The end is near...

Well, the trip is almost over. James and I are both looking forward to getting things back to normal. I'm looking forward to NYC with Callie, whom I haven't seen in over a year now! When we get back to Bozeman we have a quite a few projects; 1st I need to find a job!

We'll be back in NYC Tuesday evening. We'll have our cell phones back then too. Wednesday we're going to a Mets vs. Twins game and Friday we're going to a comedy club. We'll be back in Spokane Saturday afternoon.

lo and behold, rotating meat is good

yah, we sprung for rotating meat today, it`s the pork they put in pitas. It tasted good, but qbout a 1/2 hour later we were on q frqntic search for a bathroom in the Louvre. On to ,ore pleasant things; we went to Versailles this morning, i feel sorry for the landscapers! Then to the Centre Pompidou, we didn`t go in, I just wanted to see the exterior. And then we went to the Louvre for a few hours, we only really wanted to see the Mona Lisa, and then we just wandered around. That place is HUGE!!!

We`re ready to go home, we desperately need meat: Not kidding. Neither of us could ever be a vegetarian. It surprises both of us how familiar our routine has become. The unknown is now becoming familiar in a weird way. I`m used to strange beds, sharing a bathroom, bottled water, not knowing where the bathroom is or how to flush or turn on the lights.

This will be short....

The French Keyboard is crazy! Just want to let everyone know we made it safely and with out any problems! Today we went to the Eiffel tower, Arc de Triumph, Notre Dame; champs Elysee, and the Latin Quqrter; where we had relly good crepes for dinner. Tomorrow were going to go to Versaille; the Marais Quarter, the centre Ponpidou and then to the Louvre. Thats all for now, this keyboard is wickedly stressfull! oh, we'll be back in nyc on the evening of the 19th.

Barcelona, continued

Yesterday we went to parc Guell and to Casa Mila, both were designed by Antonio Gaudi. They were pretty cool. We wanted to see the inside of Casa Battlo but it was too expensive. The outside is really neat though. You can see Gaudi´s influence throughout the city.

We didn´t really do much for our anniversary, we figured being in Barcelona was cool enough. We did go out for tapas again but it wasn´t as good as the previous restaurant.

I think our hotel is Paris has internet so I´ll try to throw up a blog or 2 while we're there.

Adios!

Tapas

We went out to dinner tonight, and it was soo good it´s worth writing about already! The food was nothing spectacular, but it was very good! I´m still full! We had went to a tapas restaurant that was recommended by the hostel. We ate outside which was nice, all of the sounds add to the experience. There was music almost the entire time, different types: spanish guitar, hammer dulcimer, and then guitar again but all popular songs in the U.S. The only foul moment was when I had to tell one of the many rose vendors to leave us alone (most leave when you say no, this one was too persistent, like the umbrella vendor). Anyway, we had pasta salad and greek salad. The greek salad was cheese (mozzerellaish), tomatoes and maybe pickles, we´re not sure. The pasta salad was pretty much tuna salad, both were pretty good. Then we had veal sirloin cuts on french bread (so good!), bravadas (Fried potatoes with mayo and some spicy sauce), coquettes (Fried cheese and ham balls, good but not as good as the rest) and fried cuttlefish. I surprisingly ate a lot of the cuddlefish, it reminded me of calamari. I think we liked it so much because they actually salted stuff. We´re so desperate for salt that we buttered bread and then salted it (With salt that we brought from home). Ok, and for desert we had catalan style creme which was creme brulee with a little cinnamon and creme caramel. We were stuffed after that, still are! And it was cheap!

Anyway, I´m going to try to go to sleep in our 90 degree room, as long as I´m full I´m sleepy.

Barcelona

We finally made it to Barcelona. The trains getting here were a nightmare, I´ll admit it, I finally cried. We had itinerary that was printed for us in Venice at that train station. So we got up at 5:30 am to catch the train at 6:56am. We got to the train station and the train was listed as being on time, track 1, everything as usual, and then 6:56 came and went, no explanation. So we waited for the ticket office to open and I did my best in french to tell the agent we needed the next train to Barcelona, he told us not until that night. The agent next to him spoke english and she gave us new itinerary. We´re pretty sure she tried to screw us, we´ve found the french don´t care. So we did what she told us and when it was time to transfer trains we figured out she told us to get off at the wrong station so we had to take a bus to another station and wait a round for 3 hours and then transfer again, and supposedly again but it turned out we didn´t really have to and the itinerary we had wasn´t even close to correct. Anyway, 6 hours later than planned, we made it.

Barcelona is really nice, but hot and our hostel is junk. The only window to our room has a bed pushd up to it so you can´t open it and there´s no AC. It´s probably close to 90 degress in there. Hopefully I´ll be able to sleep tonight ( I was beyond exhausted last night, lucky for reception).

Today we went to Sagrada Familia, it´s the coolest church we´ve ever seen! Unfortuantely, over 100 years after being started it´s still not finished so it´s covered in scaffolding, hard to get a good picture. We also went to the German Pavilion, aka Barcelona pavilion and Mies Van Der Roh (SP) Pavilion. It was really nice. We also walked around for a while on Mt. Jiuc, where all the old Olympic infrastrucrture is. Tomorrow we´ll go to Casa Mila and Parque Guell, then maybe to the beach if we have time. Tonight we´re going to go out for dinner.

The french Riviera was nice, but it was a little more like a geriatric convention and unfortunately the beaches to not require you to wear a top. I think at least 60% of the people at the beaches were eligable for a senior discount. We´re both officially ¨French Fried¨ , we spent to much time in the sun our 1st day (even with sunscreen) and the 2nd day was a little boring as a result. The water was beautiful, perfect temp for swimming, and finally, it didn´t rain on us!

I´ll give another update before we leave Barcelona.

Sea Enemies

Last night after I keft our blog we had dinner at the hostel- I had fresh pasta with pesto and james had stuffed mussels and local wine. The mussels were only 7euro! I thought they were excellent, and my pesto was very good too. We're going to go try a retaurant in town tonight.

James was swimming in the mediterranean by 9:30 this morning while we were waiting for a train. There are 5 small towns here, all linked by train and hiking trails, it's a national Park and a UNESCO world heritage sight. The towns are, in order, Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza, and Monteroso. We're staying in Manarola. We took the train to Vernazza this morning and then hiked to Monterosso. In Monterroso we went swimming again even though it was raining (It was sunny this am). Then we took the train from Monterosso to Riomaggiore and then hiked back to Manarola. These town are all still very touristy, but we've noticed a lot of the tourists are french. Still plenty of Americans though. We had wanted to go snorkeling or sea kayaking today but it rained all afternoon. Now it's sunny again. We're hoping that on the French Riviera we'll have those opportunities.

We took a lot of pictures, there are so many flowers here! I'm not sure you could spend a week here, the towns are all so small it doesn't take much to explore them, but there are hiking trails galore so if you really wanted to hike you certainly could spend a lot of time doing it.

We went swimming again this afternoon in the coves in Manarola. I was a little nervous because down the shore a little way there were a lot of spiky anemone. I've decided it's easier to call them sea enemies, I just can't seem to get the word "anemone" out. When were were out on the breakwater (which is huge chunks of raw marble!) there were little tiny crabs all over. The looked like huge spiders from a distant ande I freaked out a little bit the first time I saw some between the rocks.

We've decided if we see someone working in one of the orchards in town (they're every where!) we'll see if we can pay them and pick a little fruit. We got really good peaches at the grocery store but I have no idea if they were local.

oh, and this morning both James and I were woken up by a rooster cock-a-doodle-doing outside. I think there are cat birds here too, which is a terrible sound- it sounds like a cat is being tortured. We heard one in pompei too.

In St. Raphael we're staying at a hotel so most likely we wont have internet, so if you don't hear from us, just know we're enjoying our time at the beach (rain or shine!)!

Pack your bags!

James and I have only been in Manarola for a few hours and we'd already recommend visiting here! The are five town in total, all old fishing villages built into the mountain sides on the mediterranean. We walked around for a few minutes this evening and saw lemon, apricot, peach, kumkwat(sp?) trees, grape vines galore and even an artichoke! This is also where pesto was invented. Tomorrow we're going to go hiking and swimming, maybe snorkeling. We'll be sure to take lots of pictures!

Ciao!

Adventures in Pompei and to Mt Vesuvius

Our day started with an insane bus ride to Pompei. That was just the beggining. We got to the bus station just fine, but the bus ride was something else. The bus driver passed EVERY car on the road! There are posted speed limits but he had to be going at least twice as fast. It was a little scary! Pompei was excellent, we were there from 9:30 am to 2 pm. We took around 150 picturers so I'll let them explani everything later. We thought it was going to be small but it's huge! Pretty much the entire city was excavated. We didn't even see all of it!

Ok, the adventure to Mt Vesuvius; We went to the "point of sale" booth as indicated in the ticket office. Our guide book says to buy tickets on the bus so we waited at a sign that had bus routes. Well the time the bus was supposed to come came and went to we walked down the hill to the tourist office. He didn't nhave tickets and told us to try the tourist shop across the street. They didn't have tickets and told us to go back up to the train station on the hill. We went back and were told to go back to the tourist office. The guy at the tourist office just said to get on the bus and pay later. Other people had tickets and said they got them at the train station. I think they bought them at the train ticket window even though the sign in the window said to buy tickets at the point of sale booth. I don't know... the other places we had tried usually have tickets but they had run out. So anyway, the bus driver told us to pay at the top. 10 minutes into the bus ride he pulls over and starts yelling at someone on his cell phone for almost 5 minuts. The one person on the bus who spoke Italian asked if there was a problem so he made her translate to us and some otheer people who also couldn't get tickets: we were to just pay him 5 euros for the trip and that would be fine. That was cool with us because a round trip ticket is usually €8.60. That was taken care of but the bus ride up up the mountain was something else. It's switched back pretty much the whole way nd he would just lay on the horn to warn people we were coming and then he would yell "It's okay, it's okay" you could see people white knucking the seat, wide eyed with great looks on their faces. We hiked to the crates wich was letting out a little steam here and there. The way back down the mountain was a little better, we came with in inches of colliding with a little car, the bus driver just laid on the horn until the guy backed up. The driver had honked before we turned the corner. You really had to be there to get the full experience but let's just say it was scariest bus trip we've ever experienced.

we had really good pizza again tonight, it's so fresh tasting!

We leave for Cinque Terre very early tomorrow, we're looking forward to laying on the beach and eating fresh pesto!

I have to go shower, we're absolutely filthy! The dirt on Vesuvius is black and as a reult my feet are black as well. Oh, I'm now carrying rocks in my backpack, I couldn't resist! But volcanic rocks are lighter than regular rocks right?

The Umbrella vendors worst nightmare

Is either the sun or me (sara). It rained today and the umbrella vendors (who are illegal) were out in full force. One guy put his arm full of umbrellas out in front of me so I smaked all of the umbrellas as hard as i could with my arm.

Rome was great, there was too much to see though. We went in the colosseum on saturday and saw some of the ancient roman ruins. Some date back to the 9th century BC. Today we did see the pope and we went to the panthoeon. We wanted to go into st peters but the line was too long and we missed our chance. Next time.

This key board is really hard to type with so I'm keeping this brief.

We have over 200 pictures of rome alone so I can't to show everyone, we'll make a power point presentation.

Can someone print this and give it to grandma, MOM?

We in Naples now. Wow. I have to breath into my shirt quite frequently and ste pover mounds of trash. I don't know why they even have stop lights because it's just a free for all. Quite amusing to watch though, but not fun to cross. We did have the BEST pizza we've had had tonight, and it wa dirt cheap! Pizza was invented in Naples. We might go back to the same place tomorrow night.

Tomorrow we're going to pompeii, and if we have time to the crater on top of vesuvius. I'm not sure I'll be able to sleep tonight!

Ok, I'll try to leave another blog tomorrow, hopefully on one of the other computers that doesn't have a sticky keyboard. If I don't, It might be awhile before we have internet access again. I'm not sure our next hostel (In Cinque Terre) has it and I'm pretty sure our budget hotel on the French Riviera doesn't.

Oh, our scrambled eggs were excellent! We also had fried potatoes with garlic and shallots! So good!

A few pictures

At last, a computer with access to a USB port. I'll just put upa few pics, this computer is slow and I'm paying for my time on it.


The 1st one is us in Innsbruck, Austria.

2nd one is in Murren, Switzerland, in the Alps.
















Annecy France-------------------------------->


James in Venice.

That's all for now, this is taking forever. We'll have hundreds of pictures by the time we're done, so don't worry, you'll get to them.

When in Rome....

We made it to Rome!

Farva is from the movie "Super Troopers", Eileen nailed it!

We have not run into any bed bugs or anything else too bad, our hostel in poland had a moldy shower but it was only one night so we managed. I had researched all of our hostels pretty extensively, reading reviewss, getting ratings, all of that, before booking any of them. We also sleep in silk sleep sacks just in case. Sometimes I look around for bedbugs too, I haven't found any.

Since our last blog we've been to Florence and Pisa. Florence smells like poo. We were there two nights and when we came in on the first afternoon we opened the door to our room (Which was nice) and we both said it smelled like eggs. Then the next day, eggs again. Then James figured it out, after looking out the window (Which we decided to keep shut), in some old cities, the storm drains and the sewer drains are the same. Most places have separate drains. Every time the neighbors flushed the toilet we could hear it emptying into the storm drain.

The Duomo (Santa Maria del Fiore) in Florence was incredible though. I don't remember all of the history behind it but it's one of the 1st of its kind and most of the technology used to build it had to be invented at that time. It's double shelled (we're not sure why) and we went all the way up to the top, which means you go up 463 stairs, on crazy staircases between the two shells. The stairs in many places are only a 1 and a half feet wide with the slope of the dome right over head, most people had to hunch over. That was pretty much the extent of Florence, we went to a few other places but none compared to the duomo.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa was really cool too, and we took those really stupid tourist shots of us pretending to hold it up. There's really not much else in Pisa besides the tower. We didn't go in it because it's really expensive.

Today we went to the Vatican. We're going to go back bright and early tomorrow and go up into St. Peter's Basilica, the line was too long today. Then we went to the Spanish Steps and Trevi Fountain. Both were mobbed with tourists but we still got some good pictures in. Tomorrow we're going to see the rest of the sights. We wanted to let ourselves rest a little bit this evening.

This hostel has a kitchen so we made dinner, shopping at grocery stores is always an adventure. We had wanted to make beek stroganoff but couldn't find any sour cream. When we were in Interlaken we made Tacos but didn't know what kind of cheese to buy, and we made a bad choice and had cheeseless tacos. Tomorrow for breakfast we're having scrambnled eggs with procuitto, we can't wait. Most of our hostels serve breakfast, which consists of bread, cornflakes yogurt and instant coffee. We are so tired of it!

We're looking forward to tomorrow, Hopefully we'll find time for another blog, but if we don't it's becasue there is so much to see here!

If Farva were in Venice....

no one would argue about a liter of cola, he could have a litter of beer, no questions asked. James and I ate out last night, it was good and James enjoyed a liter of beer. We had a 1st course, Pasta, and then salad, and then the main dish, we both had chicken with French fries. The menu said potatoes, but i guess its thier choice of potato. And we had gelato for desert, for the 3rd time that day, its the one thing that is really cheap, and good!

Were off to Florence in few hours, we spending two nights there and making a day trip to Pisa. Then we go to Rome.

The catch up

Finally, we can catch everyone up; now were in Venice, We can see why so many people come to visit, it looks exactly like the pictures! There are tons of tourists here though, its sometimes nice to be around other Americans though because then you dont feel so isolated.

Innsbruck Austria is a places James and I would highly reccomend visiting, we would like to go back. The train ride through Austria and Lichtenstein was absolutely gorgeous! Theres tons of cheap skiing too!

Switzerland wasnt quite as pictureque as wed imagined, but still very pretty, the vinyards on mountain sides looked really neat from the train. We stayed in Interlaken, we had really wanted to do some extreme sport, as itàs the extreme sport capital of EU or somethng like that but the prices were outrageous! Whitewater rafting was close to 100 swissfrancs a person and we can do it in Bozeman for $32! So we went hiking and took a tram ride instead. We, okay James, "accidently" missed the tram back down the mountain so we had to hike. It took several days for our legs to recover. We saw cows with real cowbells though, smelt them too!

Onto France, When we arrived on our first evening, it was hot out! The lake (Lake Annecy) was so beautiful we couldnt wait to go swimming! And then it rained clear until we left. We did see some amazing lightning strikes though, and we still walked around the Veille Ville (Old town) and ate cheap delicious croissants until we were stuffed. I tried Violette ice cream, and it does taste pretty much like violettes, but that much isnt as good as it sounds, i think violeetes are better as a garnish. Oh, and we ate out once, since it was a tourist trap town restaurants were very expensive, so we ate at the cheapest one we could find and then wished we wouldnt have. James had a 4 cheese pizza and then couldnt get the taste of dirt out of his mouth for quite awhile. I had salad nicoise, yuck! I found a bug in it and lost my appetite. James ate one of the anchovies off my salad, and he, who will eat almost anything, had a hard time swallowing it. Unfortunately the only grocery store we could find was tiny place that didnt sell much worth eating so we stuck with cheap sandwiches and croissants. We spent one night in Aix-Les-Bains, which turned into a small nightmare. We had a cheap hotel, but it turned out to be in BFE (very far away in other words) so we had to take a taxi (22 Euros) There was not a grocery store or restaurant open anywhere so we had potato chips and a power bar for dinner. Then we found a bus we could take from our hotel, with the most uncomfortable bed weve ever slept in, and it didnt come the next morning when we thought it would. So we had to take a taxi back to the train station. Anyway, we made it to Venice with out any further problems, we even had a few hours to explore Geneva while we waited for our next train.

Today we went to Piazzo San Marco, Mobs of tourists and pidgeons but pretty neat. Its so cool that there are no car here, everyting is done by boat! many of the "streets" are only a few feet wide and everything is done via the canal, even garbage collection!

I dont know when well have internet access again, not all of our hostels have it and internet cafes can be expensive.

Dad: Ive tried calling you but your phone wont accept calls from pay phones. I heard Bruce Springsteen in Poland, At our Hostel in Switzerland a girl from Japan was wearing a Leinenkugels t shirt.

Ive been sending postcards so either youll get your own or check grandma and grandpas.

Disclaimer: I dont know where the apostrophe is on this crazy keyboard and im typing really fast because im paying for internet time so exscuse all of my errors.

Austria, Switzerland, France Update

Were in an internet cafe in Geneva, so this is going to be quick because I only have a few minutes. Austria was probably the most scenic place I have ever seen, absolutely beautiful. Switzerland was pretty too but so expensive. We hiked a little bit in the Alps our calves hurt for several days. Annecy, France was beautiful too but it rained almost the entire time we were there, we had wanted to go swimming and rent peddle boats but instead we stayed at our hotel and let our calves rest. Aix les Bains was very nice too, but it was still fairly cold and rainy. Our hotel situation was not cool, but we managed to find it (Our first cab ride), more details later. Now were killing time until our train leaves for Venice. When I get a chance Ill leave a better blog. James turn with the computer.

Marzipan and other good stuff

We made it to Vienna, and its hotter than hec here. There might be a lot of tpos because im using a german keyboard and a fer keys are in differant places.

Auschwitz was a little intense but a lot of it was rebuilt so that made it easier, it was the displays and the pictures (actual pictures taken of people when they arrived) that were hard. The kid's shoes and the human hair were probably the hardest. What was so weird is that the area was quite beautiful, and the buildings that houses prisoners were nice brick buildings with big white windows, grass and large trees! Better than what a lot of people live in! I gues that was part of the disquise so it wasnät obviously a concentration camp. We didn't go to Birkenau, we'd had enough after a few hours.

The town of Krakow was pretty nice, I think it's were Schindler from Schindler's list lived, we saw it advertised. I could be wrong though, it could have been a different town nearby. Virtually nothing in town was in english, pretty challenging. I canät believe we rode a public bus 70km and made it without a problem , that is after we spent an hour looking for the bus station.

Last night I ate peirogis for dinner and james had a cabbage roll, we're not entirely sure what we ate but we left the restaurant very full. Then in the town square we listened to a live band that played many american songs.


The night train was just a little hairy, we had a reservation but the reservation ticket said it wasnät valid with a train ticket. We have Eurail passes but they#re supposedly not valid in Poland. We asked a ticket agent who spoke a little english and she said we were okax, then before boarding the train we asked a train attendant and he seemed to think that was all we needed, then like 5 minutes before departure, he came and demanded a ticket; then we got a ittle nervous, I gave him our eurail passes and he seemed to like that and said something that sounded like yes so in the end we were okay. I didnät sleep well though, we were woken up twice for passport control at the Czeck boarder and again at the austrian border. The Czeck officers were very intimidating looking with huge guns.

We arrived in Vienna at 6 am this morning, it's not the most scenic place but we found a beautiful park with tons of rose gardens. I took a lot of pictures, so as soon as we have access to a USB port we'll post them. We had to kill time until 2, when we could check into our hostel. We explored a little bit and then we ate at a street cafe, the waitress spoke no english but some of the menu had word we recognined; Panini, Proscuitto, salame, paprika...so we had paninis and then some ice cream with a shot of espresso and whipped cream, I guess thatäs popular here, according to the guide book. There's a lot of bakeries around so we went into one and did a lot of pointing until I got a strawberry shaped marzipan, which look much cuter than they taste.

And now we're at the hostel, doing much needed laundry. James only brought 3 pairs of underware so I guess itäs needs to be done a little more frequently. Either that or heäs going to have to buy more becasue the 3 pair thing doesnät really work on our schedule.

We'll probably take the rest of the pretty easy, We've been pounding pavent pretty hard and we've had two nights with little sleep (the hostel in poland was full of drunk people yelling all night). I'm a little worried this hostel might be loud too (we got free drink coupons for thier bar upon arrival) but I'm tired to the point (and most of the people here speak english) that I might get colorful if I can't sleep.

We go to Innsbruck tomorrow, 5 hours on the train, we donät have any specific sights in mind and it's much smaller than Vienna so it should be a little more relaxing. I don't think we'll have internet access there so if you don't hear anything for awhile that why.

Real Quick

We made it Poland, after sitting on the tarmac for an hour and a half. Our first impression of poland is that it's very beautiful, not how I imagined it. Today looks like it will be a beautiful day too. We arrived after dark so we didn't see much, but what we could see makes us think that this is probably a very beautiful city as well. I think a large part of the town center is surrounded by a large park. We just walked around the perimeter. The night life here is very active, as a result I didnt sleep well last night, drunk people shouting outside my window all night. We're going to Aushwitz today, then taking a night train to Vienna.

The Perfect Pint

We found some pretty good food, it took a good hour. Our Hostel only has toast for breakfast so we were hungry pretty early in the day. Since our hostel is in the temple bar district we figured we'd be able to find some pretty good pub grub. Unfortunately it's all very expensive and there's probably more Italian restaurants here than Irish ones. Eventually we found a place a little further away form the touristy area and I had an excellent steak sandwich, i even ate the mushrooms. Traditional Irish food (Stew, Bangers and Mash) is very expensive in this neighborhood. After lunch we went to the Guinness Storehouse, admission was a little pricey, as all tourist things are, but I learned a lot. We both got to pull our own pints and both did it perfectly, we have certificates to prove it. I didn't drink much of my Guinness, I'm not a huge fan. We also walked along the River Liffey this morning, not much to report.
Tomorrow afternoon we fly to Poland. WE have to check out of our hostel by 10:30am (I'm sure we'll be out by 8) and then carry our back packs all day until we get to the airport around 1:30 - 2:00. I'm not really looking forward to it but I had better get used to it. It's the 1st of many times I'll be doing it. I don't know if our next hostel has free internet or not, so if you don't hear form us for a little while that's why. Hope to hear form everyone soon!

One more thing...

Just to answer a few questions; we found a grocery store near our hostel in London so we didn't have to buy egg sandwiches anymore. Tonight in Dublin we ate out and both had fish and chips, a little bland but still good, James had a Guinness of course.

The weather in London was cold and rainy all three days. It's a little warmer in Dublin and sunny! Hopefully tomorrow will be as nice as today!

The Big Update

Our Hostel in Dublin has free internet (but no access to a USB port so no pictures yet) so I'll try to update you on everything. London was very cool and VERY expensive and with the exchange rate everything was twice what we would pay in the US. But It shows that there is money in london, everything is detailed and designed, at least in the tourist areas. The subway is also very nice and very easy to use. The coolest thing we saw in London was the Tower of London, parts were built in the 1500's. We saw the crown jewels, and old torture devices. We took a lot of pictures!

Our train ride to Holyhead was uneventful, the town of Bangor looked really neat. The Ferry ride was also uneventful but we enjoyed the comfort of the ferry. The entire thing was set up like a nice lounge; tables, arm chairs, couches, cinema, bar....

You can immediately tell that Ireland is a poorer country than England. It's kinda dingy in Dublin and the streets are not well labeled and the tram system was new but very slow. Our hostel is in the old part of town, which is pretty neat, we're night next to a huge old cathedral, the only bummer is that we're four big flights of stair up in a room that sleeps 24 with 4 showers and it reeks light feet. Our last hostel smelt a little like feet to but it wasn't as bad as this one. Tomorrow we don't really have any specific plans, just exploring. We might go to the Guinness Storeroom. Possibly the Jameson Whiskey Distillery, and then we'll just wander around the area.

Oh, we had a small adventure with the bus from the Ferry Port; the didn't get to the Bureau de Change before it closed so we didn't have any money to get on the bus. So we found an ATM but it only gave $50's and the bus only takes the exact fare. So we went back to the ATM and figured out how to get a 10 (the smallest denomination it would give) and finally the bus driver took it and made change for us. His english was really bad and he was pretty much yelling and pointing when we tried to give him a 50. The story doesn't really sound good now that \I retell it, but it was our 1st snafu, probably not our last.

If grandma wants to know how we get around tell her we took the subway in London, then a train, then a ferry, then a bus, then a tram (above ground light rail) and we'll take a shuttle bus to the dublin airport and then fly to Poland. Buses are extremely confusing to us so we'll try to avoid them but sometimes my feet hurt too bad. Yesterday my right ankle hurt so bad I limped back to the hostel from the grocery store. It feels better today after spending most the day sitting. It did start to hurt a little on the walk to the Hostel.

Anyway, It's quarter to 10 here, so I'm going to go up to our feet smelling room and try to get into a deep slepp before all of the other 22 roomies arrive! We're going to get up early in the morning so we can get showers, hopefully.

If you want to know more about anything just let me know!

REALLY old stuff.

We went to the tower of London today. It is old...to say the least. I was really expendive to get in but I think it was well worth it. The corwn jewels where amazing. Where else are you going to see a real daimond the size of a golf ball and a 500 lb punch bowl made out of solid gold?
We are already tired of walking. I think Sara already is feeling the pain. We should be in great shape when we get back though. Legs like tre trunks.
We also made our way to the Natural History Museum. Lots of kid's stuff but the building was cool.

We Made It!

I thouht I had posted a blog last night but I guess it didn't post.... Anyway, we made it to London without any problems, our flight from JFK was delayed by two hours but they rebooked most people on an earlier flight so our flight was was not even close to full. It was nice. Yesterday we walked around quite a bit, crossed the Tower Bridge, explored the city near the Thames River, it's exquisite! Its very old and very new, the streets are all cobblestone and many are extremely narrow. Today we went to Buckingham Palce to see the changing of the gaurd, we also went to Westminster Abbey (Very Old!), House of Parliment (saw Big Ben), and Trafalgar square. Our Hostel is right next to the Millenium Bridge and St. Pauls Cathedral. Tomorrow we're going to go to The Imperial War Museum and the Tower of London. We haven't been stressing ourselves out trying to see everything, our feet hurt already! We take the train to Dublin on Thursday.

James' School Work

Sara let you know what she is up to in school. Now it's my turn to inform you. The picture above is an old irrigation diversion on the Lower Jefferson River, near Whitehall, Montana. This is about 40 min west of Bozeman. The details of the thing are long and boring but the basic idea is that it isn't getting the job done. A group of four of us did preliminary design for a new boulder drop structure, sediment load transport and bank stabilization. I think it ended up turning out pretty good. I learned a lot in the process at least. I think next semester we do a complete set of construction drawings for the same project with a new group (thank God!).

Other than school work, I am just doing a lot of biking. Many of the trails around town are to wet to ride but I have my secret places.

So the Europe trip. If any of you have suggestions of cool places to go, let us know. We know what cities and towns we will be going to, but specifics are going to be decided on the fly.

The Mystery is Over!

I've talked about my "Boards" to everyone but I'm not sure it really means much to most people. The actual dimensions of each board is
30" x 50" They're pretty big. You can't really see the details but you can at least get an idea of what's going on. My final review is Wednesday morning. I can't say I'm excited or nervous, but I am looking forward to dressing up for it. I rarely have an excuse to wear my NYC clothes.

The project is called the Sun Ranch Institute, it's a visitor's center and research facility for the Nature Conservancy. We started designing the last week in February and we pretty much had to stop the 15th of April so we could start production of our boards. These two took me an entire week of long-ass days. I started class at 8 am each day and I would work until 11 or midnight most nights. I built 2 model this past week and surprisingly they didn't take nearly as long as the boards did. While building the model I was surprised to learn how much was still left undesigned (that's why I say we had to stop designing) . I would have like to design patterns or openings into the concrete retaining walls, further design seating and floor patterns... It could go on forever.

I'll try to post an update after my final review on Wednesday, but no guarantees, I have a busy week ahead.

The Maiden Blog

Time for a trial run of this thing. I plan on keeping everyone updated through this blog. I think you can leave comment on our posts as well. You can also e-mail either James or me, most of our hostels have internet access.

We have all of our reservations for planes, hostels, hotels, trains and ferries made but we still have a lot to do; forward mail, cancel the paper, get traveler's checks.... And the semester isn't over yet. We have 1 more week of school and then finals week. My studio class is over so that will free up a lot of free time.

I have a final on Friday May 11th at noon. It's over at 2:00 or whenever I finish and immediately after that we'll be on our way to Post Falls, Id. We're flying out of Spokane Saturday evening (red eye to NYC) and we'll arrive in NYC Sunday Morning. Then we fly red eye again to London. We'll arrive in London at 8am their time on Monday. We pretty much have a 12 hour layover in NYC, which was planned. We have to drop of a suite case and we want to get snacks for the trip at Zabar's and eat in Little Italy. Hopefully we'll be worn out enough to sleep during the flight to London. Our 1st hostel is the old dormitory for the St. Paul's Cathedral Choir.

Well, it's 7:00 and that means I need to watch tv (now that I'm finished with my project I can do that!).