Well we got home last night. Everything went great on the flight; we actually arrived almost an hour early, so that was great. I thought I would just kinda sum up the rest of the trip, even though I'm home... The second day that we were in England, we went into London for the day. We drove to a tube stop a little ways outside of London and then took the tube to a stop near Buckingham Palace and started the day there. Buckingham Palace was cool, but not much different that when I was there in 2000. We then walked [View Full Entry]

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Well our last two days in the Netherlands were good. Emily and I went to Amsterdam via train one day. We went to the Van Gogh museum, which was really cool. One floor was entirely dedicated to his paintings and it was in chronological order so we could see the progression of his paintings. At the beginning of his career as a painter, his paintings were very dark, with hardly any color at all. In 1886, he moved to the Montmartre area of Paris to live with his brother Theo and his brother told him that in order for his paintings [View Full Entry]

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On our second (and last) full day in Paris we went to the Louvre in the morning. We got the about an hour before it opened and were within the first 100 people in line, so that was great. It was raining when we were waiting outside, so that sucked, but it was totally worth it! Once we got in, we decided to head straight for the Mona Lisa to see it before the rest of the crowd. It was an adventure. Emily and I were pretty much running through the Louvre trying to follow our map that will lead us [View Full Entry]

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Last night we arrived in Paris around 5ish and went straight to our hostel. The hostel that we are in is very nice. It was built only a few months ago and really caters to people our age. It's a little ways away from things, but there's a metro a couple blocks away. So last night we wanted to wander around a little, and we also wanted to go to the Eiffel Tower. So we started wandering in the general direction (it was on the opposite end of the map). After about half hour of walking, we looked at the map. [View Full Entry]

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Well on Thursday afternoon we arrived in Pisa and found a place to stay, no problem (unlike Siena). So we just wandered around the town for a while and hung out by the leaning tower since there was nothing else there that we needed to see. The leaning tower was so cool, I guess it looked exactly how I pictured it, but it was just awesome to see it in person and to see that it really does lean as much as the pictures show. Anyways, it was great that Emily and I had no plans there because we just laid [View Full Entry]

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Well we have had an interesting last few days… I don’t have much time on the internet, but I’ll give a little summary of what we have done (and I won’t be able to post pictures yet, but I’ll try at some point). When we got to Rome (after 30 hours of traveling on train and ferry) we met up with the other six from our group that were in Rome at the Spanish Steps, so that was awesome and then we went out to dinner at a place called “Concordia” (how appropriate) with them. The next day we all met [View Full Entry]

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Well we are back in Athens. We got here yesterday around dinner time and ate at our hotel. It was so nice to be back here. I really wish we could stay longer than two nights in Athens. It really feels like home because we were here for three weeks at the beginning and this was really where we got acquainted with Greece. We went out to the place, Brettos, that we went to a lot when we were here before, and it was great. I can't believe that it has already been almost three months since we arrived in Greece. [View Full Entry]

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We are back in Istanbul now after a super long bus ride. We have done quite a bit in the last few days that we spent in the Cappadocia area, so I’ll try and sum it up here! Three days ago we drove from Pamukkale to the Cappadocia area. That was a long drive. With a few stops along the way it took over 12 hours. Our first main stop was in Konya to visit the site of Rumi’s tomb. Rumi was a very famous Sufi mystic of the 13th century. The whirling dervishes were started by Rumi and they are [View Full Entry]

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So now we are in a town called Pamukkale. We are only here for a night and then we are heading for Cappadoccia early tomorrow morning. But yesterday we went to a few more ancient ruins... the ones Priene, Didyma, and Miletus. Those were all really cool, especially Didyma because there were huge pillars and they were all standing. It reminded me a lot of the Temple of Karnak in Egypt. We ate at a little local place along the way and had an ok buffet there. But they had strawberries, which were amazing, so that made the meal amazing! I [View Full Entry]

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Yesterday we arrived in Selchuk, the nearest modern town to the ancient site of Ephesus. But I'll start with yesterday morning... We went to the sites of ancient Pergamon. They were pretty cool, but very similar to all of the other ancient sites we have seen. Lots of pillars and a huge theater that held 14,000 people. We also went to the Aesclepion, which was the ancient hospital area. That was really neat. You could see all of the places where the patients would stay when they were there, the rooms were pretty well in tact, well for being 2,000 years [View Full Entry]

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