Ciao! Well my first impression of Rome wasn´t what I thought it was going to be. It wasn´t pasta galore, old buildings galore, or gladiator galore. It was Johnny and I trecking with BOTH packs in the 90 degree weather on the outskirts of Rome. We got off waaaaay too early on the metro and had to walk our way to civilization. After about 3 hours of walking and gulping down the camelback, we finally found some Wi-fi (a daily activity for us). We looked pretty homeless sitting on some corner with all of our bags on the ground and bags under my eyes. But it didn´t even matter at that point. Johnny found a hostel on the palm piolet and booked it right away. We got to the Ciak Hostel and crashed for a couple hours. The place was very nice, we had our own shower, TV, some Italian movies, and a roomate name Luigi. He had a brother named Mario. Just Kidding.
Once we regained some energy we walked to the Pantheon. We listened to our Rick Steves podcast and took the tour of the place. Pretty cool, pretty old. After that we walked around most of the Piazzas, but our favorite was Piazza Navona. We had dinner there and had some Italian fetticchini and spaghetti. Later we found a bench and made a daily visit. We declared it ours (because it was the only hotspot for wi-fi).
The next day we had to move hostels because ours was taken over by these Chinese people. So we found one a couple blocks over and relocated ourselves. We toured the Colosseum with Rick Steves and replayed scenes in our head from ¨Gladiator.¨ Later that night we met up with Laura and the newly engaged Mark and Larissa Zini. It was fun hanging out with some familiar faces. We went to the Spanish steps and got asked a million times if we wanted to buy roses from all these Middle Eastern guys. Sooo annoying. It was the Zini´s last night so we all got gelatos. We went to a place with 100 flavors! It was so hard to choose!
BRB
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Lost in Lyon
Helloooooo. Well we have a lot to catch up on. I´ve been writing everything down in our ¨world journal¨ so I´ll just give you the main idea on here. By the way, this is allyole.
After Prague we flew to Lyon, France for the day. We arrived but then realized we had no where to stash our backpacks. The airport didn´t have any luggage storage for us. So we trucked all of our stuff with us and finally found a place in the la gar in Lyon. We kept our frontbacks (my name for our ¨lil¨bags) with us and we found a place to eat in the main square. Johnny was mad because I got a hamburger, but I was hungry for some real food! He got some weird meat that wasn´t even cooked. After dinner we saw some trees off in the distance...aka our hotel for the night. These trees were under this huge church that overlooked the city. 7324897034987123 stairs later, we arrived. The sun was setting and we took some pics on the overlook. Pretty Pretty. We knew we had to scout out our camp groud before it got too dark, but late enough so no one would see us. Kinda like spies...right mom? We found this spot on the very steep hillside under the church and decided to hang out there...literally. We unpacked our hammocks for the first time and went to work while scaling the side of this hillside.
Well morning came and I slept for about 30 min total because I was pretty scared someone or something was going to find us. But we survived. We had to make it back to la gar by 7 to get our bags and make it back to the airport. We were kinda confused how to get out of there because it was still dark when we got up at 5. We were walking on this path and saw the main road...woohoo. oh wait, there was a security guard there. shoot. We stood in a shadow for a couple min (like spies), then realized he was unlocking the gate. Lucky for us this park opened around 5. So we started our descend downhill and grabed a bagguette on the way to la gar.
I hope we can come back here someday so you all can see where this all went down. But don´t forget to bring some bug spray because I woke up with 15 bugbites on my legs and some even on my face! Ew!
After Prague we flew to Lyon, France for the day. We arrived but then realized we had no where to stash our backpacks. The airport didn´t have any luggage storage for us. So we trucked all of our stuff with us and finally found a place in the la gar in Lyon. We kept our frontbacks (my name for our ¨lil¨bags) with us and we found a place to eat in the main square. Johnny was mad because I got a hamburger, but I was hungry for some real food! He got some weird meat that wasn´t even cooked. After dinner we saw some trees off in the distance...aka our hotel for the night. These trees were under this huge church that overlooked the city. 7324897034987123 stairs later, we arrived. The sun was setting and we took some pics on the overlook. Pretty Pretty. We knew we had to scout out our camp groud before it got too dark, but late enough so no one would see us. Kinda like spies...right mom? We found this spot on the very steep hillside under the church and decided to hang out there...literally. We unpacked our hammocks for the first time and went to work while scaling the side of this hillside.
Well morning came and I slept for about 30 min total because I was pretty scared someone or something was going to find us. But we survived. We had to make it back to la gar by 7 to get our bags and make it back to the airport. We were kinda confused how to get out of there because it was still dark when we got up at 5. We were walking on this path and saw the main road...woohoo. oh wait, there was a security guard there. shoot. We stood in a shadow for a couple min (like spies), then realized he was unlocking the gate. Lucky for us this park opened around 5. So we started our descend downhill and grabed a bagguette on the way to la gar.
I hope we can come back here someday so you all can see where this all went down. But don´t forget to bring some bug spray because I woke up with 15 bugbites on my legs and some even on my face! Ew!
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Playin in Praha, Amsterdam
And now, the moment you've all (MOM) been waiting for - Dun Dun Dun our Europe blog is back in action!!!
(note to Google- you should probably add a few more servers to to the rush of traffic that's going to be generated when this posts).
Well folks, as of now we can't upload pictures because of a restriction on the computers in the hostel, so I guess to make up for it we'll have to write 1000 words for every picture we've taken thus far. Just Kiddding!
Ally and I have been having a great time for the first four days of our European adventure. We started in Amsterdam for a day, toured the Anne Frank house and the Van Gogh museum, napped in Vondelpark, and sipped mojitos at Cafe Cuba. We were pretty tired the whole day after only sleeping 2-3 hours on the plane, so we checked in to our four star accomodations at Amsterdam Schiphol around 12 (the sun didnt go down until 10:30pm in Amsterdam). Have any of you seen Unaccompanied Minors? Well the night was kinda like that minus the minors.
Anyways we made it to Prague at 8:30am and tried to check into the hostel, but found that we
couldn't until 2pm. So even though we were on 4 hours of sleep in two days, we decided to make something of the time we had and explore some of the city.
We visited the Charles Bridge, built in the 1300s? by King Charles IV.
Hey it's AO. Yes, we did visit the bridge, but only made it about half way across...then we had to sit down. After sitting against the bridge wall for about .2 seconds we passed out with our sunglasses on. If I have learned anything so far on this trip...it is `How to fall asleep anywhere.` Once we woke up, we realized there was a crowd of tourists around us taking pictures of one of the statues next to us. We were rejuvinated to the end of the bridge, then we saw a park. *Lightbulb* This was the perfect place to nap. We found two benches and collapsed. Johnny tried to make it look like he wasn't sleeping by sleeping sitting up, but I was much more comfortable looking like a bum all sprawled out. I believe there is picture evidence of this.
(note to Google- you should probably add a few more servers to to the rush of traffic that's going to be generated when this posts).
Well folks, as of now we can't upload pictures because of a restriction on the computers in the hostel, so I guess to make up for it we'll have to write 1000 words for every picture we've taken thus far. Just Kiddding!
Ally and I have been having a great time for the first four days of our European adventure. We started in Amsterdam for a day, toured the Anne Frank house and the Van Gogh museum, napped in Vondelpark, and sipped mojitos at Cafe Cuba. We were pretty tired the whole day after only sleeping 2-3 hours on the plane, so we checked in to our four star accomodations at Amsterdam Schiphol around 12 (the sun didnt go down until 10:30pm in Amsterdam). Have any of you seen Unaccompanied Minors? Well the night was kinda like that minus the minors.
Anyways we made it to Prague at 8:30am and tried to check into the hostel, but found that we
couldn't until 2pm. So even though we were on 4 hours of sleep in two days, we decided to make something of the time we had and explore some of the city.
We visited the Charles Bridge, built in the 1300s? by King Charles IV.
Hey it's AO. Yes, we did visit the bridge, but only made it about half way across...then we had to sit down. After sitting against the bridge wall for about .2 seconds we passed out with our sunglasses on. If I have learned anything so far on this trip...it is `How to fall asleep anywhere.` Once we woke up, we realized there was a crowd of tourists around us taking pictures of one of the statues next to us. We were rejuvinated to the end of the bridge, then we saw a park. *Lightbulb* This was the perfect place to nap. We found two benches and collapsed. Johnny tried to make it look like he wasn't sleeping by sleeping sitting up, but I was much more comfortable looking like a bum all sprawled out. I believe there is picture evidence of this.
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