RadiateLove

I need to catch up here! This journal is the only way that I am keeping track of what day it is! It's about 5:35pm and I am sitting in our little cabin listening to the birds chirp. I've heard some people bitch a lot about the accomodations and contiki tours and I wish that they would just get over themselves! This is an awesome trip! Anyways, back to the Tuscan meal in Florence. There were so many courses! One free (or included, would be the most accurate) bottle of wine amongst the four of us. We started with small pieces of bread with salami, ham, and parmasan type cheese. So good! After that came pasta- ravioli, spagetti, and some sea shell looking green things. All good, even with me not liking pasta all that much. ... read more

Tonight I am in a campsite near Florence, Italy. The cabins here are like big motorhomes. There are 2 bedrooms, a real bathroom, and inbetween is a seating area. Very nice! So we left Venice this morning. Breakfast was good. They make awesome sandwhiches here with melted cheese and ham on baguettes. So good! I think I will miss them. The bread like this always seems so dry at home. It was so warm this morning. It was great getting on the bus- I mean coach! Air conditioning...ahhh. :) You can hear everyone singing Summer of 69 at the bar right now! It's up on the hill from here. I kinda wish that I was up there right now but thought I'd save myself for tomorrow night. Anyways, it was a shorter bus ride today. We ... read more

Ok, tonight I am in VENICE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! But, I need to finish writing about yesterday. Nice WAS nice! It was hard to find washrooms though. We ate in a sandwhich shop for lunch. I had a baguette with ham and cheese. Totally diggin' the whole sandwhiches on french bread. We finally found a toilette in a department store. I spent .50euro to use it. But the feeling was worth it! Those Europeans are smart charging people to use the washroom. Then we went and sat in a park near some cool water fountains. For some reason, on our trip so far no fountains seemed to be working. So we chilled out there for a bit and walked back to the pick up. The coach came and we went back to the campsite. We had a good supper, ... read more

I feel better today- emotionally. Physically my ankles are still swollen and my knee also feels swollen and stiff. Hopefully that gets better. This morning we were up at 6:15am. Ate breafkast, picked up our clean laundry (12 euros for a little Spanish lady to wash and dry a bag of your clothes), and left the campsite at 8:15am. It was a long driving day to the French Riviera. I slept a bit on the coach. We stopped four times, once in a cute town called Arles. We usually stop at gas stations off the side of the highway (I'm sure they aren't called highways in Europe), so it was different to stop in a town. At our first stop today, I ate a bigger meal than normal. Usually we just buy snacks, but this time ... read more

Ok so I missed a couple of days and am on my way to Spain, so I'll backtrack... The Chateau was awesome!! We were in the heart of the beaujolais wine region. So so gorgeous!! It's an endless see of rolling green hills. The Chateau is from the 15th century, give or take a century. Right out the front door is a place to lounge, with a view of the countryside and a fenced in pool (which people jumped into the first night). It's like a big dorm, even though...I've never actually been in a dorm lol. The bathrooms and showers were unisex and communal. When we first got there, as with every stop, we were supposed to throw the rep off of her speech. Mecha got the guys to sit in the front seats in ... read more