This is what we accomplished today (besides watching The Bachelorette for 4 hrs....)
Before (our clutter in Florida)
After: This is much more us. Shabby chic. It will hold our office nicknacks.
butterfly bush yellow
28 July 2009
Home sweet home!
Being goofy and excited as we wait to board the plane in London.We are home! We arrived back in Wilsonville very late Saturday night. We were SO EXHAUSTED! We traveled and were awake for nearly 24hrs. It really is disagreeable traveling on an airplane for 8-9 hrs! And that was just getting back to Chicago. But we did make it home and we have been trying to relax and catch up since then.
We've unpacked most of our house, we just have the decorating type stuff to put up now. We probably would be done by now, but the heat wave Oregon is having is just killing us. We don't have air conditioning....which is just miserable. It's about 105F here - not fun!
But we've enjoyed catching up with some friends and have plans to see other friends later this week.
We are working on going through the rest of our photos to post too.
We hope everyone is staying nice and cool in the heat!
We've unpacked most of our house, we just have the decorating type stuff to put up now. We probably would be done by now, but the heat wave Oregon is having is just killing us. We don't have air conditioning....which is just miserable. It's about 105F here - not fun!
But we've enjoyed catching up with some friends and have plans to see other friends later this week.
We are working on going through the rest of our photos to post too.
We hope everyone is staying nice and cool in the heat!
24 July 2009
On the final homestretch!!
We have reached our final night of our 3 week trip. In some ways we are sad our trip has reached its end but mostly we are looking forward to our nice comfy bed, a real kitchen stocked with 'normal' food, and a toilet that isn't picky about what goes down...or comes up.
It takes a bit long to post pictures so since we'll be home tomorrow we'll just post the pictures of italy and greece later as well as other pictures from our trip.
Overall, we really enjoyed the historical feel of Athens. We visted the Acropolis in the 100F+ weather and had to drink five 1.5L bottles of water each day, but it was still amazing to see all the architecture, artistry and history behind the city on top of the hill. We quickly learned that Athens has hills EVERYWHERE. We're confident that after 3 weeks of walking for hours and hours each day we have some pretty fit legs - or so we hope!!!
While in Athens we visted the Acropolis museum and the National Archeological museum, which we think are some of the best museums we've been to. The Archeological museum had the coolest display of pottery, jewelry and all things random and neat from the ancient greek societies. You could go to Athens just to go to that museum.
The other best thing about Athens and Greece was the amazing tans that we got....well we think they are pretty amazing because we were WHITE before. In fact, after we layed out on the beach for a couple of days people stopped speaking to us in English and a few people thought Dan was greek (they weren't very observant...but still). We tanned (and got sunburned each time) on the 'cruise' to Greece, on the beach of Aegina Island and on the Poseidon Coast just outside of Athens.
We would like to possible go back to Greece someday and see more of the country, we only saw such a small area. It really would take a few weeks to see the most important sites in the country.
Yesterday, we spent the whole day traveling to London. Our hostel here is decent, although there are a lot of renovations being done. Last night we went and saw Harry Potter. On the way to the theatre we saw the premiere opening of UK Inglorious Bastards. All the actors and big shots were walking down the red carpet. We tried to squint and see if we could see Brad Pitt, but we couldn't and realized we'd rather go see Harry Potter instead. We'll hold our opinion of it....
London is quite expensive, especially the transportation, so we brillantly (or not so - our feet our now killing us!) decided to walk around the city today. But all the museums in the city are free, so we felt extra great about having such a cheap cheap day! (If you haven't noticed....we are all about being cheap, often to our detriment...but we've almost learned our lesson on this trip!)
We saw the National Portrait Gallery, which was by far one of the best museums we've seen. Dan loved looking at all the new portrait work...we skipped over much of the older victorian era paintings of random royalty, and men straddling horses with big hats and bigger egos. We've really had enough....
We then headed to the British Museum aka "the museum of the things the Brits have stolen from other cultures." They had a lot of cool things from the Acropolis that were missing when we went to the Acropolis Museum, so it was neat to see those. We saw the Rosetta Stone, mummies and and all the other cool things from every culture you can imagine. I'm pretty sure we've seen every random nicknack from all the major cultures.
So now we've written way too much....we just wanted to share the interesting things we've seen.
It takes a bit long to post pictures so since we'll be home tomorrow we'll just post the pictures of italy and greece later as well as other pictures from our trip.
Overall, we really enjoyed the historical feel of Athens. We visted the Acropolis in the 100F+ weather and had to drink five 1.5L bottles of water each day, but it was still amazing to see all the architecture, artistry and history behind the city on top of the hill. We quickly learned that Athens has hills EVERYWHERE. We're confident that after 3 weeks of walking for hours and hours each day we have some pretty fit legs - or so we hope!!!
While in Athens we visted the Acropolis museum and the National Archeological museum, which we think are some of the best museums we've been to. The Archeological museum had the coolest display of pottery, jewelry and all things random and neat from the ancient greek societies. You could go to Athens just to go to that museum.
The other best thing about Athens and Greece was the amazing tans that we got....well we think they are pretty amazing because we were WHITE before. In fact, after we layed out on the beach for a couple of days people stopped speaking to us in English and a few people thought Dan was greek (they weren't very observant...but still). We tanned (and got sunburned each time) on the 'cruise' to Greece, on the beach of Aegina Island and on the Poseidon Coast just outside of Athens.
We would like to possible go back to Greece someday and see more of the country, we only saw such a small area. It really would take a few weeks to see the most important sites in the country.
Yesterday, we spent the whole day traveling to London. Our hostel here is decent, although there are a lot of renovations being done. Last night we went and saw Harry Potter. On the way to the theatre we saw the premiere opening of UK Inglorious Bastards. All the actors and big shots were walking down the red carpet. We tried to squint and see if we could see Brad Pitt, but we couldn't and realized we'd rather go see Harry Potter instead. We'll hold our opinion of it....
London is quite expensive, especially the transportation, so we brillantly (or not so - our feet our now killing us!) decided to walk around the city today. But all the museums in the city are free, so we felt extra great about having such a cheap cheap day! (If you haven't noticed....we are all about being cheap, often to our detriment...but we've almost learned our lesson on this trip!)
We saw the National Portrait Gallery, which was by far one of the best museums we've seen. Dan loved looking at all the new portrait work...we skipped over much of the older victorian era paintings of random royalty, and men straddling horses with big hats and bigger egos. We've really had enough....
We then headed to the British Museum aka "the museum of the things the Brits have stolen from other cultures." They had a lot of cool things from the Acropolis that were missing when we went to the Acropolis Museum, so it was neat to see those. We saw the Rosetta Stone, mummies and and all the other cool things from every culture you can imagine. I'm pretty sure we've seen every random nicknack from all the major cultures.
So now we've written way too much....we just wanted to share the interesting things we've seen.
18 July 2009
Finally in Greece!
Hello!
We just realized that our last post from the 13th didn't get posted! Not sure what happened, but it is posted now and recaps our last nights in Paris, our time in Budapest as well as Prague.
Since then we have had quite a rough time trying to get to Greece. Thankfully, we are now in Athens, but it was about 3 awful days to get here. We are pretty sure we experienced one of the worst days we've ever spent together. It is a long story, but the gist of it is this:
We just realized that our last post from the 13th didn't get posted! Not sure what happened, but it is posted now and recaps our last nights in Paris, our time in Budapest as well as Prague.
Since then we have had quite a rough time trying to get to Greece. Thankfully, we are now in Athens, but it was about 3 awful days to get here. We are pretty sure we experienced one of the worst days we've ever spent together. It is a long story, but the gist of it is this:
- italian trains suck and we will never be convinced to use one again
- eating only pretzel sicks all day is not enough to sustain us.
- it's definitely worth it to just spend the extra money to fly places rather than trying to be cheap and get there the long way
- when the ticket agent says this way is "cheaper" - you might not get there at all.
- being stranded in a small italian town with no way to get home (as in the US) is frightening
- ferries from italy to greece are more like cruises - buy seats and do not sleep on deck (although we didn't)
Overall, we are now trying to enjoy Athens, but it is so stinking hot. Today we are going to the Acropolis and all the major ruins sights. We are pretty excited, because there are some amazing things to see. Hopefully, we'll post pictures later.
Tomorrow we head to one of the islands to relax and enjoy the water and the sun before we head to London and then home!!
We hope everyone is enjoying their summers and we are excited to get home and see you all.
13 July 2009
We're enjoying Prague!
Us by Prague CastleHello again! Sorry it has been a few days since we've written. We've been busy traveling around and around. We can't believe we are already half way through our trip! We are seeing some amazing sights! Since we last wrote we spent one more day in Paris, then 2+ days in Budapest and yesterday we arrived in Prague. We've figured that on some days we are walking around the city for around 5-7 hrs!! So we are pretty exhausted by now! The weather here in Prague has been nice and warm, perfect for strolling around the old city.
Our last day in Paris we went to the Museum d'Orsay (which I think is better than the Louvre). We also had a fantastic time eating ice cream and walking around all the neighborhoods that we hadn't seen yet or that we wanted to go back to! During the day a bunch of fighter jets flew over the city, with helicopters...it was all very suspicious so we are curious to what was going on. During the evening, we saw the Sacre Couer in the Montmarte neighborhood (which a great view of the city) and went to the Moulin Rouge. We stayed out late, we ate crepes with nutella and saw the eiffel tower sparkel up with light. We now miss Paris a bit, but after 5 days we were plenty ready to head to a new city.
Budapest in Hungary was a great relaxing place. It was much larger than we thought and was just like all other european cities, huge with old churches and buildings. So we didn't end up taking many pictures. But Budapest did have it's charm and the guesthouse we stayed at was very quaint and perfect for our needs. When we first arrived we walked through the older, more green gardens on Castle Hill the first day. We saw some magnificant churches in all different styles as well as the older palace with some amazing views of the river Danube and the city. The parliament across the river looked like a castle. One evening on a walk there was even a rainbow right over parliament...unfortunately this was probably the one and only time we did not have our camera with us - figures!! That was one of my favorite parts of our trip. On our last day in Budapest we went to a relaxing turkish (well hungarian now!) bathhouse. It was so fantastic to lay in the sun and take a nap! The water was warm and refreshing, even though it was warm outside. There were a ton of people there and it was interesting to people watch with everyone in their swimsuits! We are now in search of european swim trunks for Dan :) I think we were even part of a commercial that was being filmed there.
We arrived in Prague by a 7hr train - which actually wasn't that bad. We got to see a few contries on the way and we were sitting next to a very nice american couple that had been to prague before, so we ate our lunch, read, napped and talked with the couple. The funnies thing happened when we were waiting for our tram to our hostel. Two scrappy men got into a fight - well it wasn't even a fight....they more were attempting to kick at each other, I don't think anyoen even swung. It was kinda funny to watch. Well, then one of the guys huffed off all mad and I guess he called the police (why...I'm not sure, they barely touched each other). So the police went to find the other guy, but they happened to park just in the way of the tram tracks. So ironically enough after we had been waiting for about 15mins for our tram, our tram finally came barreling down the street BUT the police car was in the way. So the driver got out and tried to dramatically eye up if he could pass our not (this was actually the funniest part!). All the other trams ended up stacked up down the street, and there were quite a few of them! He ran around and around trying to find teh police and laughed because the police were the ones in our way. It was just funny to watch everyones reaction and Dan and I were laughing because we knew that the hold up was all because of two scrappy men attempting to fight eachother. Anyways, it was a humorous beginning to our time in Prague
Here are some pictures from today in Prague. We went across the old St. Charles bridge to the Prague castle. We didn't pay to go in today, but we might tomorrow.
Dan finally got some belgium chocolate here - he had been searching for the perfect place!
07 July 2009
Bonjour!
We are having a great time here in Paris! we were getting a little worried with dans back hurting for the first few days, but it seems to be doing okay so weve been busy running around the city seeing all the sites. i am going to try and write as much as i can, but the french keyboard slows me down and it took awhile to load and save our pictures (we have so many now!) so here is what weve been up to the last few days in reverse order - starting with today
we took a day trip to versaille. key word on this trip is TOURISTS TOURISTS TOURISTS - there were so many and we waited in line forever and ever but luckily we met a very nice american couple in front of us and we kept ourselves entertained for the 2 hr wait. inside the palace was great - but secretly we dont know if it was worth the 2hr wait and millions of people. but we had fun!
last night we went out late for a dinner, gelato and a walk along the seine. we went to the latin quarter again, notre dame, pont neuf and views of the eiffel tower. we had a great time watching all the people and enjoying the evening views!
carlie on pont neuf
yesterday during the day we went to the the louvre aka dans big day! we spent 4hrs there and probably only saw half or more of the amazing museum. i think we also went shopping too!
on sunday we headed straight to the eiffel tower (and by straight i mean we took the wrong train in the wrong direction and a 20 min trip took about 1.5hrs - oops!) but it was well worth it!
We stopped and had a picnic lunch here on the champs de mars in front of the eiffel tower. For over an hour we watched tourists from all over the world take the typical eiffel tower picture, where you make the tower the same size as you and put your hand on the top. it was ridiculous how many people were doing that. we stuck to the non cliche poses, with the except of mine above ;)
we are still enjoying our hours long naps in the afternoon, but we feel as though we have done quite a lot already.
tomorrow is our last full day here in paris and then we head to budapest. we are excited to be getting in the habit of traveling again and hopefully we can keep you posted regularly - were not sure about internet access in budapest - but please keep us up to date with emails, blogs, messages....whatever!
au revoir (we are getting good at all the french phases too!)
we took a day trip to versaille. key word on this trip is TOURISTS TOURISTS TOURISTS - there were so many and we waited in line forever and ever but luckily we met a very nice american couple in front of us and we kept ourselves entertained for the 2 hr wait. inside the palace was great - but secretly we dont know if it was worth the 2hr wait and millions of people. but we had fun!
last night we went out late for a dinner, gelato and a walk along the seine. we went to the latin quarter again, notre dame, pont neuf and views of the eiffel tower. we had a great time watching all the people and enjoying the evening views!
carlie on pont neufyesterday during the day we went to the the louvre aka dans big day! we spent 4hrs there and probably only saw half or more of the amazing museum. i think we also went shopping too!
on sunday we headed straight to the eiffel tower (and by straight i mean we took the wrong train in the wrong direction and a 20 min trip took about 1.5hrs - oops!) but it was well worth it!
We stopped and had a picnic lunch here on the champs de mars in front of the eiffel tower. For over an hour we watched tourists from all over the world take the typical eiffel tower picture, where you make the tower the same size as you and put your hand on the top. it was ridiculous how many people were doing that. we stuck to the non cliche poses, with the except of mine above ;)we are still enjoying our hours long naps in the afternoon, but we feel as though we have done quite a lot already.
tomorrow is our last full day here in paris and then we head to budapest. we are excited to be getting in the habit of traveling again and hopefully we can keep you posted regularly - were not sure about internet access in budapest - but please keep us up to date with emails, blogs, messages....whatever!
au revoir (we are getting good at all the french phases too!)
04 July 2009
We are here!!!!
Yep we made it to paris safely!
While we feel as though we have been traveling forever, we still havent done too much yet. It took over 24 hrs of travelling to get here due to a few delayed flights and many long layovers. but everything went fairly smoothly in terms of traveling.
On one of the old bridges on the river Seine
We stopped here for a quick sit in the shade while walking to the city centre. It was a beautiful little garden and the tower reminded me of Spain.
We also had a great lunch in the latin quarter - delicious pitas. its weird but paris has the best greek/felafel type food!
unfortunately we had to cut our day short because we havnt been feeling too well. i felt randomly sick and threw up this morning and dans back is hurting very bad, probably from all the moving last week. so right now we are kind of dissapointed about today and potentially tomorrow. but we did go back to our hostel and catch up on our sleep and give in to our jet lag!
Here is our hostel room. It is so basic, but we really cant complain. We even have our own bathroom, which is great. This is where we napped for an embarressing amount of hours today...definitely more than a couple and a few put together! ;) I doubt we will sleep tonight!
well my internet cafe time is almost up and this french keyboqrd is very difficult to write on! keep us updated as to what you all are doing in the states and leave plenty of messages/emails for us so we have an excuse to spend a few euro at the internet cafes!!!!
While we feel as though we have been traveling forever, we still havent done too much yet. It took over 24 hrs of travelling to get here due to a few delayed flights and many long layovers. but everything went fairly smoothly in terms of traveling.
today was our first day of actually site seeing and walking through the city; here are some of the things we saw.
Notre Dame! We think the notre dame is one of the best sites in paris, so we headed straight to it! of course there were a million people with the same idea. we are pretty sure we heard the most english there since we arrived in Paris!
Notre Dame! We think the notre dame is one of the best sites in paris, so we headed straight to it! of course there were a million people with the same idea. we are pretty sure we heard the most english there since we arrived in Paris!
On one of the old bridges on the river Seine
We stopped here for a quick sit in the shade while walking to the city centre. It was a beautiful little garden and the tower reminded me of Spain.We also had a great lunch in the latin quarter - delicious pitas. its weird but paris has the best greek/felafel type food!
unfortunately we had to cut our day short because we havnt been feeling too well. i felt randomly sick and threw up this morning and dans back is hurting very bad, probably from all the moving last week. so right now we are kind of dissapointed about today and potentially tomorrow. but we did go back to our hostel and catch up on our sleep and give in to our jet lag!
Here is our hostel room. It is so basic, but we really cant complain. We even have our own bathroom, which is great. This is where we napped for an embarressing amount of hours today...definitely more than a couple and a few put together! ;) I doubt we will sleep tonight!well my internet cafe time is almost up and this french keyboqrd is very difficult to write on! keep us updated as to what you all are doing in the states and leave plenty of messages/emails for us so we have an excuse to spend a few euro at the internet cafes!!!!
