2nd Entry (Finally)

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Hey all!

I know it's been a while since I blogged, but internet access has been expensive and we've been real busy. Everything's been expensive, thanks to the weak dollar and rising EU prices, but we're finally camping so we're saving a lot of money now. Since my last entry we finished our time in London, took the chunnel train down to Paris, visited some sites in Normandy, flew down to Venice and then took a train to Florence. We're having a great time and although the weather has been back and forth, we're currently getting some beautiful weather here and hoping that as spring progresses and we head further south we'll avoid any more cold. I'll give a quick rundown of our activities but there won't be any pictures today because I can't get this computer to recognize my camera. Hopefully I'll have some up in a few days.

London

We hit some more sites in London, including Hyde Park and some wandering through Harrod's, which is an amazing department store that can pretty much get you anything you want, but talk about expensive. Then we finally made it to the British museum to see all the ancient artifacts from cultures around the world. Of course my favorite was the Rosetta stone as well as the rest of the Egyptian stuff. I bought a book on how to read Hieroglyphs so hopefully by the time we get to Egypt I'll be able to decipher some of the writing :-). We also visited Westminster Abbey to see all the graves and monuments for British Kings and other accomplished Brits including poets, authors, actors and scientists. I particularly enjoyed Isaac Newton's grave and monument. When it was time to leave London we headed to...

Paris

Our train to Paris was uneventful and we made our way to the first hotel we had booked for two nights (thanks to Drea's boss Jay for giving us the miles to pay for the room). We spent the first few days just wandering around and getting used to being in Paris. When it came time to find a new place to stay, we decided it was too cold and rainy to camp, so we found a fairly cheap hotel in Montmartre, north of Paris, and were very happy with the room. We spent the next five days seeing museums and sites in Paris, as well as trekking out to Versailles. We hit the Orsay to see all the Impressionist paintings and I really enjoyed that because I had never been there. Of course we went to the Louvre to check out the famous statues and paintings as well some more Egyptian artifacts I wanted to see. We didn't get there until late in the afternoon so we took a fairly whirlwind tour, but it was a lot of fun.

Normandy

After our stay in Montmartre, we caught a train north to see Mont St Michel. When we got to our final stop I apparently took too long to find our third bag and the doors closed and the train took off with me still on and Drea outside! After a few moments of panic I realized it shouldn't be hard to get off at the next stop and hop on the next train going back the other way. So when the train stopped again after about ten minutes, I jumped off, managed to communicate to the station attendant that I needed to be on the next train back the other way and she pointed so I jumped on. I made it back to the Mont St Michel stop and luckily Drea was waiting for me :-). The whole thing only took about 30 extra minutes so I was pretty impressed with my ability to function when things don't go according to plan! Lesson: small regional trains do not stop for more than a minute or two at small stops. Drea and I have made sure to locate all our baggage well before the train stops since then.

Well, there's much more to tell but I'm running out of time so I'll say goodbye for now and try to post more after we get to Rome tomorrow.

Mark

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Comments

[Peter]

Pics
Definately need to get your computer and camera back together as friends. Need pictures. Way to live bro.!!!!!