Rub a dub dub, three men in a tub...

Such a weird nursery rhyme. Anyway, this keyboard is severely screwed up so this is a short post. We are in Nice at a hotel and I get to take baths...its great.

Nice is nice!

Oh so creative, I know. Well this keyboard is so confusing - the m, a, w, z and probably other letters are all in odd places. But I will do my best.

So first, a quick thanks for all of the birthday wishes! 23 seems pretty much the same so far - you know, life is normal, traveling through Europe and all... we were in little Orange in the region of Provence - a bit bigger than Port Angeles, the same latitude as Portland, and the warmest city in France (thanks, dad, for that info). And it was gloriously warm - hot, even! The girls bought some champagne to drink at midnight, and we had dinner at a Chinese/Thai food place for my birthday (of course we seek out the Chinese and Mexican food places everywhere) that was way too overpriced for the amount of food that we got, and we got more Champagne for the evening. So, sort of a quiet evening (although I did get to order a Royal Bacon that night!) but they have promised me that we will get to go out dancing in Nice. Orange, overall (oh, and it's O-range, but we like to say Orange) was a nice relaxing stop after the glamour and dazzle of Paris, so to speak...

So Paris!!! We originally planned to stay 4 nights, and ended up extending it by 2 more days. Sarah was still recovering from her awful sickness, and I had developed a coughing/sniffling cold, so we took it easy the first day or so. Of course we saw the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre - but I think we all agree that we prefer the Impressionists better, so we all absolutely loved the Museums Orsay and Orangerie - both full of Monet, Manet, van Gogh, Cezanne, and all those guys. Walking into the Orangerie was incredible - it's an old greenhouse that now houses 8 of Monet's huge waterlilly murals, and the effect was sooooo cool. We took pictures, but I don't think we could capture the feeling.

We also did one of the free tours offered, and it was amazing - I think we were all apprehensive about a 3 and 1/2 hour tour, but the time flew and we saw everything and learned so much about Paris. (That tour included seeing the bridge where Carrie and Big reunite on Sex and the City, the fountain in the Devil Wears Prada, and the Samaritan Hotel that had something to do with Jason Bourne.) Other sites - Arc di Triomphe and that crazy roundabout, Champs Elysees, the eternal flame, Notre Dame, Moulin Rouge...and as usual, we found ourselves searching for Mexican food - tacos, in particular - but I'm not sure Paris is really the place for Mexican food. There were a ton of Japanese restaurants, but otherwise the cuisine seemed mostly French.

I knew I'd like Paris, but I didn't count on loving it so much. Of course, the French women really have lived up to our expectations of them. Never before have we run across so many unpleasant women - and it does seem to be just the French women. We'll have to tell those stories later... for now, I'm off to read by the water in Nice! It's so comforting to be near the ocean again - or whatever sea this is. I hate that feeling of being landlocked. Even in Edinburgh, there was water but from where we usually were, we couldn't see it. Our hotel here is just a couple blocks from the beach!

London, baby!

So this is long overdue, but I will be telling you all about the wonders of London. We are in Paris right now, as all the other posts indicate, but we are a bit behind on our blogging. Alrighty, so Nora told the wonderful story of how we got a hotel room, but after that, hilarity ensued. We were all totally jazzed to have a hotel so we went-a-walkin to find a pub. That's right. A pub. Not a bar. Anyway, we found this cute little one and got some beers. We were sitting, having some lovely converstaion when I looked over at our seemingly normal neighbors only to notice one of them is wearing a leather collar. No biggie. But wait, there's more... that collar was attached to a leash. And that leash was attached to the wrist of an old man. Yes. It was a bit strange. At first glance it just looked like a young man and his father out for a drink, but alas, it was something a bit dirtier. Overall it was a great first night.

So we walked all over London, went to the British Museum for all of 15 minutes, saw Traflagar Square, Parilment, Big Ben, Wesminster Abbey, and all that jazz. Oh and the best part, there was a green peace protest thing going on when we were got to the Parliment building. I guess people had just climbed over the walls with ladders and got on the roof with all sorts of banners that said "Change the Politics, Save the Climate." It was a pretty big spectacle. Later on we talked to one of the guards and asked what was happening and he said that someone must've been sleeping on the job...oops. And yes, all those protesters were going to be arrested when they got down.

So we need to get going now, but everyone stay tuned for the great story involving those crazy royal guards how they were totally flirting with us...

Haggis

Hello again! Sorry it has been so long since I have written anything on the blog! We are leaving Paris today and headings towards Orange, which is a town in Southern France. We don't really know anything about it except that we found a cheap hotel room there : ) Ali is going to write about London, so I'll recap Edinburgh. Our hostel was okay, except that there were 16 beds squeezed into a fairly tiny room. And everyone was snoring and breathing so that by the time morning came around, it was disgusting and hot and smelly. But other than that, it was fine! We walked a lot around the city, went up and visited the castle, which we still know nothing about. But it was really pretty! We all tried Haggis, which is a traditional dish in Scotland that basically all Scottish people like but everyone else thinks is gross. It's all the leftover bits of meat mixed together with oats and spices and then squeezed into a skin like a sausage. It was interesting....very strong tasting. It looked like a little poop though.
At night we kind of just explored our neighborhood, one night ending up in a cemetery. We righted a few gravestones that had fallen, I fell over one....the usual stuff. The night of the cemetery, I spent the whole night up sick: vomiting and....other stuff. It was horrible, and even worse because I knew the next day we had to travel. As expected the next day was pretty awful- I had to go to the bathroom about every half hour. I also threw up outside the Edinburgh airport for awhile. I managed to hold it in on the actual flight, but when we got to Paris we found out that we had to take three separate trains to get to our hotel and I didn't think I was going to make it. I could barely stand up much less walk with my giant bag on. So we ended up taking a $90 taxi ride. Not great but we didn't know what else to do. I am much better now by the way, and have now pooped my pants too many times to count. I don't know why I am always the one with the poopy problems, but oh well!

Just a note...

... to inform y'all of our next destination - Orange! So, it's a small town in the region of Provence (southern France). That's basically all we know about it, and we're pretty stoked. We found a reasonably priced hotel, and I think we are all looking forward to being in a smaller area with more natural beauty.

By the way, I am in love with Paris. I think we all are. Au revoir for now!

Three Little Sickies

Yep, by some stroke of luck we are all, to some degree, sick. Ali and I have sore throats and Sarah's neck hurts, which is usually a precursor to her being sick. I think it was only a few days ago that Ali said something like, oh maybe we won't get sick at all! Wishful thinking... so, cross your fingers and toes, folks, and let's hope that we don't get worse. For me, at least, the result is feeling lethargic and sort of uninspired to do much, which is unfortunate here, when we have such natural beauty surrounding us. Edinburgh really is a beautiful city, with the sea and rolling hills visible in the distance. The Edinburgh castle towers above the city, right in the central area, so it's an impressive site on all of our walks.

So, by now this is pretty obvious and maybe a bit outdated news, but we decided to head straight to London from Amsterdam. The hostels/hotels in Belgium were pretty spendy for a place we knew little about, so we used our Eurail passes to get to Brussels (so at least we made it there!) and then took the Eurostar train (and through the Chunnel) to London. Sarah had emailed a London hostel situated in Greenwich (embarassingly, Ali and I had both thought it was "Green-witch" until the customs officials laughed at us in Belgium), and we met some very delightful English people on the Eurostar who gushed about Greenwich when we told them we might be staying there.

They were an English woman, her mother, and her husband, and they asked us questions about where we were from and where we were going - we apparently sounded Canadian to them, with nicer accents than most Americans. They also clued us in on some of the British lingo - transport, not transportation; crisps, not chips; chips, not fries; ta-mah-to, not tomato - and told us that yes indeed, they do eat beans on toast for breakfast. The woman let us use her cell phone to call to confirm with our hostel our reservation, but unfortunately... they never received the email, and they were already booked. We hoped our English friends might offer to take us to their home, but alas, no. So, arriving in London, we tried the hotel reservation desk, where the woman claimed only hotels costing around $100 a night were available, and hoped we could find an open Internet cafe or something to search for ourselves.

So, around 7 or 8 in the evening, we found ourselves across the street in a phone booth, trying to call the hostels on numbers that weren't working, when a man asked us if we wanted to use his cell phone. He then introduced himself - Carlos - and upon hearing that we were planning to stay in a hostel, he launched into some tirade against hostels and how unclean or whatever, that we looked like 3 nice American girls who shouldn't stay in some horrible hostel, and that his brother was supposed to stay in that Travelodge over there but had gotten in a car accident and so he offered us the room.

We had to clarify a few details - so yes, parents, we were cautious - and found out Carlos and his wife were staying in a different hotel, and the room in question was supposed to be for his brother who couldn't make it. We had to make it clear to him that we weren't planning to pay much in the hostel when he originally offered the room for 4 nights for 180 pounds. Unfamiliar to the exchange rate, we weren't entirely sure how much that would be in dollars - we frantically calculated how much that might be per person per night, and eventually, he offered the room at 150 pounds total (so around $80 per person for the 4 nights at the way the exchange rate is right now - more than we'd pay at a hostel, but an incredible deal for a hotel).

He gave us the confirmation email about the room, so I'll have to double check on the amount that it originally was, but I think the reason he was willing to reduce the amount was because there was no way he was going to be able to get a full refund on the room anyway, and also, I think he genuinely wanted to give us the deal. Anyway, he never even got our names and we just paid him in cash after he checked us into the room, and, tada! We had a hotel room just a hop, skip and a jump away from King's Cross Station (oh, and of course we saw Platform 9 and 3/4).

London was a whirlwind of amazing sites and food - we wished we could have stayed longer, for sure. We'll have to do more on that later. Oh and so now we are in Edinburgh, but we leave tomorrow for Paris. We decided that, due to the cost of transportation, we would skip Ireland. Even though Ireland is covered by our Eurail pass, the UK is not, so getting there, and then getting away, would just be added expenses. But, we think we might go to Portugal with our extra time, later on. We'll keep you all updated!

So we fly to Paris around 6 p.m. tomorrow evening! Au revoir!

They're speaking English, yet we can't understand them

Those English accents were so charming and pleasant, but these Scottish ones... well, it's just difficult to understand what people are saying. Anyway, as Ali said, we walked around the neighborhood last night, mostly checking out the menus of our nearby restaurants for prices - so far, we have found at least one other Chinese food place! (We found a Dominoes!!! And yes, we will be going there soon.) So in Berlin, where we stayed for 3 nights, we went to the same Mexican restaurant 3 nights in a row. Yep. Que Pasa. They knew us there. I even went there again during the day to read and have a tasty mango colada. Since then, we've been finding our new "Que Pasas" in each city. Just fyi :)

Oh, and before we all forget, I have a little anecdote from Rothenburg. We mentioned the crazy old lady in our room who was actually kind of adorable. The first night, I think she got mad at Ali for keeping the light on to read (it wasn't even that late). The next day, we 3 were going downtsairs to get train info, and she said something like, oh you're going out now, so you'll be getting in late, huh? Of course, that night, she was the one up the latest after we had all gone to bed, rustling around on her bed, going back and forth to her locker to her bag. Earlier that night, she asked Ali if she could borrow her "slippers," meaning her flip flops, to wear in the bathroom. Ali couldn't really say no, so she let her, but then the woman continued to wear them all evening, kept them by her bed over the night, and wore them again the next morning. I really need to work on my reactions, but I couldn't help but giggle every time she walked past in those "slippers" - I'd have to put my book in front of my face until she left the room. She was a sweet little woman, though, and I think she was genuinely sorry to see us go.

That's all for now, I think I've been hogging this computer a bit. We will do more pictures, ummm wait a minute, maybe not, well not from this computer at least. Soon. loveyoubye!

Ahoy!

Well we just arrived at our hostel in Edinburgh after a whirlwind in London. I will post some good stuff later, but for now I just wanted to let the parents know flight info for when we get back. My mommy was asking for it, at least. Ok, so we leave Zurich on Dec 9th at 11:25 am and after a layover in Heathrow, we get into Seattle at 4:10 pm on the 9th. Crazy time travel!!! Welp, we are going out to the pub for a drink then to explore the neighborhood, our new ritual when we arrive in a new place!
kloveyoubye!
Al Pal

Oh and also, apparently I don't know how to spell PIGEONS...sorry about that.

VERY scary experience

So we opted for a bit of alone time today. Nor had a tram pass and decided to go into the central part of town, Sar stayed our part of town but went to the area with all the shops, and I went for a stroll along the canal near the apartment. Before I start the bulk of the story, I need to fill you all in on one of my quirks. The pidgeons here are freakin scary. That's right, you heard me: I'm scared of pidgeons. While Sarah and Nora say I'm crazy, I think they are aggressive and they want to bite my toes. Anyway, so it's a beautiful day and I'm sitting on a park bench, writing in my journal, watching the ducks along the canal and this woman comes up behind me and starts speaking Dutch. She could have been talking to me, but it's also possible she was talking to herself, or perhaps even the birds.

Everything is just fine and dandy until I see what she's got in her hand: a bag of bread. Oh dear god she's going to feed the birds...there was no way to escape. She threw the bread into the air and the birds, pidgeons mostly, but some ducks and gulls, started flying/swirling around me. I thought they were going to peck my eyes out. I got a video of it so you can all see how terrifying it was for me. When it was all finally over I looked over at the lady and she was standing there with this grin on her face. I wanted to throw bread at her and have the birds peck away at that stupid smile. Ok that's a bit much but I was not pleased.

Who knows how I came out of that ordeal with all my toes, or even alive for that matter, but I did. Huzzah!

It's Always Rainy in Amsterdam...except TODAY!

Yes, it is indeed true, it is sunny today in Amsterdam! We've been here since Sunday, and forgive us for not posting anything this week - we briefly had Internet at the apartment we're staying at, and then it stopped working, and then we found out it was never supposed to work in the first place. So we've been staying at my friend Kelsey's stepmom's apartment, (yay, it's a normal keyboard here with the y's and z's in the correct places and apostrophes easy to find!) and it has been so luxurious to have our own "home"for a bit. We've definitely been watching a lot of TV in the evenings, since there are a number of English stations, including Comedy Central... and it's rained every other day, but we've still gone out and walked all over the city.

Ali and I did the "Heineken Experience" yesterday - a tour of the former Heineken Brewery - and we all browsed around the Red Light District late afternoon/evening as well. The other day, Sarah and I biked into the city center on a mission... and we made our way there fairly easily, but we probably took nearly twice as long coming back - in the rain, as it was getting dark - since we took a few wrong turns and had to find our way back somehow. This morning, I woke up to sunshine and decided to go on another bike ride (Elle, the owner of the apartment, has a couple folding bikes) into the center. Everything looks so much happier and enticing in the sun! I don't mind the rain that much, but it's not exactly a picnic walking around in the cold with wet socks.

Amsterdam is definitely a biking city - as many of these European cities have been. There is almost always a separate bike lane, and here there are even traffic signals just for the bikes. I'm not sure we've seen an actual parking lot full of cars - the cars just park on the side of the road, but the bikes park all over the place. Oh and I no longer fear cars as we did in Prague, Rothenburg and Berlin - maybe we never explained that, but there were crazy drivers in those cities!! They never stopped for pedestrians - plus the streets were often mismatched together in an odd arrangement. We actually had a car stop for us as we crossed the street today, and that was a definite first.

Well, we are probably off to Belgium next - probably to Bruges, since the hostels in Brussels look ridiculously expensive. These first 2 weeks have flown by for me - and I'm still excited for the rest. The food has been incredible everywhere, although some of our favorite places have been Mexican and Chinese places... :) We did find a delicious Italian restaurant, and went there just before 10:30 p.m. the other night - and didn't realize until we left at 11:15 p.m. (after some incredible pasta) that the place closes at 10:30 p.m.!!! We felt pretty bad, since the guy in there made all of our food all by himself, so we went back again yesterday, during the day, to have some incredible pizza. I've been reading a coupel John Grisham books, both set in Italy, and I'm in the midst of "Eat, Pray, Love," also partially set in Italy, so I'm soooo looking forward to the food there.

Anyway, we're all at an Internet Cafe today, but we're off to do some exploring on our own. Lots of love!

From Amsterdam

So pretty funny story, we got to the train station in Amsterdam and needed to transfer to the metro lines to get to a different station. Since we thought we were pros by now, we just bought single tickets to the Amsterdam Centraal and that was that. When we tried to get through the barrier on to the platform, there was no where to put the ticket, and since we needed to get through a turn stop thingy, we were kinda lost. It seemed like there was some sort of "to go" mechanism but our tickets just were not doin the trick. We stood there like tool muffins for like 2 minutes swiping our train tickets over this magnetic thing. After that didn't work, sarah pressed this info button that was maybe also labeled SOS and the thing started beeping so we walked away pretty quickly...we finally asked and found out we had bought train tickets, not metro tickets. Oops.

Just the 3 of Us

So, I have Ali's camera attached to the computer, and I wanted to upload all the pictures of us 3. (She's quite the good marksman, if you will.) However, the mouse on this computer is being difficult, and so far, these are the only ones I'll put up. Perhaps tomorrow I'll add the rest. For now, enjoy the three of us!...(having more fun than you:)

In Berlin at Potsdamer Platz, at the Sony Center (after we saw Inglorious Basterds)


Prague - in the neighborhood where our hotel was.


Downtown Prague. We're so fashionable-looking, aren't we?


Rothenburg...the almost too cute little town.


Berlin - at the train station when we first arrived.


In Berlin, sitting on the steps just oustide of our room at the hostel.

So with Sarah's permission, I am allowed to tell this story:

Because we are eating a very strange diet, our digestive systems are a bit off. Anyway, long story short, Sarah pooped her pants. That's it. That's the whole story.

p.s. She subsequently clogged the toilet in the cute Youth Hostel in Rothenburg and it overflowed.

Berlin

Hello everybody! So we decided to go to Berlin instead of Cologne. Our guide said that Cologne was known to be a cultural center and Berlin was known for it's night life.....So we decided to come here: sorry parents. Our hostel is a little sketchy, not helped by the fact that the entrance requires you to go through a dark alleyway, and the rooms inside are lit only be red lighting. But it is cheap and safe! Yesterday we walked around Berlin, went to the Jewish Museum, and then decided to make it Jewish day by seeing Inglourious Basterds ( In English ). Then we went and had Mexican food around the hostel around midnight. We were all so sick of bread and cheese and sausage, so it is really nice that there is all types of international cuisine around where we are. The Mexican food is a bit off though. Nora ordered vegetarian nachos and instead of getting vegetables like peppers and onions, she got peas and baby carrots....And last night I ordered a carne asada enchilada, which turned out to be lamb. But oh well : ) Tomorrow we are headed to Amsterdam which we are all excited about. Germany has been fun, but we are ready to try a new country now. Love you all! And bye the way did you notice that the ys and zs are correct now? You are welcome : )

Picture time!

We are all at an Internet cafe right now and all posting, I think, but I figured this was a good time to show some pictures of what in the world we have been up to.

Here we are, all ready to drive to the airport from the house of Ali! (I found an apostrophe but for some reason it takes a long time for it to actually appear when I press that key, so I will continue to avoid contractions...)

Ali, in the Zurich airport. I think Sarah was asleep at this point. These were the wicker chairs that we were able to stow our bags under while we slept/read/people-watched.

Sarah and Ali drinking some 1L steins of beer in Munich - we did not drink at Oktoberfest, since it was so expensive, but instead went with Doug to a biergarten to hang out for the evening.

Our hotel in Prague - hostels are fun, but it was nice to have our own room to sprawl and hang out in. Right now the girls are looking for deals for some of the countries we are about to travel to.




This was my kangaroo dish in Prague - it was quite delicious. Kangaroo steak with a cherry sauce, and mushroom tagliatelle. (I know it looks pretty rare, dad, but no good doctor could have brought this one back.)



In the central area of Prague. The buildings were really beautiful - but some of them, particularly the colorful ones, really reminded me of Disneyland...



So, when we first got to Prague from our bus (from Nuremburg), we were trying to figure out how to get to our hotel - we did not quite get that the big red M with the arrow is the Metro sign.



Ali and Sarah in Rothenburg, with the Tauber valley behind them.




The schneeballen - they were all over Rothenburg, beckoning from every window. They were yummy sugary pastries, but I think we all would have preferred something doughier.



Rachel (girl we met from Sydney), Sarah, me, and Ali - in our room at the youth hostel in Rothenburg.

Well, I think our internet time is running out quickly, so that is all for now!! Lots of love!!!!