Day Five: Hello France

So we got in late to Paris, people associated with international flights don't seem to be too keen on schedules or keeping to them. Regardless, we got to Paris about midnight two nights ago and had our first "crisis." We got to the metro station (similar to London's underground, Paris' is a subway called the Metro), and the machines were in French to sell us tickets. No problem, we hit a little icon and bam, we've got English. So we go to buy some tickets, and they don't take Euros... like.. the cash. They say they'll accept the coins (euros come in one and two euro coins as well), but we didn't have any of those. No big deal, right? I mean, we've got credit cards. We try those, but the reader won't read them. Now Katie starts to get a little exasperated. She was right, the language barrier would prove to be difficult. We aimlessly walked around for about thirty minutes, trying to figure out what to do, not being able to read any signs, and finally we asked a guy if he could speak english. He spoke very little, but pointed us to an information desk about a half mile down the terminal where a little spoke enough english to help us. Then we got on the metro, found out our directions we received were bad, and it took another hour to get to the right hotel.

We slept in pretty late, seeing as we had about 10 hours of combined sleep the first four nights combined, and ventured out into Paris. Before we went out though, we decided to take the hotel manager's recommendation for lunch, and here's what we got.

that was katie's salad.. she loved it

this was my half-chicken, it was the most delicious thing i've eaten outside of America, and rivals most things I've eaten at home...

So our first meal in France was awesome, seriously we talked about it the rest of the day. After eating, we ran into an American couple (older people) at the restaurant. They were from Florida and visiting Paris before they went to see their son, who was studying in Rome. Their son's roomate was Tony Blair's daughter. First of all, co-ed roomates are funny to me, but to have the former prime-minister of England's daughter as your roommate would be CRAZY.

After talking with them, we went to the Louvre. This is the biggest museum on the planet. OK, so I don't know that for sure, I'm just saying. It was about five football fields long by five football fields wide. There is so much famous stuff there I cannot begin to explain it, so I will show you pictures.

This is in front of I.M. Pei's glass Pyramid, which is actually the entrance to the Louvre

oh and this little gal here is the mona lisa, found her hanging out with no one even remotely trying to see her!

ok so I lied, there were two hundred people trying to see her, but Katie got close! (see below)

Katie just hanging out with Mona...

this is me next to a giant cup

I'd upload more pictures of the cool stuff (I think Katie and I took about 200 combined at the Louvre), but it takes about a minute to upload each picture, and I have little patience. So I'll continue to talk about what we did the rest of the day.

After the Louvre, we went back to our hotel and sat down for about fourty five minutes.. Walking around the Louvre was tiring, so the break was great. Then we left the hotel, and decided to chance going to the Eiffel Tower. We had heard it's cool to see the lights turn on, and it was about dusk, so we hopped a Metro and headed across the Seine. We got there, and walked through about the half mile park below the tower (or Tour Eiffel, as the French call it), and as we were approaching, the lights turned on.. It was just after sunset, and was pretty sweet.. There were people making out in the grass all around us, and Katie took pictures of every one of them. Then we got to the base of the Tower, and quickly decided we had to go up as high as we could. There are four pillars at the bottom, and we smartly (sarcasm) chose the one without an elevator. We said screw it, and walked sixty flights of stairs to the second landing. That was a hike, and Katie was a trooper. Below are some pics from the night.

This is Katie just leaning on the Tour Eiffel, no big deal

and that's us, re-enacting the birthday card that Katie's roomates gave her, except this one isn't photo-shopped

Like I said, I could upload photos all day, but it takes a while, so I'm going to stop now. Day one in Paris was awesome, maybe our best day in Europe so far.

Day Four: Recap of London, pictures, and heading to Paris tonight

Katie and I by the River Thames at night
Katie found a cool blue door, mom asked that we have pictures with people in them, so I obliged
This is the courtyard at Westminster Abbey, taken from the cloisters, made me think of Phil Grefrath, he'd love this grass...
The one and only. Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) was nowhere in sight, Katie checked.
This is Picadilly Circus, the Times Square of London

Last night was our last night in London, thank the Lord. Katie and I are both excited to get out of the dorm-style european hostels. The place and the people were friendly enough, people there just don't put much priority on sleep.

We head to paris this afternoon, grabbing a train to the airport in a couple hours. We're staying at a real hotel there (thanks gramma rose), so there should be more resting going on than in London.

Today we woke up, checked out, and went to a park. Katie didn't sleep well last night, so she grabbed a nap while I watched a soccer tournament next door, which was being emceed by a radio DJ. Let me tell you, THAT was entertaining.

Recap of London highlights:
Things we loved:
Tower of London
Westminster Abbey
Thames River
The parks
Things that were overrated:
Buckingham Palace

We loved London, we really did. We're excited for Paris though. I've already lost some stuff, but Katie's still talking to me, so that's good too.

Hope you enjoyed the pics. Pray for travel, and that our hotel is sleep-friendly.

Day Three: Wimbledon has big houses

Today is saturday, but I'm updating for Friday because we didn't make it to the internet place. Thursday we went to the Tower of London, which is this huge castle by the river Thames. There are SO many things there. The coolest was definitely the queens crown jewels. There were tons, and we got to see them. You aren't supposed to photograph them, but I was feeling rebelious and did anyway.


That was cool in itself, but then we decided to go to Wimbledon, where the tennis tournament is. Wimbledon itself is a suburb of London, and it took us about an hour on the Underground to get there. We utilized this time for a much needed nap.

Once there, we wandered through neighborhoods and asked the friendly British people where the heck we were going. We finally found it, and went to the store to buy Katie's little brother something, but everything there was ridiculous. A tshirt was £24, which is almost $50! We then took the underground back to Hyde Park, the biggest park in London. We got an ice cream cone and laid around four about an hour or two. We've been to 20 parks here, it's awesome.

Then we went back to London Pub, our favorite food hangout we've found. Ate there, and headed to Picadilly Circus at night, and took some pictures. There were seriously 100,000 people outside. They close the streets so people can drink. We walked past this gay bar, and there was a huge line, so we didn't go in. There was a guy with makeup and a green speedo passing out fliers. Katie declined to introduce herself to him.

I'm going to add pictures on Day four's post...

Day Two: Lots of famous stuff

Today is Thursday, and its about midnight here, therefore its 6 pm in Missouri and 7 pm in Ohio. We went a ton of places today, and I'd love to post some pictures, but there is no USB port on this computer, so they'll hopefully be up tomorrow.

Today we saw...
Big Ben- pretty sweet. it was the first thing we saw when we came out of the subway stairs. it sits right on the river, and is really intricate. Trey, it reminded me of the movie 'The Three Mouskateers,' how's that for an old school movie reference
The houses of Parliament- wouldn't be as cool if they weren't attached to Big Ben
Westminster Abbey- the sweetest part of the day probably. Huge church where lots of people were buried. We saw a bunch of kings and queens bones, or at least the boxes that hold them. Katie got kicked out for illegal flash photography... ok so she didn't, but a few people almost did, the security there was pissed. It was really pretty from outside and inside. Cool cloistered hallways with some sweet courtyards inside.
Buckingham Palace- super over-rated. No fuzzy hat guards that we could see. Katie said, and I quote 'Man, the queen got jipped.'
London Bridge from way far away- it was far away
The River Thames- really pretty at night, we walked along the shore for a couple miles at least
London Pub (again)- we found a place we like
Oxford Circus- huge shopping district. didn't buy anything, but it was packed with people.
Hard Rock Cafe- ate some american food.

some more stereotypes that we've found to be true. Everyone here smokes. Everyone. They don't expect you to tip at meals. Everyone drinks all day. They try and hand you free stuff at seemingly every corner.

we bought a three day subway pass for £17.40, or $35. We used it about nine times today, which means it already paid for itself (almost twice over).

last night was rocky, but hopefully we're used to the time change now. tomorrow's docket includes wimbledon, the tower of london, st. pauls cathedral, london bridge closer up, and hopefully a few more things. tomorrow is our last full day in london.

the money here is really cool. they use pounds and pence, and they dont have bills for one or two pounds, they just use coins, and cool coins at that.

the weather was beautiful again, we're getting spoiled here. people seem to think it rains all the time here. katie and i love parks now. when you don't want to go back to your hostel, parks provide a sweet place to sit and do crosswords for an hour to rest your feet, and everyone else goes to parks to. we watched a pickup soccer game today, almost laced em up and showed these Brits how we ball in america, then i remembered i suck at soccer.

goodnight america

Day One: These people don't waste time

So after an eight hour flight and a delay in there, we made it to Heathrow airport at about 9 am.. got to our hostel about 10:30, and they told us our room wasn't ready until 2:00! This place looks ultra-shady from the outside, and is only semi-shady on the inside. I'll take what i can get.. our roommates are foreign, or at least the one or two we ran into..

I'm going to throw some pictures on here later tonight, but am at an internet-cafe type place and cant upload directly from my camera (thanks trey for letting me borrow it!)

We saw platform 9 3/4 today, from Harry Potter. It was really cool. A pigeon almost bit my head off, but Katie karate chopped it. Everything is really expensive. All the stereotypes are true so far. The buildings are beautiful and most look like castles. They DO drive on the left hand side of the road, which is weird when you have to cross the street. Not everyone here speaks English, which was kind of surprising, a lot of people with poor English.

We went to Picadilly Circus today, which is like the Times Square of London. That was cool, and then we walked to Trafalgar Square, which is this huge courtyard-ish area outside the national gallery. A few fountains and some SWEET buildings.

Went to starbucks, ordered something new, picked up the wrong thing. Turns out it was coffee. English people don't seem to understand my English. Maybe I should take some classes.

We're headed to dinner and then to bed early, don't wanna get hit with too much jet lag.

Leave a message if you like, props to Dave Fortener for recognizing the Seinfeld quote in the last post. Hopefully there will be pictures up tonight when we get back from dinner. Miss you all!

T-Minus 24 hours to liftoff

So we leave tomorrow morning for London. That's less than a day from now, and I haven't started packing. Problem is, I probably won't get to start until later tonight anyway. Beyond that, my parents came this weekend and I got a SWEET backpack for my trip. Since my birthday is while I'm over there, they gave it to me early. It has roughly 3.4 million compartments, including one for my used razors (who shaves on a plane anyway?) Ten bucks to whoever can guess what that last line references. But seriously, it has so much storage. I can't begin to describe everything this bag can do, the magical powers are endless. Anyway, it should make the trip a lot easier.

So I'm off to UD to film a video for club tonight (maybe I could post it on here!) and catch up with some friends before I peace out to the motherland. Once we're over there, I hope to update the blog every night, so if you care at all, feel free to check it a bunch.

"The Pond" means the Atlantic Ocean (apparently there's been some confusion)

I was umpiring little league baseball last night, and I told my "boss" about the trip to Europe. When I tell most people about the trip, they "oooh" and "aahhh" for a few minutes, ask me where I'm headed, and that's about it.

So I tell this guy Pete about the trip, and he says, "well are you prepared to go?" I thought he meant, excited, or maybe had I planned everything. I told him yes, and then he asked what I thought my chances were off getting robbed or mugged. I told him that a ton of people had warned me of this, so I figured pretty small, I'm not going to be carrying much around with me at any given time, so I told him not very good.

He then went on to tell me he thought the same thing, and that he had heard all kinds of rumors of people getting robbed while in Europe. I've heard a bunch of stories too, but he went on to say "have you ever heard of people getting robbed on overnight trains?" I said no, and he went on to tell me this rumor that people on overnight trains get gassed in their compartments, and then robbed of everything they've got. While he was telling me this, I was thinking two things:
1) Who the heck would this ever happen to? and...
2) Why the heck is he telling me this?

Turns out, it actually happened to him! Pete was on a train from Paris to Rome (which was the original plan for our trip, until we changed plans to fly easyJet), and people had warned him that overnight trains got gassed and robbed all the time. He said he laughed at the idea, but slept right in front of the door of the compartment. Sure enough, he woke up the next morning and everything was stolen. I'm not sure how he knows he was gassed, but he seemed pretty convinced. This story may be the only thing that doesn't excite me about Europe.

I put it in the blog because it was funny more than anything.

We leave in more or less four days, and I'm at the nervous stage. The farthest from home I've ever been is California, and I was only six then. There's a lot of planning that goes into these kinds of trips. Before I sat down to plan this all, I thought travel agents were pointless, but now I can understand why they're in business (I bet the internet kills their income though...)

So four days till we leave, I'd love some pointers or funny stories about stuff overseas, I'm a rookie here...