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 [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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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. [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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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 Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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