We soon noticed the leader of the group taking away tray after tray of beers and became very intrigued. Was he very wealthy? Was he a celebrity? Was this David Beckham? After he had purchased round 3 for 40 people, we had to find out. Turns out it wasn't the famous football player as he admitted his right foot wasn't quite the same, but a Danish social studies teacher. He and his class were in town to tour the European Government sites, and had made time to spend a night to learn about Belgium beer. Why are all social studies teacher not this cool we wondered? Our new friend Ulrick turned out to be one of the nicest people we'd ever met. He was very friendly and answered our many questions on Europe and Denmark, and asked some of his own about us. He even told us to come to Copenhagen on our trip if we get the chance and he'd show us around. He was a big part of the reason we took this trip, to meet people like him and learn about other cultures and ways of life. Soon the first of 3 bands to play that night started. They were a cover band playing american rock songs, including the White Stripes "Seven Nation Army", which really got the entire crowd of well over 200 singing along. This very well could be the greatest bar on Earth, an out of this world beer selection, people from all over the world making new friends and sharing the great experience together. We won't go into too much detail on the beers we drank other than we had about 5 or 6 each, totalling about 12 different ones. We made a list to remember them by. Highlights would be Gildenbier which Heather had first, and Gulden Draak Charlie had for a 2nd drink. Both were dark, wonderful beers with many layers of flavor to them. At the start of the 3rd band we decided to wrap it up as it was after midnight and we'd been there about 5 hours. We noticed our friend Ulrick had gotten his first bill for the night, 3 rounds only cost him 414 euros, which would be over 600 US dollars, not bad for probably 120 drinks I guess. We walked over to say goodbye to him, and got caught into singing along to Bob Marleys "No Wo.man, No Cry" with the entire bar before leaving. Upon arrival at the hostel, the vending machine caught our eye, and Heather said we needed some "snick-a-ma-snacks" before bed. Our selections included paprika flavored chips, a waffle, and an ice cream bar. All were greatly enjoyed, and the paprika chips were a pleasant suprise as we really hadn't eaten all that much today. Sleep was very much welcomed at this point in our private hostel room.

De Saloon

2008-09-11T00:53:00.001-07:00

We will miss our favorite pub in Amsterdam.... we made it there once a day.

Amsterdam - Last Day

2008-09-11T00:46:00.000-07:00

DISCLAIMER:
Before we start we need to say a few things. We undoubtedly know we are two of the luckiest people in the world. We are on a journey that so few people have a chance to experience. But with all good journeys will come some hard times. So we hope to all who read this we don't sound negative when we talk about some of the funny things that go wrong because they are insurmountably miniscule next to the joy we feel waking up everyday here in Europe.

________________________________________________________________________________

We probably stayed here in Amsterdam about a day too long. By the last day today we had really run out of things to see. But because we bought the 21 day eurail pass saving us big $ we couldn't use it for the first time till the 10th of Sept in order for it to get us to our final destination on time.

We made it up for the free breakfast today, not bad really. They promised eggs which sounded like heaven because we haven't had a hot breakfast in a long time, but turned out to be hard boiled eggs which we both in turn stuck or noses up at.

We stored our packs in the hostel lobby while we went for one last walk about the city. Just up and down the canals, to Dam Square which we are pretty sure EVERY road leads to.

One thing funny about Amsterdam is when you ask directions it's either measured in minutes or canals. "it's just 5 minutes up there... just cross 2 canals."

While trying to find some free internet we ran into a tour group that we listened to for about minutes. Found out some funning things about Dutch last names like no one had one till about 100 years ago and no one wanted them so they picked really funny and sometimes nasty ones. I guess it's a good way to start a conversation in Holland to ask what someone's last name means.

One more lunch of pasta and a pizza... we've already stated our feelings clearly about those. And of course one more stop back at De Saloon to sit on the canal and have a Palm. We were greeted with "welcome back!" I guess that made us regulars. We will miss our favorite Holland pub.

One hot walk with our packs onto the train station to use our Eurail pass for the first time. Not by choice at all but we are traveling 1st class, it's very nice. We would have welcome the price cut of 2nd class but if you are over 26 in Europe you can hardly get any deals. So here we are on the train from Amsterdam to Brussels. We both wish it was spring time to see the amazing fields full of flowers.

We are couch surfing in this city with a guy named Phil. We had to take a later train I hope he waits for us because we will be late.

H& C

________________________________________________________________________________

PART II

Hope Phil understands the joy of trains. We truly do now. What should have been a less than a three hour train ride (in first class I should add) to Brussels from Amsterdam turned into a honest nightmare.

The smallest thing to complain about would be the fact it was stuffy and very very hot on the train, something must have been wrong with our compartment. We were about an hour out of Brussels when the train just stopped. And of course we have to hear in German, French (?) then English what was going on. So before we knew - we saw the reaction out of everyone else: it's not good! Due to "something" wrong with the track ahead we have to go back to the last station. Around 300+ people now sat at the platform waiting to hear what was happening next. All we would hear is, "the track is completely..... keep waiting... when we know we'll tell you something."

We made the most of what we thought might be a 20 minute delay by playing cards. 31 was our game of choice. One of us had to stay with the bags at all times while the other went off for information or to find WiFi to tell our host Phil that we were running late and we couldn't do anything but wait. I really friendly german man offered Heather his seat and she actually picked up enough to figure out what he said.

Next they announced that we all are taking a bus to the next station. So we all gathered up our things, went down the stairs, through the tunnel, up the stairs through the station and watched as two buses were already full of people and ready to pull out.

After awhile outside it was "get back on the train." After doing the stairs and tunnel again we RUSHED back to get our good seats in 1st class. That being at the very front of the train we were the farthest away. Then we sat on the train for 10 minutes before hearing: "so sorry (in two languages before we could understand) back on the buses." Again, stairs, tunnel, stairs.

Mob mentality took over.

One bus had already pulled out, the second bus clearly would not hold all of us. We crammed and squeezed on the bus like it was our life on the line. Our packs were heavy as ever and taking up the space of an extra person so the "4" of us stood with 3 times what the bus should have held.

This bus ride was only about 20 minutes but it could have been 4 hours. No air in this bus, everyone smelled INCLUDING us and were sweating so much. Our hands where so wet we could hardly hang on around the corners.

Off to the next station only to be informed it was not a direct train to Brussels and we'd need to switch over again.

Long story short we made it to Brussels, at 11:15 at night we have not found internet so poor Phil probably thinks we stood him up.

Then we did the unthinkable...

WE GOT A HOTEL ROOM!!! Oh sweat Lord this is HEAVEN!!! A real shower?! Fresh bed?! I'm not going to lie it was a lot more than we wanted to spend but it was the only one in walking distance that wasn't booked up. Heather used some haggling skills and got the front desk to knock off 30 euros.

Ok so after two very long hot showers I think we are feeling like humans again. It's a very good thing we ate a huge meal in Amsterdam because we probably wouldn't have made it this far.

Tomorrow we find the internet and hopefully Phil :)

H & C

PS from the few blocks we walked in the pitch dark here Brussels is pretty nice. Our spirits are still high... how could they not be?

Amsterdam Day 4.....or is it Heinekenville???

2008-09-09T13:49:00.000-07:00

Another day unwinds in Amsterdam at our favorite bar, De Saloon. Made even more our favorite tonight as Prince's Purple Rain started playing shortly after we arrived.

We got up a bit on the early side today....10:30am!! We believe the city doesn't really get going until noon as the streets seem fairly empty until then. We started our day in hopes of touring the Heineken experience, but our dreams were soon crushed as it was closed until sometime in October...boo Heineken. We were directed to "The City", which ended up being just a large gift shop with all things Heineken, including a 78 euro sweatshirt Heather debated buying (ha ha). We tried our best to get our 3 free beers each we were promised on the tour, but to no avail.

We spent the afternoon exploring the outer areas of Amsterdam, and were surprised to find that there really is a normal looking city part to all this Dutch-ness.

Why do they even bother with food in America?!? We found dinner at a small Italian bistro around the corner from the hostel that promised pizza for 4 euros, and since we are on the cheap, we wandered in. How do we describe the fantastic-awesomeness of this food? We ordered a margarita pizza and a pasta with bacon, egg and cheese in a cream sauce, along with the best grape soda in the world...kinda like wine right? The pasta was perfectly cooked, with the rich cream sauce sticking to each piece. The pizza I don't think words can describe, and we aren't even in Italy yet! The cheese tasted like it the cow was hooked up to the restaurant it was so fresh. The wood oven cooked the crust to a perfect crisp texture with a nice smokey flavor from the fire. If this is what Italy is like, we may not come home, and we have a lead on the worlds greatest pizza in Naples.

After cleaning up a bit and recovering from our feast, we left again for a final night in the city on the river Amstel. We walked through the Red Light District one more time, up and down some canals and went to a bar called the Old Nickel, where we tried some more Trappist Monk beers from Holland. Can't wait to find those monks in Belgium! (More to come on that adventure)

We walked up towards the Dam Square and had a drink served by a smart ass waiter, who offered to buy our drinks if we didn't like them, and even informed us that he knew how to make change!! After dark we made one last pass through the Red Light District to see it all lit up, and got caught in a bit of a rainstorm. So a short 30 minute walk in the rain, with a brief stop to buy another cone of the greatest ice cream on the planet at the Australian ice cream shop, here we are back at De Saloon winding down another night for the 3rd time.

H & C

PS to review: TINY TINY cars in Europe, and Thousands and Thousands of bicycles everywhere.... there will be a quiz at the end of the trip so pay attention!

Amsterdam day 3... Red Lights and Beer

2008-09-08T14:35:00.000-07:00

We are champs. Ok not in the traditional sense. We have small goals and large ones.

Large ones: spend six months in europe.

Small ones: get up for breakfast.

Guess which one we achieved?

We went to Dam Square and saw a street performance of a guy who fit his entire body through a toilet seat then got on a 10' unicycle and juggled torches.

Then off to a "koffee" house to share a "toastie" which is what the dutch call grilled cheese and such. We knew we were close to the Anne Frank house but didn't realize it was literally next door. We went through, it was really amazing walking through the bookcase the family hid behind for so many years. The staircases where unbelievably steep. They had it set up so we only had to walk up them and there was another way out. We were a little sad they took all the furniture out of the rooms, it made it a bit harder to really envision life there. But we loved going through and seeing everything that made her diary come to life for us.

More wondering around, going in and out of little shops. We had our first Trappist Monk beer, trust me Jon is proud!!

We back back to hostel grabbed a shower, cleaned up for the night. We stopped at a few more pubs, talked to some colorful locals including an ex-US guy that might have been a few sandwiches short of a picnic.

Oh my gosh we need to tell everyone.. the 80's are alive here and thriving.

After dark (because we were told by a local woman in her 60's it's the best time to go) we went to the Red Light District. Pretty much what we thought it would be, I mean if you have more questions just email us and we'll try to answer.

We picked up some dinner in a local grocery store. I think it was the first time for both of us we bought something we had NO IDEA what it was. My best guess it was hummus but who knows. We ate back in the lobby of our hostel.

We walked the streets a bit more found a Grolsch for 1.25 (euros) and then back to our favorite spot from our first day here to scam some free internet and catch all you lovely chaps up on our blog.

And yes, we had french fries with mayo to get the real "Amsterdam experience."

Amsterdam stuff to know: EVERYONE rides a bike, there are thousands and thousands on the streets

Goede nacht,

H & C

Amsterdam day 2... yeah

2008-09-08T14:15:00.000-07:00

Oh hold on to your hat, we slept too late. Our two flat mates were even really quite when they came in so we have no real reason for the sleep in other than we lost an hour coming over here.

We explored the city, and ran into a really cool place called the dog bar. Literally dogs in the bar, they had water dishes for them to drink out of. Of course Heather ran up and pet them all!

Not much else to report from the first day... Amsterdam ya know?

H & C

Planes, Trains and British Washers

2008-09-08T05:41:00.001-07:00

Well up sort of on time, I swear that alarm is evil.

We cleaned up and were hoping to walk into the kitchen to find a week's worth of clean clothes... do I really need to explain how much we needed these?! Well with the LOVELY British washer/dryer combo our clothes came out completely soaking wet. No, not damp... soaked. We had to ring each thing out in the sink, stuff them in plastic bags and carry all that extra weight over to Amsterdam. Ughhh. Lovely bloody start.

We took a 1.5 hour train to Luton London Airport to catch our flight. Charlie accidently opened the bus doors in the middle of our shuttle to the airport with his backpack causing a lot of confusion. The flight was fine, only 45 minutes or so long. The pilot was pretty funny he said, "the weather in Amsterdam is the same as London, miserable!" Actually it was sunny and very nice. We got into Amsterdam, collected our bags and decided the airport was a rip-off for exchanging our pounds for euros.

We grabbed a train in Amsterdam to the Central Station and then had NO idea how to find our hostel. Our packs weighed somewhere around 375 pounds; so that's a lot of fun. I can only say we are pretty much as cheap as we are stubborn. After countless people told us to take a bus down to where our hostel was we decided to walk. I mean we'd walked for hours and hours and hours in London each day... no big deal right? Well Heather's arms went numb and charlie pretty much lost feeling in his upper back and neck. Good times. We even got desperate and tried to pay a rickshaw driver to take us as far as he could for 6 british pounds... grr no luck.

We took a nice break on one of the many canals and eventually made it to our hostel. I was assured in an email that we could pay with a credit card...oh no - cash only. So with our bags FULL of heavy wet laundry and no euros to be had... off we went to find an exchange place that wouldn't rip us off.

Our room here is very nice, Heather asked what floor we were on and guy at the front desk said "2." I guess that's Dutch for the 4th floor. But on the other hand we are only sharing with two other travelers and we are in the heart of the city.

And why would a laundry place be open in Holland on Saturday or Sunday??? As i type our laundry is hung in every sort of nook and crack in this room in hopes of someday drying.

On the positive side we had a great meal here :) We found an amazing bar called De Saloon. Charlie had a belgium beer and a tasty burger and chips, Heather had baked goat cheese with honey and bacon and a cup of tomato soup. Mmm.

After a small talk we've decided we are trying to do too much in a day. So we are going to try to take it a little easier in hopes of being able to scrape ourselves out of bed at a normal time.

H & C

London - Galleries, Museums and puppets... Oh My!

2008-09-08T05:30:00.001-07:00

Up by 9am, we couldn't be more proud of ourselves.

We made a stop back at the catalog store because in our worldly travels we didn't think that buying a battery charger in London would not really be the thing to do since it has a UK plug.

We hopped the overland train and then and the underground to Elephant and Castle station (I know, I laugh at it too). We walked a few blocks in the rain to the Imperial War Museum. Directly inside the museums enterance were many planes, tanks, and artillery guns from the first and second world wars. They had sections of the tanks cut open so you could see inside them. Our first exibit we walked through was the Holocost art exhibit, and one the world's largest Holocaust displays. Honestly there isn't really a way to comment on the emotion that we felt, it was very raw and moving. The art was done mainly by sole survivors who were never artists until many years after, and used it as a way to relase the feelings of what they went through, One of the final exibits of art was one called "Souvenir", and it was a collection of postcards with an artists sketches we could take for free, we each took one of Auchwitz.

We continued on the WW1 and WW2. We took a tour of the trenches (where Heather had to leave early because the air was thin and got a bit claustrophobic). One of the interesting things was the display of propaganda that was handed out during the war. Some examples were about food rations, not gossiping about the war because you "never know who is listening", mending clothes instead of buying new ones and women getting into the work force to do their part.

We went back to the main part of London bought tickets to "Avenue Q." Now off to the British museum where we shared a lunch under some shelter in a very rainy park. They are NOT exaggerating when they say you can spend at least two days there and not see it all. We of course did it in about 2 hours only seeing the highlights like the Egyptian mummies, Greek and Roman artifacts and Japan through the ages. One of the most interesting parts was seeing the Rossetta Stone. This was the original stone used to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Avenue Q was unbelievable funny!! And for 10 pounds a ticket we couldn't go wrong. Of course we did our favorite new trick of buying the cheapest seats in the house then moving up the the really "fancy pants" seats right before the show started, London has AMAZING theater, I can't wait to go back.

On our train ride back to Susannah's flat (our couch surfing host) we stopped at Sainsbury's and picked up some Stella triple filter and some pasta sauce to make a late night dinner. We ended up talking till almost 1 am with Susannah and Chelsea, a girl from San Francisco who was surfing there as well.

With good intentions as always of getting up on time we headed to bed with an alarm set.

Cheers Mates!

More pictures from London

2008-09-04T14:35:00.001-07:00

London - Pip pip!

2008-09-04T14:15:00.000-07:00

Another day of oversleeping.... stinkin' time change is still getting the best of us.

After rolling out of bed and having a wonderful proper shower we headed out to explore the street around Susannah's place. We headed into our first catalog store that totally confused us at first but by the end we thought was a pretty smart idea. Charlie got a new memory card (yeah we can put up photos). We enjoyed our second lunch of tasty fish and chips.

We grabbed a train then the tube back into downtown London. We exited on Trafalgar Square and Lord Nelson's monument (he fought Napoleon), really big lions and pretty fountains. The National Museum was right on the square and we spent a little under and hour before they closed trying to see it all. We saw Monet, Picaso, Leonardo DiVinci, Michelanglo, Raphale, Degas, Renoir, and a million other things that totally moved and impressed us.

After the National museum we wondered into China town, Soho and other little parts of London. It was so busy at all the pubs we decided to head back south and grab dinner at the local "cheap" pub. Chili and rice and cottage pie.... yum.

We are trying to call it an early night tonight just to get back on track and not over sleep... wish us luck!!

Only one more full day in London, I'm already a bit sad. But I'm guessing I'll cheer up in Amsterdam.

Cheers!!

PS (parents don't read any further) we saw a crack deal go down at the train station, pretty sketchy.

London - What's all this then?

2008-09-03T16:24:00.000-07:00

Great success! We woke up on time at 8:30am and got to have the free breakfast at the hostel. We cleaned-up and packed-up ready to head out for the day.

Another day of finding everything free we can do in London. We bought a day pass on the bus which is good for the trains too. We got off in Victoria station, found our way to the theater district. We got a GREAT deal on tickets to see Wicked. We had time before the show started. We walked down Victoria street to tour Westminster Cathedral (free). It was built in 600 and is being completely restored, it was amazing to see how that is all done. We walked to Westminster Abby after that, then to Parliament and to see Big Ben. We sat down in the park there overlooking the Thames river and made good use of the Queen's wi-fi (hope she doesn't mind). We walked to Buckingham Palace, checked out those famous guards and then took a walk down the Princess Diana memorial walk in Green park. Charlie got his first small taste of some world war monuments in Hyde park including the Wellington Arch.

We grabbed sandwich to share and took off to explore more.

We took the bus back to the hostel and picked up our packs. Then we took the train/bus down to Straetham to meet Susannah. We are "couch surfing" at her flat for the next 3 nights. (again can't beat free) We had a LOAD of trouble on the trains that is really a long and boring story. We ended up meeting her, her boyfriend, and three other couch surfers almost two hours late.

So here we are, tired as usual... and happy of course. All five of us couch surfers are in the living room now. Charlie is planning out our day tomorrow.

We are both excited to be sleeping in a real bed with a normal shower :)

Did we mention we LOVE London... cause we do.

PS... photos are on hold... bug charlie about it, he needs a new memory card

London, day 2

2008-09-03T02:04:00.000-07:00

Today we slept in until a bit past 11am, guess we were both way more tired than we thought, and not used to London time yet.

We walked over to a market near the London Bridge train station and got an awesome lunch of a prawn/rice/pea shoot salad and a couscous/roasted veggie side we shared. We walked down to a park a few blocks off the river and ate on a bench where we were joined by an older man and butch the dog who entertained us with tricks.

We started walking towards the river and came upon the Tower bridge and crossed. We took a short break at the Tower castle and explored the shops around there. From there we walked towards St. Paul's cathedral, finding many cool old churches and buildings along the way, along with TONS of cool looking pubs and restaurants. We decided to come back at 5 for evening mass (free to worship or 10 pounds to get in to tour), and since it was kind of rainy, we crossed the river to the Tate modern art museum to spend some time in doors.

We checked out the Shakespeare's Globe theater afterwards then headed back to the St Paul's cathedral. We were both impressed with the cathedral, it was the kind of place that gave us goosebumps walking in, and neither of us realized its where princess Diana and prince Charles

were married.

We spent the rest of the night eating at a pub with a traditional english meat pie a couple blocks from the hostel and hanging out at the hostel bar over a beer catching up on emails.

We did our best to make to bed by midnight but adjusting to the time change is a bit challenging.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

2008-09-01T15:26:00.000-07:00

After a few very very short hours of sleep we woke up, and in under 15 minutes made our way down to the street and hopped in the cab. We caught the Mega Bus to Chicago then the train to O'Hare. Our flight on Air India was actually the best either of us have ever been on. We had individual TVs that we could watch any movies, play games, TV shows etc. We got 2 full meals and even blessed when we boarded.

It was only an 8 hour flight and we slept all but an hour of it. Getting into London was a bit harder. We were very tired and what should have been a 1/2 hour ride in the "underground" turned into 2 hours because we took one wrong tube.

The Dover Castle Hostel we are staying at was only 1 block off of where the tube dropped us off. So far so good, we got so rest then walked around a few hours.

We are sitting in a Pub a few blocks from the Hostel and Charlie is about to fall asleep so I think we better head back.

H & C

So far we LOVE London.

Yes we already had fish and chips :)

Going Away Party

2008-09-01T15:17:00.001-07:00

Thanks to everyone that came to our party, we had so much fun. It was pretty hard only getting a total of 5-6 hours of sleep between that last few days then getting up at 5:30 am to start our travels!

7 days and counting

2008-08-26T10:58:00.000-07:00

7 days to go. So much to do, last minute packing... the 110th trip to Dick's Sporting Goods.

We are both really excited for the going away party at Great Waters Brewery on Saturday night, that will really make this all feel even more real.

I'm really happy to have the day off work today to get organized.

My friends Jennifer and Melissa are taking me out to dinner tonight, one last "girls night."

- Heather