This morning I woke up with a bunch of red bumps on my legs and feet. The first thing I thought of was bedbugs!!! It wouldn't have surprised me if it was indeed bedbugs as this hotel on the outskirts of Venice was by far the worst hotel of the trip. After a very sub-par breakfast, which was very typical of our Italian breakfasts, we all headed back on the coach for our full day in Venice. Since Venice was an island, we had to catch a water taxi which took about 15-20 minutes. It was a very quiet ride [View Full Entry]

---

---

It's been over a week but I can never get used to these early wake up calls. This morning we all boarded the coach to leave the cool, clean, and efficient Alpine countries and descend into warm and chaotic Italy. First stop in the morning though was for a little white water rafting excursion for a few hours. It was supposed to be Patrice, Suzanne, Clay, and I doing this but apparently Suzanne and Clay starting feeling a bit under the weather and decided to forego this optional excursion. Only about 15 of us ended up going. Once we were [View Full Entry]

---

---

After a big night of drinking and partying, we woke up this morning to get some physical activity in, as if we haven't been doing enough walking. Most people decided to just sleep in as they were too hung over to go mountain biking. I didn't think that the course would be overly strenuous, boy was I wrong. About 12 of us went over to the bike shop where we were met by about 30 others from another tour. We all got fitted for our bikes and off we went. We all rode single file along some very easy trails [View Full Entry]

---

---

This morning I woke up feeling all refreshed after my first real good night sleep of the trip so far. We made our way back over to Munich's city center this morning for a little more sightseeing and shopping. It was still sporadically raining when we arrived in the city. It was not even 10 o'clock and the area around the Marienplatz was already buzzing with activity. Today was the first day of Oktoberfest and we watched part of the parade march through the square. There were bands marching and wagons all decorated while being pulled by horses. People in [View Full Entry]

---

---

Today was another early morning as we have 3 countries today. We left Lucerne and made our way on the coach over to Mt. Stanserhorn. Arriving in the small town of Stans, we all got our funicular ticket that would take us all the way to the top of the mountain with views of the surrounding Alps. The entire group took this optional and we all boarded this little train that would take us to the furnicular. It was a very relaxing ride with cool crisp air mixed with the sounds of cowbells ringing in the distance. We then all [View Full Entry]

---

---

Today's drive was going to be the longest driving day of the tour. We left Paris for Lucerne, Switzerland. Sitting on the coach for such a long period of time is like hell and we tried to pass the time by listening to our IPOD's, reading a book, but mostly we used the time to catch up on some sleep. Me, Amy, and Patrice tried to kill some time by playing Poker. We all knew we were in Switzerland when the landscape became much more rugged, mountainous, and greener. You could just tell by looking at the cars and the [View Full Entry]

---

---

It was another early wake up call this morning as we had a full day of sightseeing in Paris to do. After a bland breakfast in the hotel this morning, we all boarded our coach to head out to the Louvre museum. It seemed that most everyone purchased the optional museum pass which allowed you to skip the line and just go the front. All 6 of us stuck together and decided to go find the major works of art like the Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, and the Winged Victory. We found the Mona Lisa which was overwhelmed by [View Full Entry]

---

---

This morning was a very early wake up as we were to meet outside of the hotel with all our bags to join up with our Conitki group. I had a bit of a panic this morning trying to stuff as much crap into my backpack as possible. Apparently they were going to weigh our suitcase to ensure it was less than 45lbs. Why they do this, I have no idea. We checked out of the Imperial Hotel with my backpack bulging trying to get my suitcase below the alloted weight limit. Outside, there were about 10 others waiting to [View Full Entry]

---

---

It was a pretty early wake up this morning as we had a full day of intense sightseeing to do. We re-boarded our hop on/hop off bus to make our way to Buckingham Palace, the Queen of England's residence. We watched the changing of the guards along with what seemed like a million other people. It was pretty boring and not very eventful. Afterwards everyone else wanted to take a tour of the inside of the palace. It wasn't my cup of tea, but I figured what the heck. Tours were available to the general public when the queen was [View Full Entry]

---

---

Our flight finally arrived in the UK at around 10am. The weather was a bit dreary as one would expect in London but everyone seemed to be in good spirits as we finally arrived in Europe!!! We were a bit on edge though, it being the 4th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks as well as the recent London Underground bombings. We made it this far and weren't about to let anything get in our way. Customs was pretty easy and within a half hour we had retrieved our bags and were ready to venture into the city. We decided to [View Full Entry]

---

---