Europe 2009

OK, lets get the bad part out first (well, at least for our moms). Our lovely hostel provided reservations for some fun adventurous things, paragliding, skydiving, cannyoning (really wish we had time for this), a big swing, hiking, ice climbing, but we wanted to stay low key, so we chose the bungee jump, but not the 'small' 260 ft jump, but the 440 ft one...out of a gondola...surrounded by huge snow capped peaks...over a lake!!!!!! whoo, the jump was AMAZING! our brains could only partially comprehend what was going on, but the cloud of adrenaline as we jumped out was unreal. falling so rediculoiusly fast towards the water from so so high does things to you, and for jen it the whip when the bungee caught helped crack and lengthen her spine, very refreshing. much scarier than skydiving. i have never seen jen so nervous until we got to the final gondola, but it was a blessing because making stupid jokes to calm her nerves helped calm mine also. and holy crap i was nervous, the worst part being when they were hooking me up in the gondola, realizing that i was actually going to do this stupid stupid thing. hahaha. just to show how nervous we were, everyone got a free beer when they picked us up and we couldnt even finish them. the CRAZY out of control driver up the twisty mountain roads didnt help much either. overall it was an incredible time, especially for the chiropractic benefits.

earlier that day we (Jen) dragged ourselves out of bed and hit up our last 'long' run in Europe, only about 6.5 miles, but i (scott) could feel the altitude a bit (3000ft, its scary coming back here to 5500ft!). We then took advantage of our eurail pass and skipped off to Brienz (not really sure how to spell it), another small town nestled between a huge lake, and bigger mountain peaks. we only had a couple hours there, but had a nice time walking along the lake, making a peanut butter/nutella (we ate SO much nutella) sandwich, and throwing rocks at ducks (mostly scott).

the switzerland bungee (see above)

then we headed to Bern, our last stop in Switzerland. We arrived late to a swealtering and stinky little hostel room (we think our next trip, having duel incomes we will opt for private rooms). Then next morning we roamed around Bern, a fun smaller town (120k) and the capital, walked past Einstein's house where he lived for a couple years and onto the rose gardens which smelled wonderful, and even got to see another kitty! (I think we saw a cat in every country except canada (we didnt leave the airport) and England, but the multitudes in Croatia and Italy made up for it!).

That afternoon we hopped on our last train ride to PARIS! Tres Bien!!! another time to use our french, well, jen used her french, while all i said was 'pardon' and 'excusez moi'. fun though. Our hostel was in a bit of a sketchy area of town, but paris is paris, and it was awesome! we found a nice kebab place across the street and hit that up, oh, so delicious! we poured a bottle of wine into our nalgene water bottle and headed to the metro to go to the effel tower to watch the fireworks for bastille day (their independence day). I'm not sure i have ever been in a crowd that big except maybe for new years eve in new york, it was insane, i was SO glad i wasent driving a car because pedestrians (me included) totally took over the roads, swarms and swarms of people were everywhere along with many cops and baracades. the fire works were good and the lit up effel tower was really cool, but as much as we loved paris and being there, we both began missing America during the show. especially watching the fireworks show on the 4th of July with our friends at Coors Field...sniff. Anyway, the walk home was even more crazy, with people seeming to materialize out of no where, we walked for about an hour to another metro station with a smaller crowd and still had to shove our way onto a subway car! but we made it back to our hostel and hit the sack at about 1, preparing to get up at 7 for our 24 hours of travel back home.

the plane rides were fine, and we are in love with air canada and want to date it. they have the coolest touch screen movie/tv shows things, and pretty good meals! We had a 6 hour layover in toronto, which we spent looking at magazines (runners world and michael jackson tributes) making a final pb/nutella bread roll, sleeping for about 15 minutes, and reminiscing about our trip. our final ride to denver was a blur, as was the ride from our friend pete, seeing their new awesome house, and driving up to loveland with a wife who was struggling to keep from drifting in and out of sleep, but i could count on every couple minutes some singing from her and a well needed poke or two :-) By that time we had been awake for about 24 hours! good!

What a great trip, thanks so much for all the comments, they made us laugh and miss you all the more!

Things we loved about europe:
- train travel
- cool archatecture EVERYWHERE
- lack of strip malls
- great, and sometimes crazy foods
- tons of history, like WAY old history, not like 200-300 years, 1000-3000 years old!
- meeting new friends, especially cruse buddies!
- nutella being everywhere
- great beers
- beautiful scenery
- new cultures
- speaking french and other languages
- seeing family while we were there!
- public transportation
- bungee jumping (sorry mom)
- stuff within walking distance
- cruise ships, everything about them!
- store brand beer (like kroger, ha!)
- paying with a credit card at your table in restaurants
- chocolate and wine

Things we missed about the US:
- grocery stores being open late
- nutella not being everywhere (scott may have eaten too much, i think we went through 3 jars while we were there!)
- air conditioning
- big beds
- cookie dough
- free bathrooms and water fountains!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
- having a bit more room
- nail clippers
- our family and friends

Let me just start by saying that out of all of the places we have been so far, Switzerland is where we want to move!
Also, there are three flies on the computer screen right now. Scott has already killed about 20.
Besides the mass of flies, it has been a great last couple of days!

Our last night in Heidelberg, we wanted to have some real german meat, so we bought some bratwurst.... well what we thought was bratwurst... it was actually something very different. Not quite sure, but it was delicious and spicy!
To sum up, we really enjoyed Heidelberg and it was our favorite place in Germany. Very quaint little town with awesome castles!

Our journey continued to Interlaken, Switzerland, where we currently are. So to paint a picture of Interlaken, picture a little town of about 5,000 situated between two giant mountain lakes, the color of the sky, with huge snow capped peaks above it and rolling green foothills below. Yea... its that sweet! After exploring the town, we had a delicious dinner of homemade pasta, corn, bordeaux and some delicious swiss chocolate while sitting in the back yard of the hostel, watching the sun set over the mountains and trying to fend off a sneaky kitty trying to get some free pets and food.

The next day, we got up early and went to Zermatt, home of giant mountains and the Matterhorn. We hadnt really been prepared to hike, but when we found a trail to a great overlook of the mountain, we couldnt resist and enjoyed a great 3 hour hike in the mountains. We had a nice stop at the top to sit at a playground, eat a nice picnic lunch and enjoy the veiws of the shark-tooth Matterhorn. One sad part of the day was when I dropped my peice of bread with nutella on it, nutella side down into the woodchips of the park while trying to flick peanut butter off of my pants. But it was ok because Scott picked the wood chips off for me and hey, everyone needs a little more wood in their diet right? OH, and when we were drinking our water, we also found a dead fly floating in it, which is impressive because we have a spill guard on it! Scott still drank it. (after he removed the fly)
That night we discovered that on the weekend, the grocery store closes at 5 on Saturday and is not open on Sunday, which means we HAD to go out to eat. We had the most delicious pizza, accompanied by beer. Just beer. We asked the waitress what kind of beer they had and she seemed confused..... big and small. So we of course got big.

Today we had a much needed relaxing day, consisting of waking up late, reading, strolling through the Interlaken, taking the train to a small (yet spectacular) town on the lake nearby and enjoying the scenery sitting by an old castle overlooking the lake. Dad and Julie would be happy to hear that we also watched the movie Chocolat after dinner while eating swiss chocolate with pockets of flavored liqueur.

Tomorrow is our last day here in Interlaken and we will leave for Bern for one night, before heading back to Paris for Bastille day (their indepedence day) before we fly home on Wednesday (aka the longest day ever). We will be sad to be in Paris without the company of Dad, Julie and Katie, but will just have to eat an extra nutella banana crepe for you guys!

Love you all

Scott wishes his beard was long enough to hang out a window.... actuallz he wishes he had a beard in general. And bz beard i mean mustache.

Heidelberg is great! Think of a pictureque little town in germany on a river with rolling green hills and a huge castle on the hillside and zou are thinking of Heilelberg. Zesterdaz we walked around the town and across the river to get a great view of the whole little town and the castle. We stopped to get a crepe (not as good as the ones in France, but still delicious with other options like applesauce and cherries) and did a walking tour of the castle. We strolled back to our hostel through the old town, filled with tourist shops (where Jen got a new hat!) but a lot of fun to window shop.
That night we went to the supermarket to get some dinner but were being zelled at in german and closing the doors, so we decieded thez were closing at 8, and had to go get a delicious kabab ( or kebap as thez like to spell it).

Todaz we went on a run, and at the beginning, it was drizzling, but bz the middle of the run, it was a total downpour. It was like being in the shower right under the nozzle...we were drenched. But at the end, the sun was peeking through the clouds, right behind the castle. After some breakfast, we took at train to Nekarsteinach, a nearbz town with 4 castles from the 12 and 13th centrurz! There is a conveinent walking trail between all of the castles and it was SO awesome. The castles were all up on the hill overlooking the town and river and all had reallz neat towers zou could climb up! I tried to stick mz hair out like Rapunzel so Scott could climb down, but it was a little too short (about 100 feet too short). On our waz back to the train, we had to stop and get some gelato....we didnt reallz want to, but we felt like we had to for Pete..... and zou cant pass up European gelato!

Tomorrow we are off to Switzerland! Germanz has exceeded our expectations (except we havn't seen one person in leiderhosen) but it has had great beer, good food and beautiful scenerz!
I cant beleive our trip is alreadz coming close to the end! Believe it or not, we onlz have 6 more dazs! We will be seeing some of zou crazy people in less than a week ! We can't wait!

Love zou all!

hello from germany! again, messed up keyboard, so if a y or a z are mixed up its not mz fault, well it is...anzhoo!

our last night in amsterdam was a great one. we went back to our favorite canal corner to watch the sunset, eat some cream cheese and salsa tortillas (jens idea of course), chips and beers (zes, we ate the beers, and thez were delish!)

we headed back to our hostel to read a bit before bed (we got new books in paris, i got 'angels and demons' and jen picked up the light 1000 pg read 'pillars of the earth'). however our reading was interruped by a couple in the bunk next to us being extremlz sick and puking-forcing themselves to puke, after eating a 'space cake', legallz found in amsterdam...one of the benefits to hostel living, others inlcude: bed bugs (jen), crazy thunderboat-train engine-space shuttle takeoff snoring, down blankets in 100 degree rooms, suprisinglz delicious included breakfasts, and multi flushing toilets.

we left the next morning, after a suprisinglz delicious included breakfast, about 45 minutes before our train left. now upon arriving we have a lovelz 15 minute stroll to our hostel, this morning however it decided to downpour, and didnt let up so we had to wrap our rain coats around us and our baggage as best we could and make the wet wet treck to catch our train. which we did :-)

a 3 hour trip to Köln gave us pleantz of time to hang drz our cloths on the first class seat backs (the eurail pass that includes 1st class is AMAZING!). we stepped out of the train station and nearlz broke our necks looking up at the ridiculously tall gothic cathedreal. we also climbed up the 533 stairs to the top of the bell tower. about half way up zou could stop and see the actual bells, jen got a picture of me infront of the biggest of the 7 bells, and about 10 seconds later it went off 15 minutes past the hour, scared the bell out of me! jen wished she had a picture of that face instead.

we think this was the tallest tower we have climbed zet, with florences tower being second, then chartres, then arc de triomphe, we dont count the eiffel tower, but that was reallz cool too.

that afternoon we searched and searched for a mysterious choclate factorz, but were unsuccessful and had it been the amazing race, we would have been eliminated.

we decided to go out to dinner and get a real authenic german sausage, but when we got our food we discovered we reallz dont know german and shouldnt pretend like we do when ordering food...the chicken fried steak, fries and salad were good though.

we just made it to heidelberg and this hostel looks like the nicest so far! its a bit rainy outside, but we plan on exploring a castle or two today. love the comments and are open to suggestions for funny things to do in our last week here in europe. (i need some more pictures of mustaches, although i alreadz have several, neat!)

Hello from Amsterdam!!

Scott and I just got into Amsterdam last night! But first to catch you up on our last bit of Paris!

Our last full day in France consisted of a long run first around Luxembourg gardens and going out to Chartres (a small city an hour outside of Paris), which has an amazing cathedral! It is such a cool church because one half of it burned down in a fire and when they re-did the tower, they did it in gothic style, so one tower is in Renissance style and the other is in gothic! Another cool fact, in WWII, they took EVERY single peice of glass out of ALL of the stained glass windows around the church so they wouldnt be harmed if the city was bombed! Cool huh?
That night we did a river boat cruise of the city. Everything is lit up at night and it was spectacular to see!

We would like to take this time to thank Dad, Julie and Katie for all of their hospitality, kindness and generosity during our stay in Paris. We had a great time hanging out with you guys and loved getting to see you in the middle of our trip!

The next day Scott and I left on a train and stopped in Belgium in Brussels! As with most of our trip, we had no idea what we were going to do there until we got there, all we knew was we wanted some Belgium waffels!
We set out on foot (and ended up walking over an hour) to the city center. Along the way we found a place that sold waffles (10 for 1 Euro) so of course we bought 10!! (they weren't that big and they were a good snack!) We were told that in Belgium they have two kinds of waffles....belgium and Delighe (I may have spelled that last one wrong). Well, the kind we got was the second and it was very yummy! They actually had big chunks of sugar in the waffles, which had a caramely taste. We had lunch in the park and watched a jazz concert. Scott and I decided that Brussels was not what we were expecting and was a little bit too much like a big city (and kind of dirty). We only stayed a few hours and then headed to Amsterdam!

Amsterdam, on the other hand, is not like a big city at all! It is REALLY pretty here! The a lot of the city (and country for that matter) is below sea level and they are constantly fighting flooding. This means that the city is full of canals and one of the best ways to navigate is by boat. It is actually very similar to Venice! It is beautiful. The only reason Scott and I could think of why it is not more popular is the overwhelming drug use (soft drugs are legal here). Walking by "coffee shops", you can get big whifs of marajuana. Sadly, we have not seen any windmills, but we did find a giant wooden clog to sit in and even saw a clog boat!! Today we went to the Anne Frank museum and the Heineken brewery. The Anne Frank museum was really neat and sad to see what happened during that time period.
The Heineken brewery, on the other hand was not sad at all, and really fun. Although they stopped producing beer in that particular factory, it was a neat tour with plenty of beer. For all of you in the US who dont like Heineken and think it tastes "skunky" or bitter, it is much better here, although it is still very bitter. But after a few, you dont really notice that much.

Tomorrow we leave to head into Germany. Our first stop is Cologne (Koln). 90% of it was destroyed in WWII but the cathedral (which is the largest gothic cathedral in the world), still stands!

We are having a great time and we are loving the cool weather in Amsterdam! (Paris was having a heat wave, just as hot as Rome, if not hotter...upper 80s and 90s)

We miss you all and as always, wish you could be with us to try the fresh Heineken!

Ok, first; this keyboard is crazy, so if the words are mispelled, dont think too much of it....

we took the train from rome to paris. It was 40 minutes late and we almost missed our connection in Milan. We made it though and the train was awzsome. we went through the alps and the mountqins were giant! However, there was a couple that was smooching the whole time, which was not oly gross, but super loud,suck face gross hooverville; sukin sounds. Wr mqde it my dads apt at ,idnight.

Day 2 we went to the Louvre museum, which was awesome and we got to see the mona lisa, venus de milo, and crap load of other things. That evening we went on a river cruise on the Seine and saw the city by boat!!!! Then went to dinner which was good, but our waiter left halfway through.....it ended up being a 4 hour dinner.

Day 3 we went to Notre Dame.....sorry no hunchback....... we looked. We saw the old Roman city ruins under the church, had delicious greek food for lunch, and nutella bqnqnq crepes for dinner on our way to see Mozarts requiem mass at a cool church.

The next day we went to Varsailles, where the kings of Frqnce lived, including louis XVI. It was reqlly orqnqte qnd neqt but SO hot thqt dqy: They are having a heat wave here. That afternoon; we went to the arc de triomphe; SO big and greqt views from the top.... there was a live cqmera from the top showing people under so Jen ran down and Scott stqyed on top and watched; Jen layed on the cement waving at the arc, while the touristed smiled in amusment.

Day 5 we went on a run and the park was closed.......who closes a park, so we ran around the park. We went to see Napoleons tomb with a cool WWI & II museum and to the Paris opera house......no phantom either!!! We also went to the Dorsay Museum and saw a lot of Monet and other impressionists and capped off the night with crepes! They are AMAZING here!

Today we finally made it to the Eiffel Tower and went to the very top. Scott stuck his head through the bars & it got stuck... just kidding, but almost! We also saw the Sacre Coeur, a huge church on a hill with an overlook of the city.

Its been fun and I have LOVED using all of my french I hqve learned. Paris is an amazing city; except for maybe the backards keyboard;
Tormorrow we are going on an 11 mile run; wish us luck! We love you all and wish you could be here with us!

whoa, its warm in rome, but also super fun!

OK, two things we thought of from our cruise before we begin. one, when we were waiting in line for st marks cathedral there was this woman begging, which is fine, but we couldnt get over how funny the situation was. she was begging with her beggin cup in one hand, which is normal, but the other arm was wrapped around a big bag of cookies! what?! as the line moved, when we got to her, i looked at her, she took it as a sign for free money, and then i stuck out my hand for a cookie, she looked puzzled, then smiled, then thankfully we moved because i didnt really want one of those nasty looking cookies. funny though

second, on our final night of the cruise we sailed past an active volcano at about 10pm, (stromboli) it was super hard to see at first, but there was a lightning storm, so every once in a while a flash of the entire volcano would appear, super cool. and after a while of watching it began erupting! shooting lava a few hundred feet into the nights sky, so cool!

OK, on to roma (why do we spell it rome if they spell it roma in roma, who knows).

our first day after taking the train an hour from our ship to the city, we dropped our stuff off in the hostel and went romeing (hehe) around the city. we were so suprised as we were just strolling because around each corner there was another famous monument! we went to the trevi fountain, which is way bigger than the replica in vegas! we hit the pantheon, which was also HUGE! as well as a couple other monuments, very fun. we made our way back to the hostel, made some tortellini (because we are in italy and all), got a bottle of vino, let breath very elegantly in our nalgene and sipped it as we tried to guess the nationality of tourists visiting the trevi fountain at night.

Friday we got up early for a run and found a nice park with a couple dirt trails, way better than cobblestone sidewalks, yuck. after a quick hostel shower (whch is different from a normal shower, mostly just smaller and fluxuating water temp) we jumped on the metro (subway) and headed to the vatican city. we toured st peters basillica, the largest catholic church in the world, and home of the pope, who we think we saw on the roof, maybe.

we then headed to the vatican museums, we hurried to the sistine chapel to make sure we had time to soak it all in, but when we were finished, we couldnt go back, and did the entire museum walk twice, but it was pretty awesome. that ceiling is pretty spectacular! wow. there was also a raphael exibit which was really cool, and lots of old maps that i really enjoyed. we decided to walk to the botanic gardens, but when we saw how much it cost, we decided to forgo the flowers and hit up some gilato instead, i do not regret this decision.

Finally, today we walked to the colosseum and taking the advice of my friend pete, we did an audio tour, which was well worth it, really really interesting, like it was free to the public, each spectator could only get one wine, they once made a huge whale and released 50 bears from it for hunters to kill, ha! bears. we then walked to the palatine hill and the forum, what amazing ruins dating over 2000 years old!

OK, we are stinky, sweaty, a bit sticky and hungry, so we will now make our way to the supermarket to make up a pasta dish with perhaps a couple cold beers. we head to paris tomorrow where we will meet up with jens dad, cant wait! we miss you all, love the comments, and are beginning to miss american food (how sad).

Ciao!

Well, here we are! Back in Rome! We have 3 days here before we head out to Paris!

As for our adventures, we left off in Venice. Well, after our last post, we spent the rest of the day sight seeing and enjoying navigating our way through the crazy maze that is the Venice streets! One thing that we had never heard about was Venice at night. Apparently, every night the waters of Venice rise and flood everything. We were walking in St. Marks square in water up past our ankles! It was pretty amazing, but kind of gross to wade around in trash, pigeon poop and a few spare bandaids!! Now we know why there is little trash or pigeon poop on the ground during the day! Most exciting, Scott's bag finally caught up with us!

Our trip to Dubrovnik, Croatia was really fun! We hiked down some great cliffs to stick our feet in the water. The old town of Dubrovnik is a really neat, walled old city. We climbed up a big hill and had a great panoramic view of old and new Dubrovnik!

Our next stop was Naples, where we saw the old city of Pompei! What a cool place! It was so neat to see the town, which is extremely well preserved and much bigger than we were expecting! Naples is where pizza origninated and we felt the need to try some official pizza from Naples, so we took a stroll into the town and had the pizza. Tasty!!!

We are expecting to see some great sights and sweat a lot in the next few days in Rome!! We will let you know how that goes.......

well, jen dared me so i have kicked a pigeon, not too hard though

our first port on our cruise was a small town called portofino. great little place! we hiked around and ate lunch with our feet in the cool water, very nice.

next we spent two days, one in florence and one in pisa. pisa, kinda weak, the leaning tower was fun, and the pictures also fun, but not much else to see. florence on the other hand was amazing! we did have to wait in line for the accademia (where the david is) for almost 3 hours, yikes, but WELL worth it! its so huge!! we climbed the bell tower, saw the ponte veccio and the duomo.

we enjoyed a day at sea, i got third in a speed climbing competition, and jen won the gold in a mini golf tourni, capping her win in a sudden death round with a hole in one! maybe a bigger accomplishment than a doctorate...hmmm.

we stopped in sicily and took the train to a town called taormina, a cool ancient ruin of an ampatheater from the greeks in 300bc, whoa! then climbed a huge hill to have lunch by a chuch with staggering views of the town below and mt. etna an active volcano towering at 10900ft. pretty cool.

another day at sea, lots of sun, food and reading. the only tough part is doing long runs around the ship, its great that there is a 1/4 mile track around the top of the ship, but we are not looking forward to our 32 lap day comming up, at least its a place to run, and we love running at sea level!

now we are in venice and only have like 4 more minutes to go, its a bit overcast today, but really fun, and a nice break from the heat. it was 102 in florence, whoot! it is SO beautiful here, we have loved getting lost in the crazy streets and the beautiful canals. we just saw st marks square and the chuch, wow! we have another day here and then we are off to croatia and then pompeii.

we love and miss you all! we will check back in a couple days when we reach rome. my lost bag is still having a fun journey as well i hope, maybe will join us today, but i have gained a couple new t shirts.

we had a great end to our UK experiene. Of the many things we ended up doing our last couple days in London: seeing the tower of london and the crown jewls (plus a 500 carrat diamond, made from a 3000 carrat diamond!), but pretty sweet touring a castle that is 1000 years old and where the royal family lived for 600 years, we saw shakespears globe theater, met up with our friends mark and sarah for some great pub food and a couple beers, we also went to the royal observeatory and stood on opposite sides of the prime meridian, i felt very far from jen :-)

my bag, however, liked london so much it decided to stay a bit longer, but we are hoping it will meet up with us before we leave on our cruise this evening. Our cruise is all around italy and hits croatia one day too, i think its about 13 days and should be awesome! plus we dont have to share a room full of bunk beds anymore, yeah!

thats about it, we probably wont be on the internet for a couple days while we are on the cruise. thanks for the comments, love em! havin lots of fun. and look at all these neat italian symbols òàùèé°ç§ ì

PS its HOT in Rome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! whoot!