We started off our France trip with a day trip to Bath. Yes, it seems a bit out of the way to go to Bath first, but we like to be complicated and pack everything in. The reason for Bath is that we were planning to take the overnight ferry from Portsmouth, England to St. Malo, France, and we didn't want to waste a day of our vacation, so we stopped in at Bath for a few hours by bus, and then we took the train from Bath to Portsmouth to catch the ferry. Bath was a beautiful town. Unfortunately we had less time than we thought we had to explore, especially since we had to drop our heavy backpacks off at a hostel to store for the day so we didn't have to lug them ... read more

Gibraltar was the main attraction for the trip to the Costa Del Sol. Unfortunately, flying into and staying in Gibraltar was too expensive of an option, so this is why we ended up near Malaga. Although we enjoyed exploring Malaga, we would have loved more time to explore the Rock of Gibraltar. We opted to take a "shopping" tour from Torremuelle to Gibraltar, only because the transportation was faster and cheaper than taking the public bus. It wasn't really a tour, they just provided the transportation, and we were free to roam around Gibraltar for a limited amount of time. Unfortunately, the morning didn't start off as good as the rest of the day went. After doing a meticulously good job of hiding our passports in our room so that the spanish mafia wouldn't get them, ... read more

This weekend we stayed in town to try and save some of our pennies. Here's what we did: Thursday night: It's the season for the Italian/Latin Carnivale, where people dress up in beautiful costumes and party just before Lent begins (40 days before Easter). So in honour of the tradition, Mike's school (CTLS) held a Carnivale party. We decided to stray a bit from the traditional elegant masks and wear masks of famous people. Mike was where's Waldo (or in the UK, Where's Wally? or in French, Ou est Charlie?), and Elysia dressed as a female Mr. Bean. She really wanted to wear the face of the queen, but Mike thought that was tacky (although later at the party we found people dressed as the entire royal family, so we weren't the only famous people there). ... read more

This morning we headed down to the docks and embarked on an ice-breaking harbour cruise around the harbour islands. It was a neat adventure because overnight, much of the harbour had re-frozen, and being the first cruise of the day, the boat had some ice-breaking duties to clear a path for other boats. It was neat to see how far Stockholm stretched out (over 14 islands). We learned that 50% of Swedes have access to a cottage (owned by someone in their immediate family), and one in ten own a boat. It's no wonder these guys are the happiest nation in the world! We wanted to take a cruise through the archipelago, but we didn't have enough time. Either way, this was a nice way to see the islands, and since it was so cold out ... read more

Today we hopped on a train from London's Waterloo station and rode it to Windsor, so that we could explore Windsor Castle and catch a glimpse of the students at Eton College in their tailcoats. Windsor Castle was, as expected, amazing! The castle is full of history and each room has a special story. It was really interesting to get to walk through a fully operating castle - the same place where the Queen spends weekends and entertains foreign heads of state. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take pictures inside the castle, but we did get to walk through many rooms. Some are very old - dating back hundreds of years - while others are much newer. In 1992 a large fire spread through much of the castle and it cost over 35 million pounds ... read more