Liz Marsh and Andrea Margheim
Just as we are starting to feel at home in London it's time to pack our bags and set off on the next great adventure! "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." -Mark TwainLiz and Andrea
These are the true stories of Liz and Andrea's Excellent Adventure...
Travel Blog Posts
May 6th 2005
After the horror that was the ferry ride we were delighted to finally arrive in Ireland. Our first city was Cork. Cork is the European Capital of Culture for 2005 and the city reflected it. It was a very beautiful city but it lacked the edge that the other cities in Ireland had. On our first day we went to Blarney to visit the castle. We climbed the tower to the top of the castle and prepared ourselves to dangle upside down hundreds (well it felt like hundreds) of feet above the gardens to kiss the legendary Blarney Stone. Legend has it that those who kiss the Blarney Stone are forever blessed with the gift of gab. Since Andrea didn't get a good picture the first time Liz had to kiss the stone twice so she's ... read more
April 21st 2005
Since Wojtiech's family convinced us to stay longer than we planned we ended up getting to Berlin late at night. We were so excited to see Ausgang (stairs) because we knew we would be able to understand the language a little bit better than in Poland! On our first day in Berlin we took a walking tour around the city. We saw museum island, the east Berlin artists quarter, the oldest synagogue in Germany, the Reichstag (the government building), the new Jewish holocaust memorial, Hitler's bunker, and Hitler's apartment, the Brandenburg Gate, we walked along the route that the wall was built on. It was a four hour tour, those are just the highlights! That afternoon we went back to the Reichstag and climbed up it's glass dome for a great view of Berlin. That night ... read more
April 20th 2005
We are so sorry we haven't posted in such a long time, there's so much to tell! We decided to split it all up into two entries. The first is our visit to Poland. For those of you who don't know the whole history of last summer here's the abridged version: Liz's parents picked up some Polish kids one night in the grocery store when they accidentally found out they were working in Colorado on the same program that we went to London on. We spent most of the summer with Wojtiech, Michael, and Kasia. Michael and Kasia are still working in California but Wojtiech decided to go back to Poland and we took the opportunity to go and visit him! We stepped off the train and were greeted by Wojtiech and his mom who gave ... read more
April 13th 2005
Prague had the most beautiful architecture we've seen. The whole city was gothic and mysterious looking. We spent hours in the old section of the town and the Jewish quarter just looking at random buildings. We can't figure out the name of our favorite building but check out the picture and anyone who has been to Prague feel free to tell us! We also visited the Prague Castle and took a walking tour which was supposed to last for one hour but we had a very enthusiastic new guide so it ended up being closer to two hours! Our favorite part of it was St. Vitus' Cathedral which was built over three centuries and had beautiful stained glass. From the castle we walked across St. Charles bridge, a 600 year old bridge that has 32 statues ... read more
April 9th 2005
We missed our train in Milan and arrived in Frieburg late but Tommy's dad, Klemmens was there to meet us anyway and what a nice change it was for us! We got to leave the train station in a car instead of trying to navigate public transportation and we arrived at a house instead of some dodgy hostel! It was a very good day for us. While in Freiburg we celebrated both Tommy and Andrea's birthdays. It's tradition in Germany that the night before your birthday all your friends take you out and do a new year's-esque countdown 10 seconds before midnight. And even though it was Andrea's first trip to Germany, her birthday was no exception. Tommy's friends all met us at the beer garden on April 2nd and counted down to midnight, after which ... read more
April 2nd 2005
Gently down the Grand Canal... To start off, don´t ever be fooled on hostels.com into thinking that a place called B&B is a cheap bed and breakfast, it´s not! We got over the initial shock from arriving at a hostel when we thought we´d have a cute little room overlooking the water. Everything was fine until we tried to go to sleep and discovered that they must have misread the directions when putting together our bunk beds because everytime the person on the bottom (Andrea) made the slightest movement (like breathing) the top bed would sway several feet in both directions. After Andrea had bid farewell to the cruel world because she knew her death from sleeping underneath Liz was imminent, we decided it would probably be a good idea to move our beds to the ... read more
March 30th 2005
We know it's a little past Easter but we were in Florence on Easter Sunday and Easter Monday so none of the internet cafe's were open! By far the coolest part about Florence was the hostel we stayed in. It was a converted monastary on a hill about 3 km southeast of the city. We had to take a forty minute bus ride and then walk about 20 minutes (or 40 when we were carrying our backpacks!) up the hill. Luckily we met some kids at the bus stop who were going the same direction and they helped us carry some of our stuff half way up the hill. It was all worth it though, once you were at the top. The hostel overlooked the city and the hills beneath it were full of olive groves ... read more
March 27th 2005
We actually left Paris quite a while ago but we only had one day in Rome so we didn't have time to post! So we had to put Paris and Rome in the same journal. Paris is a big city with lots to do so most of the time we split up so that we could all do what we wanted in the short amount of time we had there. First thing on Saturday right after we left our bags at the hostel Ksenya and Andrea went to the Eiffel Tower. They stood on the very top to se an amazing view. We all met later in the Latin Quarter and watched many street performers. One of the shows included a huge audience sing a long to various Bob Marley songs. Sunday morning Liz and Ksenya ... read more
March 23rd 2005
For those of you who were betting on when our first fight would be, the winner is 03/15/05. The good news is that we're over it now and despite it all we had a wonderful time in Avignon. The first night we were there we met two French boys Hassane and Kasim who took us out for coffee. One spoke French and German, the other French and Spanish. Both spoke Arabic and neither spoke English which made it quite the linguistic adventure! On Wednesday we went to Cannes. We saw the theater where the film festival is held and baked on the beach. On the way home we met David, an environmentalist freelance journalist whose opening line to Andrea was, "here, read the article I wrote on Darryl Hannah for High Times". He had an assortment ... read more
March 17th 2005
When we left Barcelona we had to see what city Ksenya could get a cheap train ticket to so we didn't make any reservations. We arrived in Toulouse with no where to sleep. We walked all through the town to the tourist office and got a book of hotels. Then we stood outside with all our luggage on "dat night" (Saturday) and Liz called just about every hotel in Toulouse. We ended up at a cute hotel across the river. We finally walked there at about 8:00 tired, hungry and dirty. After 1 1/2 showers we lost all hot water so we abandonned our original plan to go out and decided we'd just take it easy in Toulouse. We ordered a pizza, got a bottle of wine and spent the night watching countdowns on VH1 in ... read more
Tot: 0.072s; Tpl: 0.003s; cc: 11; qc: 84; dbt: 0.0457s; 1; s:notus w:www (50.28.61.183); sld: 1; ; mem: 1.7mb
