North Carolina

I'm going to be in North Carolina for a conference this week and it looks like I'll have a lot of free time. Any suggestions as to what I should do there??????????????

Rude Homeless Man

Today I encountered a rude homeless man. I exited the freeway and saw a man with a sign beggaging for help. His sign said "I'm needy. Any help appreciated." I felt bad for him - it was REALLY hot. I didn't really want to give him money, but I did have an unopened bottle of water. I know that water isn't that exciting, but it is something. I unrolled my window as he walked by and said, "Would you like a bottle of water?" he put his hand on his hip and sassily said "Is is cold????" I mean, would cold water be better than warm? Yes. But at least I tried. I mean, I was the only person who unrolled their window - give me a break. He decided to take the water and then say "Thanks a lot?" Oh well. I tried to be nice.

New Hair

I know it's kind of hard to see, but whaddya think?

Home Sweet Home

I'm back! It was a fabulous trip, so much fun, and I'm glad to be back. I'm going to go back and add pictures to my old posts so that you can see some of the fun things that I talked about.

I smell.....

It is official...I smell. I guess that is to be expected when you live out of a backpack. Yesterday we were in a random train station in Hungary. Very close to me sat a homeless man and his mangy dog, yet I was the one with about 30 flies all over me while he and his dog had none. Hmmmm......
Tuesday: We took a train to Vienna, which of course was late in leaving and even later in arriving in Vienna, which meant that we missed our trian to Prague. That gave us a few hours in Vienna which we spent walking from the Westbahnhof to the Südbahnhof (West Train Station to South Train Station). While walking we ate at a schnitzel restaurant. I tried to order schnitzel but just got chicken fingers and french fries - oh well. We caught the next train to Prague. When we got there we found our Hotel and then just wandered around a little bit.
Wednesday: We took a train to a little city outside of Prague calle Kutna Hora. In the train station we met two boys from London named Ashley and Harry. They went with us to the Sedlec Ossuary. It was a really creepy church/crypt where the bones of 40,000 people are arranged in the form of pyramids, garlands, a chandelier and a coat of arms. Don´t worry, I took lots of pictures.

On the train on the way back we met an 68 year old man named Joe from Texas. His wife hates to travel and he goes to Europe every summer by himself. He had some really great stories to tell and even showed us a few places in Prague when we got off the train.

We went to this astronomical clock that is like a cuckoo clock. On the hour, statues of the apostles parade through the windows on the clock and a skeleton rings the bell. Apparantly the people of the Czech Republic really like skeletons. Then we went to the St. Charles Bridge, which was really pretty. We went back to the hotel pretty early since Prague gets really crazy at night.
Thursday: We took a train to Berlin. We figured out the Metro system, found our hotel, and then went to the Hard Rock Cafe. Although we are all having a great time, we are all just about ready to be done with the trip and needed something a little bit like home.
Tomorrow we plan on going to a concentration camp, and seeing some of the more famous Berlin sights on Saturday. Then on Sunday we will stop in Hamburg on our way to Dusseldorf. I hope to have a really great hamburger and pommes (fries) in Hamburg before I get home and the diet starts. Sunday night will be in Dusseldorf and Monday we will fly home to Las Vegas. It has been a great trip - I will try to blog again one last time before we leave.

Hungary

Sunday: We got into Budapest and took a taxi to our hotel. It surprisingly turned out to be pretty nice. We dropped off our stuff and headed to a place called Hero's Square. It's pretty much a huge park with a castle, some statues, a zoo, etc.

I have been really impressed with Budapest. I wonder if Hungarians are offended by what Americans assume Budapest is like. It's the cleanest most beautiful city that we've been in so far. Lots of tree-lined streets, really wide streets, a great Metro system, the Danube going through the middle. It's great, aside from having probably the most crazy language and strange system of money.

Monday: We woke up early and took our own little walking tour of Budapest. We saw the Parliament building and St. Stephen's Basilica.

Then we took a series of busses and trams to Statue Park. After communism fell in Hungary, they decided to move all of the communist/era statues out of the city. They put them all in this park called Statue Park. We took some funny pictures imitating the statues.

We were then so hot and tired and frustrated with not being able to speak Hungarian that we ate at McDonalds. It was easy to point at what we wanted from the menu and we weren't worried about what sort of mystery food we'd be getting. Now we're back at the hotel just resting before we head to the Chinese marketplace.
Hope all is well in the states...................see ya!

Internet Again!

No, nothing bad happened to me, we just haven't been near the internet in a while. Here's the update:
Tuesday: We woke up early and went to the Vatican museum. In my opinion, the only thing remotely exciting about the museum was the Sistene Chapel, which I took some great illegal photos of.

Then we went and saw the Circus Maximus where Ashley, Amy, and Bonnie pretended to do Chariot races and I took some great video clips.

Then we went to this old church where there is a carved stone face. You stick your hand in its mouth and it will cut your hand off if you're a liar. I still have my hands, so I guess I passed.

Then we went and washed a few essentials at a laundrymat. Afterwards we ate at a restaraunt near the Vatican. They charged us way too much - random sitting fees, etc. just because we were tourists. It was annoying, but what were we going to do, fight with them in Italian?
Wednesday: We took a train to Bologna. We met a boy on the train named Brandon, he was from Canada. We ended up randomly running into him a lot over the next few days. We bought the largest map known to man of Bologna and made our way to our hotel. It was really nice.

We went to a restaraunt that our guide book recommended. It had the best Italian food we have ever eaten. To be honest, I'm not sure what I ate. On the menu it said ˝Tortelloni ricotta con burro saliva˝. Yes, I may have eaten burro saliva. It tasted like butter - maybe I like burro saliva. We ate some gelato, Ashley was proposed to by an Italian man who wanted to move to America. We went to a park where a homeless man stood and laughed at us. We decided maybe that was a sign we should leave the park.

We went back to the hotel and rested, then went out on the town. We ate french fries at McDonalds.

Then we went to a contemporary ballet performance/political protest. Who knows why they were happening at the same place, but there you have it.
Thursday: We took a train to Venice. We took a waterbus through the grand canal - I think Las Vegas did an excellent job of making Venice look real and a little bit nicer than it really is.

We ate lunch on some random island that the waterbus stopped at. Then we got back on the waterbus and ran into our Canadian friend Brandon. He went with us to the island of Murano where we shopped for blown glass jewelry that Murano/Venice is famous for. We took the waterbus back and went to St. Mark's square. The pigeons there are scarily tame and we were pretty freaked out.

Then Brandon told us about this great serve yourself restaraunt where we ate dinner. We got some gelato and went to the train station for our night train to Vienna. Upon our arrival we found out that the Italian train conductors were unhappy with their working conditions and had decided to strike. This meant that we had to stay in the most expensive, touristy city in Italy until we could get another train out of the country. Luckily we met someone who told us about a campground they were staying at just outside the city. He showed us where to take the bus and helped us get checked in there. We stayed in a cute little cabin at the campground. It really was more like a little village than a campground. It had some tents, but mostly cabins and trailers, plus a grocery store, a bar and a restaraunt.
Friday: We woke up and took the bus back into Venice. We caught our train to Vienna which took all day. Sadly, we needed to keep moving along, so all we got to see of Vienna was the train station. We immediately took a train to Sopron, Hungary. When we arrived in Sopron, Amy's brother and his companion came and took us to the branch house. They were having a Mexican themed branch party. We had a great time visiting with the missionaries, especially the senior couple who was there. They gave us some great advice about where we should go in our future travels. Then the senior sister rode the bus with us to the place where we are staying. It is the house of one of the members. She rents part of it out to the missionaries and part of it out to tourists. Her son just graduated from high school and spoke really good english. They keep telling us not to pay them, but we're going to try to anyway. We just met up Amy's brother and his companions and took them to lunch. We told them to order us some good Hungarian food. We had fried cheese with french fries, fruit soup, and crepes (mine had nutella in it). It was great.

We were glad to be with the missionaries, because there's no way we would have been able to order it on our own. In Germany and Italy we were able to make do with what little language we knew. Hungarian is a crazy language. We're pretty much mute here. We just hold up fingers and point to what we want. It's hilarious. Amy's brother taught us to say a few things, but our pronunciation is horrible.
Tomorrow we're off to Budapest, then Prague, then Berlin. We're having a great time. I can't wait to show you all pictures when I get home!

Italy Continued...

Sunday: We woke up and took a train to Rome. When we got here, we bought 3-day passes for the metro so that we can get around the city. I have never been in a more crowded or smelly situation in my life as the metro in Rome. We got to our hotel and checked in. Then we wandered around and tried to find a place to eat. We found a restaraunt that was open and decided to try it. We ordered the "special" which was far more food than I could eat: toast with tomatoes, then fried vegetables, then a huge pizza, then cake, plus (of course) coca-lite. Afterwards we went to see the Trevi Fountain,

the Pantheon,

and the Spanish steps.

We stopped for gelato and then went back to the hotel for a rest around 5:30. Our rest turned into sleeping for the night - the huge meal plus getting used to the heat of Rome wore us out! Good news - our 4th floor hotel here has air conditioning!
Monday: Went to St. Peter's Basilica. Saw where the Pope does his weekly addresses. Sadly, we won't be here on Wednesday for the next one.

We went inside and saw where they are supposed to have Peter entombed, plus the shroud of Christ, the nails, and the spear. It was a HUGE cathedral.

We tried to go to the Vatican Museum and the Sistene Chapel, but the line was too long. We'll get up and get in line early tomorrow. Then we went and ate at a random pizza place in residential Rome - I think they were annoyed with tourists coming into their local place. Then we went and saw the Colosseum,

the Roman Forum,

and Palatine Hill.

I'm taking lots of pictures, but I can't post any until I get home because I didn't bring my cord - plus most of the internet places don't let you hook anything up so that you won't give them a virus.
I'll post again in a few days - ciao!

Italy so far

Friday: We arrived by night train to Florence early in the morning.

We checked in to our hostel and then went to the museum and saw the original David sculpture. While we were in line we met a really nice British couple.

Then we went and saw the big Duomo in the city.

We stayed there and watched people for quite a while - it was highly entertaining. Then we ate some of the best pizza I've ever had followed by some great gelato.

Saturday: Today we lazied around a little in the morning. Then we walked to the Ponte Vecchio (a really famous bridge that has lots of shops on it) and all around the city.

Then we ate lunch at the great pizza place again and hopped on a train to Pisa and saw the leaning tower. We took some great touristy pictures and then came back to Florence.

Tomorrow morning we're headed to Rome.
Overall, Italy is hot. I wish that I knew a few more languages, but the Italians seem to understand my Mexican Spanish better than the Germans did :-).
Happy Father's day to all, since I probably won't blog again before it is over.
Post some comments or email me to tell me what's going on at home-especially if Scott gets his mission call! Love ya!

I'm still alive!!!

A Quick Update:
Tuesday:Arrived in Dusseldorf. Figured out how to work a German ATM. Caught a train to Köln. Walked around a little bit. We were really tired.

Caught a train to Frankfurt. Transferred to Darmstadt. Transferred to Wiesbaden. Went to Ashley's friend Theresa's house. Tried to go to the Spargel Festival but it was cancelled because of rain. Walked around and ate a real German hamburger. Went to bed early.
Wednesday:Took a train to Munich. Learned 2 very important German phrases: Sprecken ze english? and Schoklat Croissant. Went to the English Gardens-beautiful.

Ate at a traditional Biergarten-I don't think some of it was real meat.

Ran into the missionaries. Spent a night at a nice hotel because we couldn't find anything cheap.
Thursday:Took a few trains to the Neuschwanstien Castle-the one the Disneyland castle was made to look like. Learned that King Ludwig was a freak.

Came back to Munich. Spent some quality time in the internet cafe trying to book places to stay for the rest of our trip so that we don't have to keep paying tons for nice hotels. Tonight we're taking a night train to Florence.
Having a blast. I'll post more when I can. Love You!