We awoke this morning with the hopes of being able to do a little snorkeling but the rains that had started last night continued on to this morning. Troy and I braved the muddy streets in the pouring rain and made our way over to Ragamuffin to cancel our spots on that day's snorkeling tour. After putting our names down for tomorrow's snorkeling trip, we walked back to the hotel and encouraged everyone else to do the same. A group of us made our way over to Amor Y Cafe, a popular local spot for breakfast. I ordered a delicious ham and pineapple breakfast sandwich and in contrast to our experiences at other restaurants in Belize, the service here was amazingly quick. While we were eating, the clouds opened up yet again for another torrential downpour. ... read more

We left San Ignacio this morning for our foray into Guatemala. Originally, the tour had scheduled for us to camp at Tikal National Park. Due the unexpected rainstorms that they region was experiencing, our campsite was flooded. Instead, we would be staying in the town of El Remate near Tikal. We made it to the border in just a few minutes and spent about an hour going through border formalities including having to pay $37.50 in Belizean dollars as a departure tax. As we drove through Guatemala, I was quite surprised with the conditions of the roads. I don't know what everyone else was thinking but I was actually expecting third world conditions with unpaved road with deep potholes for the duration of the drive to El Remate. To my surprise, the roads for the most ... read more

After a surprisingly good sleep, Troy, Melanie, and I walked over to a bakery at the nearby Radisson Hotel for breakfast. Here we had our first taste of Johnny Cakes, which are little english muffin sized biscuits popular around the Caribbean. After breakfast, we met Kirsten and Tony, the 2 Australian sisters who missed last night's meeting. They had spent all day yesterday traveling by public bus from Mexico to Belize. Our private bus was delayed so we weren't able to leave at 10 as scheduled so to kill some time, a few of us decided to walk into town to find a store in order to buy some snacks. We received directions from the hotel staff and ventured into town. Being that it was a Sunday, almost everything was closed. We ended up settling on ... read more

Our last day on this trip started off with a late breakfast just off the Schlossplatz. We knew that eventually we wanted to try to find the apartment that my parents used to live in when they lived here in Stuttgart. However, we weren't quite sure of what else to do. We noticed that just off the Schlossplatz, there was one of those Hop on Hop off tour buses that would take us around the city. Not sure of what sights there was to see in the city, we chose to sightsee aboard one of these. We rode around the city stopping at various points of interest but it didn't really seem like any of us were interested in getting off. Apparently 2 weeks of travelling had taken it's toll on all of us. Everyone just ... read more

After yesterday's long day of sightseeing through the Bavarian Alps, today was another busy day of sightseeing in the Munich area. To make it ever better, it was an unseasonably warm day today with temperatures approaching the upper 80s. We caught the train over to Dachau, located in the northwestern suburbs of Munich. Surprisingly, the subways and trains here in Munich seemed to work on the honor system. There were no checks to ensure that people paid their train fare prior to boarding. Being the cheapskates that we were, we all boarded the train to Dachau without paying, hoping that there would be no enforcement officers on board. Dachau is best known for the concentration camp that is located here which was the first of the Nazi concentration camps in Germany. Upon arrival in Dachau, we ... read more