7 countries, 3 weeks, 1 pair of underwear

Wednesday, June 01, 2005

We're winding down our last day but we made some good memories!
This morning we splurged on tickets to Phantom of the Opera at Her Magesty's Theatre.
So the rest of the day we just waited for the show =) We walked to Buckingham Palace and saw the changing of the guard and didn't have to wait one minute to see it! We practically marched in with the horses and machine guns!
We also saw Westminster Abbey and hung out with many famous dead people. It was a beautiful church with great history.
We had afternoon tea at a trendy starbuckish place and dinner at another english pub. Melissa tried one english beer and had to reorder is was so bad!
Phantom (as we can now call it since we've seen it) was absolutely great! It was the first theatre experience for Andrea and Melissa and all three of us loved it! Andrea's comment, "I can see what all the fuss is about now."
So it looks like we saved the best for last. Tomorrow our plane leaves at 12 our time and we arrive at O'Hare at 3:00pm. Keep checking in the next few days. Maybe we'll figure out what to do with our 800 photos, seriously.

Thanks for checking, hope you've had a fun trip too!

Tuesday, May 31, 2005

Like a Roman Statue...

Ladies and Gentleman!
We had a wonderful fun filled day today. We got on our Big Bus Tour early and took it to the Design Museum. We got to see all our favorite chairs. The ones that we annoyingly point out to our loved ones in awe of their great design.
We ate lunch outside of the museum on the Thames and continued on to Madame Taussaud's wax museum. It was such a show! Famous people everywhere looking their best, plenty of shots were taken.
Melissa then met a really famous person there. He's famous in England and only some people in the US know who he is. She can't tell yet though cause she's waiting to rub it in to her fionce. He's going to go nuts and so will all his guy friends. Man...it's a good secret. She got a picture and an autograph!
This evening we walked through Kensington Gardens and enjoyed the weather. Really warm in the sun and chilly in the shade.
Tomorrow is the Changing of the Guard, some other random sites, and hopefully a show!
We'll post tomorrow night to wrap up our last day =(

Bye Bye for now!

Monday, May 30, 2005

"Look kids Big Ben...Look kids Big Ben..."

Chevy Chase, funny guy.
We all so far, really like London. Today we enjoyed the British Museum for over half of the day. It was nice to be in a museum that wasn't art based. Melissa liked the money room, Andrea liked all the mummies (we saw a 3d show, totally cool), and Holly liked the stuffed birds and rare seashells.
We then got on the Big Bus Tours and rode around the rest of the afternoon and got off at Piccadilly Circus. We had pizza for dinner at a buffet and stuffed our faces which was rather delightful.
Tomorrow we have a busy day planned and we aren't going to be able to fit everything in in two days but we'll try!
Bye everyone, we'll post soon!

Sunday, May 29, 2005

I understand...

Something that we can finally say! Today we could have conversations with strangers, order food, and had to be quite talking about people! =) It was hard for us to post the past couple of days because of the short time in the cities we were in so sorry to keep everyone hanging.
Amsterdam was pretty good. It's a nice city and isn't as hooker and potish as you'd think. Yes, you can find those but we tried to stay away from things that take us over budget for the day. We went to the VanGogh museum which was ok but our favorite was the Anne Frank House. Really cool to see it in person.
We travelled the next afternoon after having the best breakfast at Bagel and Beans! We all had our first bagel in quite some time. Brussels was the most modern city we've been to. We enjoyed a Belgium Waffle with ice cream and walked around the city center.
This morning we left Belgium on the 7:40 train to Paris. We arrived at Charles de Gualle 3 hours early for our flight! Since we were early, the flight was delayed. We got off the ground an hour late but they somehow made 1:10 flight into 45 minutes.
We were excited to read our signs in english at Heathrow and found the hostel no problems. It's a pretty dinky hostel but the good news is...it's our last one to complain about!
Tomorrow we're seeing some sites and it's internet cafe city here so we'll make sure to post!

Bye!

Thursday, May 26, 2005

Our Butts Hurt

We started the morning with cold milk at breakfast!! It started the day off right for Melissa and Holly. We knew we´d like Germany.
We went to the plaza where Mike´s Bike´s departs and unfortunately we think they went out of business. They were mia. So we rented bikes today but did it on our own and had a wonderful time. We found the Central Park of Munich and had lunch in a beer garden. Melissa had a bratwurst, Holly had schnitzel, and Andrea had the wurst chicken fingers of her life, they had wings.
We biked all afternoon and saw all of Munich. Today is a German Holiday so we didn´t do any shopping. Only restaurants are open. Our butts are not used to this sort of seat but hopefully the night train is cushy or Melissa will stop at the pharmacia to pick up a donut.
Will post soon from the marijuana capitol of the world.

Auf Wiedersehen!

Wednesday, May 25, 2005

Ja...Deutchland

Hello All!
Thanks for the posts. Venice was spectacular and we did just as we thought, ate and walked around. We took our first night train last night. Rather interesting. We were in a compartment with six chairs and when we boarded we took our claim, closed the door, and turned the lights off. It´s like a game of cat and mouse or who has the guts to open up the curtain. Well there was this one dude from Spain who we named Pedro. He smelled like old mans cologne so we let him in. We managed to keep all others out. But Pedro and us got along just fine and we probably got about 5 hours of sleep last night.
We arrived in Munich this morning and checked into our hostel run by nuns. They´re very nice and this place is so clean! We day triped to Newschwinstein castle (I know this is spelled wrong) but this is the castle that inspired the Disney Castle. It was really cool and was a very scenic train ride. We don´t know exactly what moutain range we were on but we´ll say the Swiss Alps creeped into Germany. They were big. Tomorrow we´re doing a little Mike´s Bike´s tour of Munich and then another night train to Amsterdam!

We´ll post soon. Danke for reading!

Tuesday, May 24, 2005

Good thing we can swim

Hello all!
Were alive and in Venice! Its a wonderful town and we already debated staying an extra day and since we dont have night train reservations we just might =) Theres murano glass all around and no fishy stinky smells or gross men!
Yesterday, Pompeii was wonderful. The Chinese tourists seem to ruin every site though in their huge groups with their dang photos! We have some lovely new poses you all should try with a state of art digital camera. We didnt have all the time in the world in Pompeii but it was very old, very cool, and had a few stray dogs. We got on the train at 2 and got to Venice at 10. While waiting for our water bus to our hotel we met a person from St. Louis! He lives about 5 min away from Maryville and went to Michigan state. That Cardinals logo is recognizable anywhere!
Just walking around today shopping, eating (the food is good!), and taking lots of photos.

Feeling better in a new city,
Ciao!