June 29
The day started late as we didn’t wake up until noon. I guess we had too much fun last night; despite our best interests for today. At noon, it was already scorching hot outside. We had to get into a cramped bus that was like an oven and ride for about an hour. It got to the point where we actually got off the bus halfway through our trip to wait for the next bus just to get some fresh. We were drenched in sweat already before we even arrived in downtown London. We read in the newspaper later that day that London was experiencing an extreme heat wave and the Mayor actually called a state of emergency and had a lot of things shut down. Great timing on our part. At least we had a shower at our disposal when we got back.
While we were downtown, we had to check out all the main tourist attractions. These seem to be the least enjoyable parts of our experiences in London and Paris, but it’s something that we must do of course. It’s not that we weren’t impressed by Big Ben, Parliament, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, and the London Eye, but it seems like we are impressed only for about five seconds for each attraction and then it’s on to the next. Two hours of steaming hot bus travel doesn’t really make it seem worth it at the moment, although now I can definitely say it was worth it.
There are a few cultural things that we have been able to pick up on in our four days here. One is that they love their McDonald’s and Pizza Hut restaurants. Our bus actually passed eight Mickey D’s on the way into town. They also have an extreme amount of fast food chicken restaurants and grocery stores in the area of our hostel. I’m not sure if the rest of the outskirt neighborhoods are the same way, but there are literally seven or eight restaurants similar to KFC within walking distance of our hostel. The funny thing is that they are all extremely cheap and they all have their “unbeatable deals” posted all over their storefronts. They also all have a chicken as their symbol/mascot which seem to all be drawn by the same artist. It is a wonder how they all can stay in business. We have eaten eight “two chicken strip sandwich w/fries” in two days together. They are good and cheap; right up our alley.
Another thing we now realize about London (and probably the UK in general) is that they love Michael Jackson. I’m sure it is only this evident because of his death, but we hear his music and see his fans wearing his t-shirts everywhere. Yesterday, some random guy walked up to us and shouted “Don’t stop ‘til you get enough!” This of course is a line from a MJ song. It was kind of funny now in hindsight (with respect to the King of Pop of course) when we learned about his death. Since we were in Paris when it happened, we saw his photos littered all over the newspapers. However, since we can’t read French, we had no idea why he was receiving so much attention until we got to London. It was just kind of a weird way to learn about something that is such a big news story.
I finally got the computer to charge, but the internet here is pretty shotty. I uploaded all our latest pictures, but there is quite a few videos that I would like to post that just aren’t working right now. Hopefully there will be a place in Manchester tomorrow or Dublin the following day that will work better. Right now I am just catching up on all the updates for the past couple days. Ben is hanging out in his room with all his roommates. They are pretty interesting people as I may have mentioned previously. Ben has definitely taken a liking to them and they are able to put up with him so it’s a match made in heaven. Well I need to go to bed now so I can make sure to be up in time to make that miserable bus trip one more time.
Monday, June 29, 2009
June 27
We woke up around noon (or “mid-day” as they call it here) today from our camp in Regents Park. We didn’t get any rain although the forecast called for it. I got cold during the night because all our warm clothes were still wet from the night before, but we made it through alright. I didn’t fall asleep until well after midnight; partly because of our four hour “nap” in the afternoon and partly because I just couldn’t get comfortable. However, when we picked up camp to get away from the long grass and bugs, I realized that I had been sleeping on a big fallen tree branch, so that may have led to some of the discomfort. It didn’t help that I had spiders and bugs crawling and flying around my head all night as well. I woke up twice with a spider crawling around on or near my face. When I packed my bag I had to pick off sixteen spiders from it. All and all though, I feel pretty refreshed.
We now have all our clothes lying out in the lawn to dry. I also did some laundry in the public bathroom today so those are lying out to dry as well. We have decided that our rainstorm the other night was actually a blessing in disguise. It was miserable for about an hour, but we did get a free shower, a free clothes wash, and a valuable lesson in choosing places to sleep outside. It has been four days now without a shower for me and five for Ben. The rain actually really helped us to rinse off and stay somewhat bearable, especially for Ben who failed to bring any soap or deodorant along.
We are probably just going to chill in the park for the rest of the day until nightfall. Ben wants to go to the club with these girls he’s been talking to online. I’m not sure how that will work out with our backpacks and since we don’t have a way of getting a hold of them. I am now going to take the opportunity to watch some British football, some rugby, and some cricket.
June 28
Well we sat down to watch an intense game of what we thought was rugby, but it turned out to be Australian football as we found out from our roommates here at the hostel. Soon after the game ended, it began to sprinkle. As we looked toward the sky, we saw that the weather did not look promising. Remembering our lesson from two nights earlier, we ran for cover in the nearest pavilion. There we met a nice lady with a Russian accent who gave us the advice to go sleep in the train station if the ground gets too wet. It hadn’t been raining too badly yet, but we could see another big storm coming. Ben claimed that we had twenty minutes before it hit us. I thought we probably had only a couple minutes, but we decided to head towards the bigger pavilion in the center of the park. We made about 100 yards of progress before it started pouring on us. We quickly sprinted for the big pavilion with our packs feeling heavier than ever. By the time we got there, we were soaked and my blanket (strapped to the outside of my pack) didn’t fare too much better. We packed into the pavilion with another dozen or so people just before it started to hail. We talked for awhile to a Brit who had just moved back from New York. She didn’t seem to believe us that we were planning on sleeping in the park that night. After she left, we talked to a group who had just been finishing up there picnic in the park. One was a school teacher, another a doctor, and I’m not sure about the other two. They all had different accents though. One was from Ireland, another from Turkey, and another grew up in Britain, but both his parents were from the States. The Turkish lady was really nice; she insisted that we try all of her Turkish dishes that she had made. They were really good actually.
After the rain stopped and the group went home, we made our way back to the internet café. We got there around 8:00 pm but they were already closed. Everything closes early around here. Even the bars close at 11:30 pm according to the guys in the park. Anyway, we decided to head back to the train station to see if we could spend the night there. Once we got there, we realized that it was much too noisy and there were no benches to sleep on, so we went outside in search of a bed. Since it had rained so hard a couple hours earlier, anything grassy was still soaked, so we ended up finding concrete steps about a block away from station. The wind was blowing and the steps were cold, so I never really did any serious sleeping. All we had to do was make it until 4:30 am so we could get our bus passes for the day and ride out to our hostel. Once 4:30 am finally came around, we got on our bus and headed toward the hostel. Unfortunately, we rode about an hour to the end of the line before we realized that we had taken the wrong bus. We rode all the way back and got on the correct bus this time. After another hour-long trip (where my head kept crashing against the window every time I dozed off to sleep) we finally arrived at our hostel. Our watch had broken the day earlier so we didn’t even know what time it was. We knew check in was at 11:00 am but had to ask a guy standing in the hostel door what the current time was. He told us, but apparently we heard him wrong through his heavy accent. We thought it was 10:30 am, but it was actually only 9:30 am. We waited for a half hour to get in and all we could think about was crashing in our beds and sleeping the day away. Then, at what we thought was 11:00 am, we went into the hostel and they informed us that it was only 10:00 am and check in wasn’t until noon! The day just could not feel any longer. At that point, I had been up for twenty-four hours straight (minus the split seconds before my head hit bus window). So we walked around the neighborhood for a little while until we finally were able to check in. We immediately went up to our beds and crashed. We slept for about five hours before I woke up and convinced Ben that we needed to get up and do something with the day. While waiting for Ben to get out of bed, I took my first shower since our second day in Paris; it was quite refreshing to say the least. Ben was complaining that I made him get out of bed, and that his feet hurt, and that his calves were sore among other things. I guess I always thought I would be the one complaining about all that stuff. Anyway, Ben would later be grateful that I got him up; we ended up having a pretty fun night.
Our hostel is also a bar and a nightclub downstairs. We went to go check everything out but we never even made it inside the door. We started talking to a group of people outside on the sidewalk and we pretty much stayed there all night. We are finding that the people at this hostel are quite interesting, and everybody is really open and trusting., In my room, I have a girl from Melbourn, Australia in the bunk above me and a few other girls from all over Europe. Ben has got a group from Australia and New Zealand living in his dorm. Oh, and I actually mean “living”. They came there six months ago in search of a change in life and have been renting the beds by the week ever since. I guess tonight is the last night here for one of the guys. There is also a girl from California living in there. It is fun to talk to all of them to try to get their perspective on America and to make fun of their accents. Realistically though, we get made fun of more because we talk slower that any other accent. Well I am headed to bed for the night. Tomorrow we are going downtown to check out all the sites on our last full day in London. Nothing like waiting until the last minute to accomplish the “must-sees”.
We woke up around noon (or “mid-day” as they call it here) today from our camp in Regents Park. We didn’t get any rain although the forecast called for it. I got cold during the night because all our warm clothes were still wet from the night before, but we made it through alright. I didn’t fall asleep until well after midnight; partly because of our four hour “nap” in the afternoon and partly because I just couldn’t get comfortable. However, when we picked up camp to get away from the long grass and bugs, I realized that I had been sleeping on a big fallen tree branch, so that may have led to some of the discomfort. It didn’t help that I had spiders and bugs crawling and flying around my head all night as well. I woke up twice with a spider crawling around on or near my face. When I packed my bag I had to pick off sixteen spiders from it. All and all though, I feel pretty refreshed.
We now have all our clothes lying out in the lawn to dry. I also did some laundry in the public bathroom today so those are lying out to dry as well. We have decided that our rainstorm the other night was actually a blessing in disguise. It was miserable for about an hour, but we did get a free shower, a free clothes wash, and a valuable lesson in choosing places to sleep outside. It has been four days now without a shower for me and five for Ben. The rain actually really helped us to rinse off and stay somewhat bearable, especially for Ben who failed to bring any soap or deodorant along.
We are probably just going to chill in the park for the rest of the day until nightfall. Ben wants to go to the club with these girls he’s been talking to online. I’m not sure how that will work out with our backpacks and since we don’t have a way of getting a hold of them. I am now going to take the opportunity to watch some British football, some rugby, and some cricket.
June 28
Well we sat down to watch an intense game of what we thought was rugby, but it turned out to be Australian football as we found out from our roommates here at the hostel. Soon after the game ended, it began to sprinkle. As we looked toward the sky, we saw that the weather did not look promising. Remembering our lesson from two nights earlier, we ran for cover in the nearest pavilion. There we met a nice lady with a Russian accent who gave us the advice to go sleep in the train station if the ground gets too wet. It hadn’t been raining too badly yet, but we could see another big storm coming. Ben claimed that we had twenty minutes before it hit us. I thought we probably had only a couple minutes, but we decided to head towards the bigger pavilion in the center of the park. We made about 100 yards of progress before it started pouring on us. We quickly sprinted for the big pavilion with our packs feeling heavier than ever. By the time we got there, we were soaked and my blanket (strapped to the outside of my pack) didn’t fare too much better. We packed into the pavilion with another dozen or so people just before it started to hail. We talked for awhile to a Brit who had just moved back from New York. She didn’t seem to believe us that we were planning on sleeping in the park that night. After she left, we talked to a group who had just been finishing up there picnic in the park. One was a school teacher, another a doctor, and I’m not sure about the other two. They all had different accents though. One was from Ireland, another from Turkey, and another grew up in Britain, but both his parents were from the States. The Turkish lady was really nice; she insisted that we try all of her Turkish dishes that she had made. They were really good actually.
After the rain stopped and the group went home, we made our way back to the internet café. We got there around 8:00 pm but they were already closed. Everything closes early around here. Even the bars close at 11:30 pm according to the guys in the park. Anyway, we decided to head back to the train station to see if we could spend the night there. Once we got there, we realized that it was much too noisy and there were no benches to sleep on, so we went outside in search of a bed. Since it had rained so hard a couple hours earlier, anything grassy was still soaked, so we ended up finding concrete steps about a block away from station. The wind was blowing and the steps were cold, so I never really did any serious sleeping. All we had to do was make it until 4:30 am so we could get our bus passes for the day and ride out to our hostel. Once 4:30 am finally came around, we got on our bus and headed toward the hostel. Unfortunately, we rode about an hour to the end of the line before we realized that we had taken the wrong bus. We rode all the way back and got on the correct bus this time. After another hour-long trip (where my head kept crashing against the window every time I dozed off to sleep) we finally arrived at our hostel. Our watch had broken the day earlier so we didn’t even know what time it was. We knew check in was at 11:00 am but had to ask a guy standing in the hostel door what the current time was. He told us, but apparently we heard him wrong through his heavy accent. We thought it was 10:30 am, but it was actually only 9:30 am. We waited for a half hour to get in and all we could think about was crashing in our beds and sleeping the day away. Then, at what we thought was 11:00 am, we went into the hostel and they informed us that it was only 10:00 am and check in wasn’t until noon! The day just could not feel any longer. At that point, I had been up for twenty-four hours straight (minus the split seconds before my head hit bus window). So we walked around the neighborhood for a little while until we finally were able to check in. We immediately went up to our beds and crashed. We slept for about five hours before I woke up and convinced Ben that we needed to get up and do something with the day. While waiting for Ben to get out of bed, I took my first shower since our second day in Paris; it was quite refreshing to say the least. Ben was complaining that I made him get out of bed, and that his feet hurt, and that his calves were sore among other things. I guess I always thought I would be the one complaining about all that stuff. Anyway, Ben would later be grateful that I got him up; we ended up having a pretty fun night.
Our hostel is also a bar and a nightclub downstairs. We went to go check everything out but we never even made it inside the door. We started talking to a group of people outside on the sidewalk and we pretty much stayed there all night. We are finding that the people at this hostel are quite interesting, and everybody is really open and trusting., In my room, I have a girl from Melbourn, Australia in the bunk above me and a few other girls from all over Europe. Ben has got a group from Australia and New Zealand living in his dorm. Oh, and I actually mean “living”. They came there six months ago in search of a change in life and have been renting the beds by the week ever since. I guess tonight is the last night here for one of the guys. There is also a girl from California living in there. It is fun to talk to all of them to try to get their perspective on America and to make fun of their accents. Realistically though, we get made fun of more because we talk slower that any other accent. Well I am headed to bed for the night. Tomorrow we are going downtown to check out all the sites on our last full day in London. Nothing like waiting until the last minute to accomplish the “must-sees”.
Friday, June 26, 2009
June 25
(10:00)Yesterday was quite the day. We woke up at 8 am to go to the Lourve. After a lot of walking with our packs strapped on tightly we finally arrived at the Louvre around 10:30. We were able to check our bags thankfully, which allowed us to see the entire museum. It only took us five and a half hours. Needless to say, I won’t be needing to see any more art anytime soon. At one point during the walk through, we actually got so tired that we laid down on a bench and we both fell asleep in the middle of one of the galleries. Luckily I was awaken by Ben’s snoring. After the Lourve, we started our attempt to see the Arc of Triumph (I think that’s what it’s called anyway). The only good part of the walk was finding a French sandwich shop. I ate a delicious salami sandwich on French bread with a little grey poupon and Ben ate a hot dog. Nothing like flying all the way to France to experience French culture just to order a hot dog. He did say it was the best hot dog he’s ever had though (although that may be because it was the first authentic meal we’ve had since Toronto). Anyway, after about three hours of walking and not being able to get on the subway, we finally followed another guy’s lead and jumped the terminal and rode back to Versailles to take a nap.
After we made it to Versailles, we went in search of the free public park that we had strolled through the day before. We ended up finding a man-made pond with a grassy park surrounding it. There were a number of small groups of people just relaxing and drinking around the pond. We joined them by opening our bottle of wine back up, and then we remembered how awful it tasted the day before. Pretty soon, masses of people began gathering around this pond. Just before dark we decided that we didn’t want to stay there as there were about six police vehicles directly behind us. One cop had a spot light that he kept shining on the main crowd every once in a while. We walked about a half mile away before deciding that we should go back to the edge of the park to see what exactly was going on there. Nothing was happening so eventually we got our blankets out and laid against a tree. It was probably about 11:00 pm when we had both dozed off. When we woke up, it was 5:30 the next morning. I never knew that I could get exhausted enough where I could sleep six and a half hours against a tree. I was able to take a photo of the Palace of Versailles at sunrise though; hopefully it turns out. Anyway, we never found out what all those people we there for. If something special happened, we must have slept through it. There was litter all over the park when we woke up though.
We started walking at about 6:00 am this morning to find a train going toward the beaches of Normandy. Basically all we did was walk from one information booth to get directions to the location of the next information booth until we finally got on our train a few minutes ago which left at 10:10 am. So that takes us to now, four hours after we departed from Versailles, on a train headed toward Caen, France to see Normandy.
June 26
(4:00) Quite a bit has happened since we left for Caen. Our mothers are going to kill us when they here these stories I’m sure, but here we go.
Shortly after arriving in Caen, we found that the only way to get to the war sites and the Normandy Beaches was to rent a car. After finding out that a car rental would cost us 160 Euros for only eight hours, we realized that we would not be experiencing the Normandy Beaches. We then proceeded to find a park next to a cemetery and I slept for two hours against a tree. Ben snapped off a few photos of some of the bigger tombstones and then we were on our way back to Paris; about a two hour train ride. I did not even take one picture or video all day, yet somehow we managed to turn it into our most eventful day yet. About fifteen minutes before arrival in Paris, the ticket checker came around and checked our tickets for the first time during the entire trip. He explained to us in broken English that we were riding in first class and that our tickets were for second class. We then had to stand for the last fifteen minutes. Once we got back we spent two hours trying to navigate the subway to find a place to sleep. After countless mistakes of taking wrong trains and getting off too early, we just headed back to the familiar Versailles park where we had spent the previous night. We got all situated for sleeping against our tree and then a policeman came through the park with a spotlight, so we thought we should pack up quickly and move toward the rest of the public area, just in case we were in a spot we weren’t supposed to be. After the cop and passed through, we moved back to our spot and began to fall asleep. Ben was asleep and I was just dozing off when I heard a rumbling off in the distance. I feared the worst so I began to put my bag into the plastic garbage bag I had packed. The sky seemed fine for a few minutes until all of a sudden a lightning bolt struck and thunder cracked only about a half second later. That one was close! Ben (who didn’t even wake up on the plane when I punched his shoulder) jumped to his feet from a comatose sleep. We looked up and saw rain coming over the pond. We packed everything up as quickly as possible and tried to find shelter somewhere. Unfortunately, we were about a half mile from anything with a roof or canopy. We were soaked and were struggling to keep our packs dry. We realized at that moment that there was nothing we could do except walk towards the town of Versailles at 1:00 am in a pouring rain. We got quite a few looks from the town folk while we were walking with garbage bags over our shoulders with no shirts or shoes. All we knew was that we needed to find a roof or canopy to curl up under or we would freeze. We ended up staying under a small canopy over the sidewalk for over an hour while we waited for the rain to stop. Eventually it stopped long enough for us to make it to the train station which doesn’t open until 4:45 am. Right now, we are waiting for the train station to open up so we can begin to navigate toward our train that leaves at 7:13 am toward London. Just now, we had a cop stop his car to shine a flashlight on us thinking we might be bums or something I guess. Once he got a glimpse of my laptop, however, he figured we must just be night owls. I can not wait to sleep on the train toward London!
(10:00)Yesterday was quite the day. We woke up at 8 am to go to the Lourve. After a lot of walking with our packs strapped on tightly we finally arrived at the Louvre around 10:30. We were able to check our bags thankfully, which allowed us to see the entire museum. It only took us five and a half hours. Needless to say, I won’t be needing to see any more art anytime soon. At one point during the walk through, we actually got so tired that we laid down on a bench and we both fell asleep in the middle of one of the galleries. Luckily I was awaken by Ben’s snoring. After the Lourve, we started our attempt to see the Arc of Triumph (I think that’s what it’s called anyway). The only good part of the walk was finding a French sandwich shop. I ate a delicious salami sandwich on French bread with a little grey poupon and Ben ate a hot dog. Nothing like flying all the way to France to experience French culture just to order a hot dog. He did say it was the best hot dog he’s ever had though (although that may be because it was the first authentic meal we’ve had since Toronto). Anyway, after about three hours of walking and not being able to get on the subway, we finally followed another guy’s lead and jumped the terminal and rode back to Versailles to take a nap.
After we made it to Versailles, we went in search of the free public park that we had strolled through the day before. We ended up finding a man-made pond with a grassy park surrounding it. There were a number of small groups of people just relaxing and drinking around the pond. We joined them by opening our bottle of wine back up, and then we remembered how awful it tasted the day before. Pretty soon, masses of people began gathering around this pond. Just before dark we decided that we didn’t want to stay there as there were about six police vehicles directly behind us. One cop had a spot light that he kept shining on the main crowd every once in a while. We walked about a half mile away before deciding that we should go back to the edge of the park to see what exactly was going on there. Nothing was happening so eventually we got our blankets out and laid against a tree. It was probably about 11:00 pm when we had both dozed off. When we woke up, it was 5:30 the next morning. I never knew that I could get exhausted enough where I could sleep six and a half hours against a tree. I was able to take a photo of the Palace of Versailles at sunrise though; hopefully it turns out. Anyway, we never found out what all those people we there for. If something special happened, we must have slept through it. There was litter all over the park when we woke up though.
We started walking at about 6:00 am this morning to find a train going toward the beaches of Normandy. Basically all we did was walk from one information booth to get directions to the location of the next information booth until we finally got on our train a few minutes ago which left at 10:10 am. So that takes us to now, four hours after we departed from Versailles, on a train headed toward Caen, France to see Normandy.
June 26
(4:00) Quite a bit has happened since we left for Caen. Our mothers are going to kill us when they here these stories I’m sure, but here we go.
Shortly after arriving in Caen, we found that the only way to get to the war sites and the Normandy Beaches was to rent a car. After finding out that a car rental would cost us 160 Euros for only eight hours, we realized that we would not be experiencing the Normandy Beaches. We then proceeded to find a park next to a cemetery and I slept for two hours against a tree. Ben snapped off a few photos of some of the bigger tombstones and then we were on our way back to Paris; about a two hour train ride. I did not even take one picture or video all day, yet somehow we managed to turn it into our most eventful day yet. About fifteen minutes before arrival in Paris, the ticket checker came around and checked our tickets for the first time during the entire trip. He explained to us in broken English that we were riding in first class and that our tickets were for second class. We then had to stand for the last fifteen minutes. Once we got back we spent two hours trying to navigate the subway to find a place to sleep. After countless mistakes of taking wrong trains and getting off too early, we just headed back to the familiar Versailles park where we had spent the previous night. We got all situated for sleeping against our tree and then a policeman came through the park with a spotlight, so we thought we should pack up quickly and move toward the rest of the public area, just in case we were in a spot we weren’t supposed to be. After the cop and passed through, we moved back to our spot and began to fall asleep. Ben was asleep and I was just dozing off when I heard a rumbling off in the distance. I feared the worst so I began to put my bag into the plastic garbage bag I had packed. The sky seemed fine for a few minutes until all of a sudden a lightning bolt struck and thunder cracked only about a half second later. That one was close! Ben (who didn’t even wake up on the plane when I punched his shoulder) jumped to his feet from a comatose sleep. We looked up and saw rain coming over the pond. We packed everything up as quickly as possible and tried to find shelter somewhere. Unfortunately, we were about a half mile from anything with a roof or canopy. We were soaked and were struggling to keep our packs dry. We realized at that moment that there was nothing we could do except walk towards the town of Versailles at 1:00 am in a pouring rain. We got quite a few looks from the town folk while we were walking with garbage bags over our shoulders with no shirts or shoes. All we knew was that we needed to find a roof or canopy to curl up under or we would freeze. We ended up staying under a small canopy over the sidewalk for over an hour while we waited for the rain to stop. Eventually it stopped long enough for us to make it to the train station which doesn’t open until 4:45 am. Right now, we are waiting for the train station to open up so we can begin to navigate toward our train that leaves at 7:13 am toward London. Just now, we had a cop stop his car to shine a flashlight on us thinking we might be bums or something I guess. Once he got a glimpse of my laptop, however, he figured we must just be night owls. I can not wait to sleep on the train toward London!
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Paris
June 23
(18::00)) Last night was an interesting night. The bed in our room is a normal twin size bed that we are both sharing. Luckily we are not shy about cuddling I guess. Ben slept from 8 pm to 8 am and I’m not sure if he even moved the entire time. I, on the other hand, slept soundly from 10 pm-2 am, but woke up thinking it was morning and started getting ready to go for the day before I realized that I didn’t know how to tell time and that it was actually 2 am. So I proceeded to stay up to use the computer since I wasn’t tired at all. I took a couple hour nap at 5 am and we were out for the day.
We took the train to Versailles where we found just how extravagant the palace actually was. The pictures don’t do justice to the enormousness of the ponds and gardens. Ben and I walked around the entire pond which had to have been about a 5 mile walk. Thank goodness for my massaging gel insoles! We did take a break, however, at about the four mile mark where we both fell asleep against a tree in a garden. How you can sleep against a tree only 4 hours after waking up from a 12 hour sleep is beyond me, but I have video to prove that Ben was out cold. We pretty much crashed when we got back. Since our room is so small, our bed is right next to EVERYTHING, including the window. Therefore, I managed to get sunburned while taking a nap in bed. Well we are going out to explore a little more and maybe get our first meal that doesn’t include goldfish crackers, peanut butter pretzels, and granola bars.
(22:00) We just got back from a nice amble through another section of town in search of a grocery store. The one we wanted to go to originally was closed, but we stumbled upon another small store where we purchased a loaf of bread, some pre-sliced salami, and a bottle of wine. The bread was dry, the salami scanty, and the wine was…well, wine. I’m going to spend the rest of the night trying to convince Ben to stay in tonight.
Monday, June 22, 2009
Paris
June 21
Well we made it through check in and now I have an hour and a half to blow before our flight takes off. Our mothers were both crying as we left. Next, we had to sit through quite the ordeal while we were trying to go through security because some kid was screaming at the top of his lungs the entire time. He kept running away every time they tried putting him through the metal detector. We got through it though and then proceeded to get lost and got yelled at while trying to find our way back to wave goodbye. I’m not sure how we will navigate in the cities if we can’t make it 100 yards down the airport terminal without getting lost (haha…as if my mom wasn’t worried enough). Well I don’t want to wear the laptop battery down too much because we don’t know how long it will be before we can charge it again. See everyone in 62 days!
June 22
(6:30 Icelandic Time) We just landed in Reykjavik, Iceland where everything seems quite weird. We had less than three hours of darkness on the way over so we actually saw the sun set and rise within three hours. The airport in almost right on the coastline so all we saw was water on our decent. After we landed we could see nothing but green and purple for miles. They have no trees here but have fields of purple wild flowers blossoming right now. They speak their own native language of Icelandic which remains almost identical to the language of the Vikings. The total population of Iceland is 300,000 people with 60% of them living within Reykjavik. I wish I could claim to know this information first hand, but I got all these details from the plane ride over since I couldn’t watch any movies without headphones.
We leave for Paris in about an hour so I will hopefully make a post then.
(20:30 French Time) We searched for about 3 or 4 hours for a place to stay in Paris and finally found a super-tiny hotel room to stay in. My shoulders hurt like I’ve never felt before from carrying about 50 pounds for well over ten miles on foot. We were able to check out the Notre Dame Cathedral, the Eiffel Tower, and a few other neat places though. The hotel has internet and is right next to the Eiffel Tower and a McDonald’s, so I’m sure we won’t be straying too far tonight. I am currently trying to upload some pictures and videos to facebook, so hopefully it works.
Well we made it through check in and now I have an hour and a half to blow before our flight takes off. Our mothers were both crying as we left. Next, we had to sit through quite the ordeal while we were trying to go through security because some kid was screaming at the top of his lungs the entire time. He kept running away every time they tried putting him through the metal detector. We got through it though and then proceeded to get lost and got yelled at while trying to find our way back to wave goodbye. I’m not sure how we will navigate in the cities if we can’t make it 100 yards down the airport terminal without getting lost (haha…as if my mom wasn’t worried enough). Well I don’t want to wear the laptop battery down too much because we don’t know how long it will be before we can charge it again. See everyone in 62 days!
June 22
(6:30 Icelandic Time) We just landed in Reykjavik, Iceland where everything seems quite weird. We had less than three hours of darkness on the way over so we actually saw the sun set and rise within three hours. The airport in almost right on the coastline so all we saw was water on our decent. After we landed we could see nothing but green and purple for miles. They have no trees here but have fields of purple wild flowers blossoming right now. They speak their own native language of Icelandic which remains almost identical to the language of the Vikings. The total population of Iceland is 300,000 people with 60% of them living within Reykjavik. I wish I could claim to know this information first hand, but I got all these details from the plane ride over since I couldn’t watch any movies without headphones.
We leave for Paris in about an hour so I will hopefully make a post then.
(20:30 French Time) We searched for about 3 or 4 hours for a place to stay in Paris and finally found a super-tiny hotel room to stay in. My shoulders hurt like I’ve never felt before from carrying about 50 pounds for well over ten miles on foot. We were able to check out the Notre Dame Cathedral, the Eiffel Tower, and a few other neat places though. The hotel has internet and is right next to the Eiffel Tower and a McDonald’s, so I’m sure we won’t be straying too far tonight. I am currently trying to upload some pictures and videos to facebook, so hopefully it works.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
June 20
Well tomorrow is the big day. We leave tomorrow at 10:00 AM to Toronto. Our flight leaves at 9:10 PM, but we need to check in at least 2 hours early, of course. For those of you that wish to contact us, we won’t have any cell phones or anything, but hope to connect to the internet as often as possible. You can facebook us or email me at bczimmer@svsu.edu. Hopefully I will be able to keep in touch with everybody, but if I am not able to respond, it is only because of limited time or internet access.
I would also like to add special thanks to those who have supported this trip financially, especially my grandparents, my parents, Aunt Susie and Uncle Tim, Aunt Deb and Uncle Phil, Del Benson, and Aunt Kay for all the help with the traveler’s insurance. And thanks to all who will be following along and keeping tabs. Hopefully we will not disappoint.
I will post again as soon as I have internet access in Paris!
Well tomorrow is the big day. We leave tomorrow at 10:00 AM to Toronto. Our flight leaves at 9:10 PM, but we need to check in at least 2 hours early, of course. For those of you that wish to contact us, we won’t have any cell phones or anything, but hope to connect to the internet as often as possible. You can facebook us or email me at bczimmer@svsu.edu. Hopefully I will be able to keep in touch with everybody, but if I am not able to respond, it is only because of limited time or internet access.
I would also like to add special thanks to those who have supported this trip financially, especially my grandparents, my parents, Aunt Susie and Uncle Tim, Aunt Deb and Uncle Phil, Del Benson, and Aunt Kay for all the help with the traveler’s insurance. And thanks to all who will be following along and keeping tabs. Hopefully we will not disappoint.
I will post again as soon as I have internet access in Paris!
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