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Greetings from London!
Jonathan and I are at our hostel in London and doing well. We've already seen alot. We arrived in London at about 10am local time (5am on the east coast). We then took a bus from Heathrow Airport to Windsor. I was very glad we hadn't even thought about driving here - the streets are extremely narrow (often not enough for the two way traffic to pass easily) and that does not slow anybody down. The 45 minute bus ride took us through several suburbs and open spaces outside London, it was a nice preview of things to come.
On arrival at Windsor, we went and toured Windsor Castle. It was absolutely magnificent - especially the state apartment building. In the State Apartment Building, every room was immaculate and had paintings, relics, sculptures, etc. everywhere you looked - including the ceilings. We could have spent a good amount of time in each room, but we were eager to move on. After stopping at McDonald's (I think there's more of them in London than most American cities), we took the train to London and then the tube (subway) to our hostel.
After throwing our bags in our room, we proceeded towards Buckingham Palace and saw quite a bit of the area around Buckingham Palace - finding new things at every turn on our walk (and taking many pictures). The queen was there (we didn't see her, but the flag was up indicating her presence) and tomorrow is the 50th anniversary of her coronation as queen - the city is prepared for a big celebration.
We're staying at Piccadilly Hotel, just one block from Piccadilly circus (London's equivalent of Times Square... complete with flashing signs). We are spending two more days in London before heading to Madrid. We'll update as we can.
CU, Ken
Hola from Madrid!
Jonathan and I are in Madrid and doing well despite a couple of bumps in the road the last couple of days.
Here are the rest of the places we saw in London:
Buckingham Palace,
Admiralty Arch, War Cabinent Rooms, 10 Downing St., St. James Park, Horse Guard,
St. Pauls, Tower Bridge, Tower of London, HMS Belfast, Shakespeare´s Globe, The
Monument, Duke of York Theatre (Saw the Play ¨Stones in His Pockets), Paddington
Station, Westminister Abbey, Parliment, Big Ben, British Museum (very nice and
we could take pics inside), Hyde Park, Clopatra´s Needle, and the Marble
Arch.
We have seen the following in Madrid:
Palacio Real, Plaza Mayor, Puerta
del Sol, Prado Museum, Buen Retiro Park, the Communications building (probably
the best structure we´ve seen), and a couple other places.
Tonight we are going to Las Ventas Bullring to Watch a bullfight. Tomorrow we travel to Amsterdam for a day and then Brussels.
Adios,
Ken
Gotta make this one quick... Jonathan and I are in Brussels, Belgium and doing well. Las Ventas Bullring was awesome. One matador was hurt, but otherwise the bulls didn't win. From there, we flew to Amsterdam without any problems. The highlight of Amsterdam was the Train Station (immaculate) and the boat tour that we took. Today we took a train here to Brussels and spent all afternoon walking around town (probably 5 miles of walking at least). Our favorite place here so far is an arch that we do not know the name of.
Quick picture update... we have taken almost 300 pictures to this point and many more will follow.
We travel to Munich next.
CU, Ken
Hey-
I got some unexpected time to email today, so I'll add a few things to yesterday's comments.
Our boat tour in Amsterdam was on the "Canal Bus" which let us get off and on as much as we would like for the time we were there. We also ran into Leslie, a friend I knew from Camp Eagle's Nest, while we were in Amsterdam. Some of the people that worked at the Christian hostel we stayed at there were from Lee University in Cleveland.
Brussels was the first dissapointing city we've been to. We saw three things we liked to some extent (the previously mentioned arch, the National Basilica, and the Atomium), but they weren't worth the two days we spent here. We wish we had left at least one of those days for Italy or somewhere else. Brussels is also an extremely dirty city (we were a little shocked by that). There is trash everywhere, dogs roam freely and like the center of sidewalks, none of their monuments are cleaned/whitewashed, and even the Basilica had graffiti on it. McDonalds is also very expensive here.
We leave very early in the morning tomorrow for Munich and after two days we'll head to Athens.
CU, Ken
Hello from Athens-
Sorry that we did not get to write from Munich, we went to an internet cafe and they were having global network problems that prevented new users from buying time. In Munich (Munchen) we had a great time. We went to Neuschwannstein Castle immediately after arriving. It is the castle that Disney's Cinderella Castle is based off of. The outside was amazing and the views from the top were awesome, but the inside decorations paled compared to Windsor.
The next day we went to Dachau, site of the major concentration camp within Germany. We spent around 4 hours touring the memorial site and museum and then we were given a free bus ride to Dachau (the city) by the local tourism board to show the other, less well known, aspects of Dachau. From there we went back to Munchen and saw the Old and New Town halls, had dinner at the local market, and rode around the city on the metro to view other monuments, churches, etc. We stayed at the YMCA in Munchen - and it is fun to stay there.
Our flight to Athens ran late and stopped in Thessoloniki (which we didn't know about until we boarded), but was still rather nice. Our last two flights have fed us with regional meals that have been very good.
Now we are looking forward to seeing all of the history of Athens... we've checked into our hotel (NOT hostel - we actually have a TV and A/C here... but we should say that all of the hostels we have stayed in have been pretty good) and eaten at a local food store. Athens and Rome are expected to be two of our favorites, so this part of our trip should be interesting. We'll be in Athens until Sunday morning.
CU,
Ken
Hello again from Athens,
Jonathan and I are basically done with Athens with almost a day to spare (our original schedule would have had us going to Rome today, but prices postponed a day). Thursday we saw the Acropolis, Greek Agoras, Old Olympic Stadium, and many other archeological things around there. Since both of us enjoy structures, it was one of the best days of our trip so far.
Yesterday we went to Aegina (one of the Greek islands) by hydrofoil for one or more of the following reasons:
1) Different from the city experiences
2) Much more laid back than
Athens
3) After walking so much, we thought our arms could use a little
swimming at the beaches.
4) We wanted to test out how long our sunscreen
lasted for (not quite as long as we thought, but we didn't burn too
badly).
5) What else was there to see in Athens?
Anyhow, it was a fun side trip. Today we were going to see the Archeological Museum, but it was closed. Tomorrow morning we take our last intra-Europe flight to Rome.
CU,
Ken
Buon Giorno from Rome,
We are in Rome and doing well. We arrived in Rome on Sunday morning and after checking in our hostel, we visited the Colosseum and Arch of Trajan. We also visited the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore briefly, probably our favorite church to date. Monday we started by seeing the same church in a little more detail (and took pictures) and then took the metro to the Vatican. Upon arriving at the Vatican, we visited the Vatican Museums, which also included the Sistine Chapel. There we saw many famous works by artists like Michaelangelo, Raphael, and Leonardo (we're still looking for Donatello, but we have found alot of Bernini). Jonathan's favorite work, The School of Athens by Raphael, was included. We attempted to visit St. Peter's Basilica, but they do not like men wearing shorts so we're going back today with our legs covered. After that, we visited Piazza Navona, the Pantheon, Trevi Fountain, and Palazzo del Quirinale, where we saw a military procession. We also saw many nice churches along the way whose names we do not know.
Yesterday we took a record 160 pictures, many of which were at the Vatican Museum. Our picture total is now about 650 and with St. Peter's, the Roman Forum, several other churches, and a few other things left in Rome we'll probably top 750 in Rome and could make 1000 by the end of the trip (or even more if we find more museums that let us take pictures).
One other enjoyment in Rome has been our hostel, which has a "Spaghetti Party" every night that is a 5 course meal (all you can eat) for 1 Euro (about $1.25). Not only has this given us a good, very cheap taste of local food, but has also allowed us to meet many more people at this hostel versus our other hostels. Here we've met people from Australia, England, Mexico, and two different sets of Roommates from Chicago.
We have two more days in Rome and then we will train to Florence.
C'iao,
Ken
Buona sera from Firenze (Florence),
Jonathan and I have made it to Firenze from Rome and have a few updates. First, we both agree that Rome is by far the best city we've been to so far and, even though we allowed four days for it (the most for any city), we still didn't quite get to see everything we wanted to. Since our last report, we visited the Capitolone Museum, the inside of St. Paul's Basilica, the Roman Forum, San Giovanni in Laterno, St. Paul in Chains, the Spanish Steps, and the Trevi Fountain and Colosseum again at night.
We caught a 3 1/2 hour train ride to Firenze and then found that booking a hostel was a big problem since the one we tried to book did not respond quickly. So, we ended up taking a bus to a hill over-looking the city near the Michaelangelo Plaza where there is a campground that we were able to rent a tent for tonight and then found a regular hostel for tomorrow night. Hopefully we won't have horror stories about mosquitos the next time we write - we've heard a few about other campgrounds in Italy. Tonight we walked around a portion of the city and saw the outside of the Palazzo Vecchio, Uffizi Gallery, and Duomo. We will at least visit the inside of the latter two tomorrow.
Picture wise, we repeated our 160 picture performance a second consecutive day in Rome and now have a total of about 940 pictures, close to half of which are Rome. I'm sure there are a few duds that we won't keep, but we're basically assured of 1000 good pictures now and should have more with Firenze, Venice, Milan, and Paris left on our trip.
Tomorrow we will enjoy the rest of Firenze and then travel towards Venice the next day.
Arrivederci,
Ken
Hello from our last stop in Italy, Milan!
Here in Milan we finally found a decent place to use the internet after several days of overpriced places and unavailability.
Since our last report, we have set foot in 6 different cities as follows:
Florence - Our stay at the campground wasn't too bad and for the first time we were actually COLD at night rather than burning. The next day we visited the two major museums in Florence, the Academia and the Uffizi, as well as their Duomo. We were dissapointed with all three, especially the much-hyped Uffizi. The Academia had Michaelangelo's David as well as a few other Michaelangelo works, but was very small for the price. David is a much better sculpture in person than in pictures - the detail is incredible.
After another night in Florence, we travelled to Pisa to see the leaning tower and their Duomo. We didn't stay long, but Pisa seemed like a nice town and the leaning tower was perhaps the most fun of the structures we've visited (especially watching people take pictures of their family and it).
>From Pisa we travelled to the less-well known town of Ferrara for our hostel (which was highly rated). It was very nice and it was good to see a more authentic Italian city that isn't as marred by tourism. The hostel was awesome and from our room we had a great view of a huge fireworks show they had for the official start of summer.
>From Ferrara we travelled to Venice and walked around the city a bit (seeing churches and their main plaze) before taking a boat taxi (gondolas were too expensive) back through the major canal to the train station.
>From Venice we went to Vicenza for another stay at a fairly highly rated hostel. Vicenza was also a more authentic city and has very nice architecture.
>From Vicenza we took the train to Milan, where we have seen their Duomo, a castle, a couple other churches, and a few parks. Their train station is also very nice (not quite as nice as Amsterdam's, but probably the next best). We are taking an overnight train to Paris tonight, which will be our last stop before returning home.
We are well over 1000 pictures now - we had a slight problem with our main memory card (which has about 900 pictures on it - scared us pretty good when it gave us an error), but all of the pictures are still on it and we think we can retrieve them.
We may have one more report from Paris... our flight returns the night of the 27th. Since I'm going to camp for the next week, it will probably be a little while before the pictures are available, but we plan to have an online photo album of all of them.
Ciao!
Ken
Hello from Paris,
We return to the States tomorrow. Paris has been great. We saw the Eiffel Tower, Napoleans Arch, Sacre Coure, Notre Dame, Pantheon, The Louvre, Invalides, The Grand Palace, and much more. I for one was very pleasantly suprised by the city. It will probably take a couple weeks for pictures to be ready, but we'll let you know as soon as they are. Gotta run --- look forward to seeing everybody soon.
CU,
Ken