15 Reasons to love España :)

1. All four of the skyscrapers that make up the complete Madrid Skyline.

2. My Spanish Family (y Los primos!).

3. Waking up at 12:00, eating at 10:00pm, and sleeping at 2:00am.

4. Tortilla Patata.

5. Shopping at el mercadillo.

6. Mis amigos españoles.

7. Watching the sun set at 10pm.

8. Downtown Madrid.

9. Murcia, La Manga, y Cobo de Palos.

10. The Spanish sun.

11. The blue waters of the Mediterranean.

12. Trying to piece together conversations off of words you know in Spanish.

13. Spanglish.

14. Living with less possessions.

15. Leading a simple, relaxing, enjoyable life :)

Paris

We got to Paris later in the night and it was so sketch trying to find our hotel which was hiding behind a tree... Anyway we found our hotel only to find out that we had to stay in different rooms for a night. No big deal though, we just went to bed anyway.

So the next day we woke up and had breakfast at our hotel then went to Notre Dame which had a line forming out of the entrance, but it was free and it went quickly so in we went. There was a mass going on (because it was Sunday) but we could still sightsee around them as long as we were really quiet and respectful. And though the line for the inside was short, the line for the tower was a bit longer. By the time we had made it down from the too the once short line to get in at all was wrapped around the building which really made us worry about how the lines where going to look for our next stop, the Eiffel tower. We took a break for lunch and while we were eating by the Seine minding our own business it started to downpour. My shoes were filled, my sandwich soaked, and it was now freezing. So before we went to the Eiffel tower it was decide to make a stop back at the hotel to dry off and collect rain gear. Haha.

Our suspicions about the lines at the eiffel tower were about right, though we did wait in the walking up line instead of the four hour elevator line, it still took us a good 4 hours to get through the whole thing. The rest of the afternoon was spent collecting information for the next day, both of the places however were closed... So we went to dinner. We decided upon this little crepe place that seemed so promising, but ended up being not good at all. The service was terrible, the food was okay, and they didn't speak a lick of English so it made communicating what we wanted very hard. The only positive thing that came out of our little two hour crepe dinner was the fact that when we finished it was dark and we were near the eiffel tower so we got to see it all lit up :) That was easily the highlight of my day!!

The next day we woke up early to try to bypass the lines for the louvre, but it didn't make much of a difference. They let so many people into the museum it is crazy. A claustrophobic person would have a fit in there. Anyway, our plan of action was to circle the places we wanted to see, find them, and leave as fast as possible. And that's exactly what we did. It was a good system.( I still don't see why the Mona lisa is so special ). To keep with our museum theme we went to the Hotel de Invalids afterwards. There we saw the armory museum (largest in the world!), a world wars museum, and Napoleon's tomb. All of which, was, of course, amazing. After that we grabbed some lunch at a place with really good French fries where I happily got to eat them with mayonnaise without being criticized!! :P We moved along to the Arch de Triumph and window shopping down Champseleaees where the Abercrombie was a mansion, you had to wait in a line to get in, and two extremely good looking models greeted you!!

As if that wasn't enough for one day we took a small nap and went to Sacre Coure around dusk and went shopping/hung out with the millions of other tourists watching the sun set from the steps of the church. That night however things sorta took a turn for the worse.

Taylor got really sick. The poor thing was throwing up what little dinner we had (we had chocolate crepes for dinner) all night, and the next day. So Tori, Reyes, and I had to venture to Versailles all by our lonesome. If we had thought Paris was crowded before... It was nothing compared to the masses of people trying to get out of Paris and to that Palace. Lordy. I have never waited in lines with that amount of people in my life. That day we spent 4 hours in line (first the line to buy the ticket, then the line to get in) followed by an hour walking through this beautiful palace with little to no walking room. Haha. It was an adventure... But completely worth it. To me anyway. The rooms and grounds of this place are the most beautiful things I have ever seen. Ever.

By the time we had gotten through everything an we're heading back to home base we had left Taylor for a full day of like 8 hours. We were hoping he had used it for some good R&R but as it turned out he was still really sick :( First, we took care of his "dinner" of 7up and crackers, then the three of us headed off again.

This time we ventured to the Latin quarter of Paris for dinner, which according to my book was supposed to have a lot of good restaurants, which it totally did!! We sat down at a traditional French place that had three courses for 10€. So worth it. We finally found our French dinner that didn't make us sick or wait for two hours! On our way home we stopped to watch some street dancers that were really funny (especially when they scared Reyes!! ) and we stole one last look at the Eiffel tower by standing on a rail you probably definitely weren't supposed to be standing on. Oh well....

So that was Paris!

The final day was spent going our different ways (T&T going to one airport and us a different one) and going "home". Where Reyes and I faced little to no problems and Tori and Taylor, as far as I know, went to Frankfurt their second day and are trying to get home from there. I bet they are already on a plane now, while Reyes and I enjoyed our first dinner at home in a long time :)

Pisa and Floence!

We slept on the train ride there. All four hours. That's all you can do for a 6:10 train... When we finally got to Pisa we went straight to the tower, took cool pictures, relaxed around a bit, and hopped on a train again. We were probably there for just under an hour and a half.

Florence is a different story. This city was huge!! There was no way we were gonna see everything, or was there?! We kinda hit the ground running and went straight to all the big places. Not before buying a map from this very nice man who knew a lot about the city and gave us a lunch coupon for 10% off. Yay. We saw The Florence Duomo, the bridge that they used to only sell gold on, A David replica, and Galileo's thinking spot or something like that. For dinner we stopped buy a grocery store and got snack ish things and went to catch our train!! Which was delayed, but still got us to Milan at 11:15. It was a full, crazy, exciting day, and I'm so glad we got to see two other places :) They were wonderful additions to our trip. Tomorrow we are off for another early morning to Switzerland!

Milan

Shortly after arriving in Milan and getting a good look at the city, we decided we were going to "knock it out" in a day. This way we could go on a day trip to somewhere else nearby. Lucky for us, everything is nearby!! We had originally thought Pisa for the day. I have always wanted to see the leaning tower and it looks closest on the map (which is a lie by the way, it is faster by train to go to rome). Reyes, however, told us that Pisa is pretty and it does have the tower, but it is really boring. So! As a solution we added Florence into that day trip, so if we were to go there we would see both cities. The other option was to go to Rome. After an extensive pro/con list we decided to go with Pisa and Florence!! The rest of our days in Milan went like this: fist day, Milan. We saw the Duomo which was really pretty, but really strict. They wouldn't let me go inside with my shorts (which were not short!) but whatever t was pretty from the outside. Then we spent a good chunk of time exploring the Castillo's many museums. After that we grabbed paninis and went "shopping" (but really we just got very lost). I did manage to get a really cute new dress though! :) So several hours later we had stopped in at home base to pick up our tickets to try to go get our money back/make reservations, successfully made reservations, unsuccessfully received our $116, been eaten alive by mosquitoes(so. many.mosquitoes.), and rested for like an hour to escape the heat. That night we went to the canals (more mosquitoes) for dinner and went straight to bed only to wake up at 5:00 for our train to Pisa!

Venice

The first day of Venice we did what so many books told us to do, get lost. Haha. All we were trying to do was find our Hostel. But we found it eventually. It was about 8:30 in the morning and they let us check in! It was great. Our room ends up being quite a long walk from our original hostel. In fact it wasn't like a hostel at all, it was an apartment they had bought probably for overflow people like us!! This place however was sooo nice. You share it with one other group (ours were from australia) and you have a kitchen and living room and everything.

Most of our time was spent exploring the city. We bought a travel pass so we could go around on the water metro things, which are so unique and a great way to see the city from the canals btw. So we visited Saint Marks and all the other important looking churches, rode boats, fought the heat, fought the crowds, snuck some naps in there, made our own dinners in our kitchen and there you have it, Venice in two days!!

The second day we went to Malano though which is another island right next to Venice where they are famous for there glass blowing. Which was also, of course, cool.

The final day of Venice we were forced out of our house because of a 10:30 check out time that no one told us about, but we got "forced" out at 12:30 instead haha. When we got that knock on our door though we werent packed or anything and were kinda planning on leaving our bags there so it put us in a bit of a pickle. We ended up having to store our bags for €5 at the train station.

The rest of our last day in Venice was spent going to the market feasting on some fruit and, again, getting lost until we found a little pizza place for lunch and headed back to the train station. Now we are on our way to Milano!!

The Train Ride Between Vienna and Venice...

Yeah, this is getting its own entry. We are sitting in Salzburg right now. We have been for at least an hour, and as much as I loved this city... I didn't think I would be coming back so soon.

So we got onto our couchette car and settled into our really tiny six person cart. (Which at first seemed really small and cramped, but it ended up being fine.) However space was the least of our worries. So we met Daniel from Australia who is awesome and really funny and we get along great, then a girl from South Korea, she is cool to. It's all good, we are playing cards, but then it starts to get hotter and hotter. The air conditioning had gone off. No big deal though, we kept playing BS, (which is great to play when you have players that don't all speak the same language.) but then we notice the heat, and we are not the only ones. All the other carts are opening and starting to complain and our completely Airtight car is easily 90. But still we joke about how we are going to pass out or we are in a new version of survivor.

Then the power went out. But it didn't really. It was like flickering, like strobes. So we sat 3 hours to Salzburg now in utter darkness (it stopped flickering and gave up). When we finally got there they made us evacuate the car for good (right as we had just given up and made our beds all pretty and were just gonna ignore the heat and sleep through).

Now, we are sitting in first class (SITTiNG) trying to sleep. But I can't sleep sitting up, so I am typing. It is rumored we are getting a new air conditioned cart added on, but we have to sit in Salzburg for 3 hours first, apparently. I guess we will find out.

It's now 3:18 in the morning... 5 hours until we were scheduled to get to Venice. I can't sleep, nor do I want to. These seats are really not comfy and I hate sleeping sitting up, heck, half the time I don't even use a pillow!! Oh if you didnt guess, we didn't get our sleeper cars back. And first class sucks. But just cause I wrote this doesn't mean I have a really sour attitude. I get €30 back and that's like $45 :) it just sucks that I'm stuck in this chair...

Vienna

We must have taken the rain with us because it was raining when we got to vienna too. But on an up note Vienna by far the nicest hostel we have stayed in. I haven't really talked a lot about the hostels, but except for the first one, all the others didn't give you towels and were really really hot. In fact in Munich our shower was so bad not only did I have to use my scarf as a towel, but to turn it on you had to keep hitting this button. It was like a game trying to get it to the sweet spot so it would keep the water flowing. Needless to say, it was really annoying. But back to Vienna. We settled into our nice hostel (by taking actual showers with real towels!) and waited to hear from Reyes. And finally we did! We went to the train station, ate some wiener schnitzel, and went to bed. The one and only full day might as well have been three days cause we did a lot of things. Goodness. We woke up and went to the royal palace, which was beautiful!!! (they say it was built to envy Versies in Paris... It might have won) By the time we had walked to the palace, walked through the gardens, walked to the top of a hill looking down on the grounds, and walked through the palace... I was done walking. But then we went and walked through Vienna's amusement park thing, then through its old city center, and finally to the river, by this point I was really done walking.

However bad my feet hurt though I tried to remember that the pain is only temporary and the memories are for a lifetime, but then I felt corny, so there was a bit of a dilemma there. Haha. After all that it was back to fold laundry and get everything packed and ready for our 12 hour train ride to Venice, but Not before we had a feast of yummy food Reyes brought from Spain!! Yum.

Salzburg

We got to Salzburg in the afternoon. It was raining. Of course, backside we had to walk about 20 min hauling our bags to our hostel. But Salzburg is still my favorite!! I love it.

The river runs straight thought the middle of the city and there are mountains all around. So after we got in to hostel we rented bikes and went exploring!! We found a hiking path that lead us to this really cool view of the whole city, at sunset. Yeah, it was cool. Then we ate at this really typical Austrian place. I had some really good toast with meat on it. The next day we went up to the fortress and took a tour. That was a really cool building, let me tell you! Then reluctantly we grabbed pretzels for lunch and hopped on a train to Vienna but this time to meet Reyes so that made it better!!

Munich

So Munich was kinda a whirlwind of events and time!! There was so much more to do and see in Munich, let me tell you, and when you only have two days you are always moving.

Day one: we got there and scoped out the city which really means walking way more than we need too, getting lost, and stumbling across cool buildings with disruptions in German so we have no clue what it is. But we take pictures and move on nonetheless. That night we ate at a pizza place and went to sleep because we had decided to go on a tour the next day!!

Day two: we wake up, go to the train station to get breakfast and buy sandwiches to bring for lunch, and meet to tour group at platform 11. We are heading off to Neuschwanstein castle!! Actually two of them. The other one is Schloss Hohenschwangau (the less impressive Fathers castle)Very early on we befriended two girls from Wales(Rachel and charlotte) and James from Seattle. They are great company and made our day that much better!! The castles as it turns out had a bunch of crazy history to go along with it, and they weren't as old as you might think. They were reconstructed in like the 1800s buy a father and son duo (at different times) to kinda outdo each other... (Though the son won cause his dad died so). Anyway, turns out that this is the very castle where Walt Disney got his inspiration for the Cinderella castle (or the one you see in the beginning credits!). Our tour guide was really great as well, he had a lot of information of which I could tell you about half as much. Haha. It was about two hours out of Munich, but time passed fast with all the people we were meeting. We had ran into Brice and Adam from New Mexico
now too! Brice even went to The air force academy right out by where we live (small world!). So after that long day we decided to all meet up later and go out to dinner kinda making up a fourth of July celebration!! So we went to the hard rock cafe, so worth it :)

Day Three: we went to Dachau! The first ever concentration camp. It was so hot that morning, but still I am so glad we ended up going. It was really sad and something everyone should experience. There was a definite difference in ambiance there than the rest of the trip. And from there we went straight on to Salzburg!

Frankfurt

So after traveling Denver to Dulles, then Dulles to Frankfurt (about a 13 hour trip mind you) we finally got to Frankfurt!! With little to no sleep and no idea where to go, we finally decided to go wait in line at a travel desk and half way through the line realized that we needed to make train reservations anyway!! Two birds one stone. So then after having a basic idea where to go for our hostel and having made all of our train reservations, we were on our way!! Wahoo.

The rest of our day was spent scoping out Frankfurt. We found our way to the river, found a cool looking church, ate some weird fish sandwiches, and stumbled upon a protest camp. And after a two hour nap we went back out for some wiener schnitzel for dinner!!!

Today, our second day in Frankfurt, we woke up just in time for breakfast( literally like 9:45 for breakfast that stopped at 10) and off we went. Not exactly knowing what we wanted to do we went out in search of the 'main tower'... Turns out 'the 10 best things to do in Frankfurt' didn't really help all that much. Well we found it nonetheless, then headed to the Frankfurt Botanical Gardens!! (Which for two euros was wonderful entertainment for a couple of hours btw) Even though it was raining on us off and on it was still a really good idea, I wonder who came up with it ;) After all those shannanigans we just chilled back at the hostel for a little, then went down(literally) to a train to take us over to a really old district of Frankfurt that has really great apple cider. So that's what we found!! And we even made it back in time for free pasta :)

Can I just say that I don't think I want to ever stay in a hotel again, it is so nice staying here. Everyone is so friendly and it's nice hanging with all these people from different countries speaking several different languages, it's just cool. Anyway, we are on our way to get icecream and we are ready to wake up and head out to Munich tomorrow!! Can't wait.