Good Morning! I apologize for not writing sooner. There was an immensely long plane ride and then I found tourist stuff to do and a lot of sleeping. So, we arrive in Dubai, I got to see the Palm from the plane. It's even on google maps. the palm is a man made palm tree looking shaped beach here in Abu Dhabi. http://www.lonelyplanet.com/united-arab-emirates/dubai/images/marina-dubai$26294-21#content My mother and I checked into the hotel (around 16:40) and walked around to find a grocery store. They had mostly American food items and chips. It was cool seeing Doritos and "Cheez balls" written in Arabic. We had dinner at this little restaurant next to the hotel called Coco's, which turned out to have the entire menu of TGIFriday's. Fried green beans and all. * I must men... read more

Photos from China trip- Great Wall of China, Bullet Train, Other travel... read more

Castles. More importantly, Neuschwanstein Castle. -LINK-there is all the information on the actual castle, and not just my view of it. First I had to get to Fussen, where this particular castle and another are located. I rode a train with other members of a walking tour from Munich to Fussen. I met this Canadian, Toby who I shared a train ride with, and a rather hostile game of "My Farm." For complete rules and regulations of "My Farm" please see an Aulstralian named Vince that is on a train somewhere in Munich. I'm sure he'll explain the rules for you like he did for me and Toby. So me and Toby play "My Farm" on the way to and from the castles. In between shouts of "My pig" and "My hay!" there were tiny mini ... read more

Amsterdam was a trip. No pun intended. This place is like you are in a giant sized play place. There are millions of bikes around, lots of canals, city parks where people are tripping on shrooms and smoking or eating pot, tulips everywhere, boats, and lots and lots of drinking. My first night there, I had a bit of trouble (seems to be a theme for first days in new countries) where I was trying to find my hostel (Amsterdam Hostel Leidseplein) located on Korte Leidsedwarsstraat 79. So this was the first time I was trying to dissect compound words within words to understand what I was looking for. Since Leidsedwarstraat ends with "straat" it means street. So every time you run into a big word, you have to sit there and tear it apart to ... read more

Switzerland was just by far my favorite place on this Eurotrip. It took us 16 hours by train to arrive in Switzerland from Paris-Leon. We had a bit of trouble locating the exact spot in Switzerland I was trying to get to. I wanted this very specific town that is home to Diga Verzascas. This is the famous 007 Bungee jump from The James Bond Movie "Skyfall". It is the second highest in the world, first being the ones in Victoria Falls, Africa. Anyways, back to the train. So we are taking a train through Switzerland and our train stops at this military academy of some sorts.. (I didn't even know the Swiss had a military) and a platform full of boys get on the train. There were so many guys that got on the train ... read more