Blogs from Europe - page 12015

url='/Videos/2887.html' onclick='dialog("/Videos/2887.html?popped=1","tbvideo",600,600);return false;'my room at The Place Up at 5am, breakfast by 6, to the airport by 7:15, and on our way to Manchester by 8:45. The flight was very short, with a good bit of turbulence, but they still fed us juice and breakfast sandwiches that were actually pretty good. You'd never find that in the US in economy class on a flight under an hour. We arrived in Manchester, took a taxi to our hotel, The Place Apartments, and took an hour to settle in before we met our guide, Lisa, at noon. My room is actually a 2 bedroom apartment suite. There is a front living room, a kitchen 2 bathrooms, and 2 bedrooms. It is bigger than our apartment back home. Check out the video tour (horrible video, but you get the ... read more

So back to the story eh? I arrive at noon at Faro airport down on the south coast. Looks like Florida, but with roundabouts and french cars. I surprise Helenee from behind with Bom Dia, do the hug thing and go find Heleneê´s roommate, Stacia, who is borrowing a car to come get me. So how do they decide to introduce me to Portugal? SHOPPING! Brilliant. We end up at Faro Shopping Center after getting decidely lost. They go from store to store buying nothing while I sit under a palm tree hiding from the sun as much as possible as my SPF 50 sunblock should be used in moderation. Afterwards, Stacia as she said wanted to stop by her boyfriend´s place even though I felt it was quite obvious we were already going to be ... read more

I am still in this beautiful city of Copenhagen. My family just got back from Syria. My host brother got food poisoning and is really sick. It is really interesting to see how drastically they change their attitude towards him when he is sick. In general, Danes do not baby their children at all. In fact, my host parents told me that they sent their daughter alone on an airplane (at her request) at the age of 5. Eight year olds go to school on the busses or walk by themselves. The children are so well behaved and show an amazing amount of maturity for their age. Of course, Counter Strike is still popular among little boys, and I’ve seen girls play with dolls, but they are still very different from the majority of children I ... read more

I only speak five french words and it would have really helped us if I just tried to learn some more before we went to Marseille. Very few people can speak in english though they tried really hard to help us with directions. The first person I asked for directions was the bus driver who drove us from the airport. I asked how to go to Prado and he didn't understand me first since I pronounced it "pra-doe" instead of something like "prah-doh". He told me the directions and I kept on saying "Yeah, Okay, Merzeee.." while he was talking but I actually didn't understand a word since he was speaking in French. He did pointed out his hand while talking so at least I knew where to start. Hehe. At the train station, we did ... read more

Trip to ItalyJulie J Vanover So, after my almost 2 whole days of traveling I arrived in Naples. I traveled 4 hours from Athens to Patras on the train, then had to wait 3 hours for the ferry so I decided to explore Patras a little. Well, they had an old Greek ruin, so headed there up the steep city streets and then climbed 11 flights of stairs with my backpack on in the heat. Ugh, but the view was amazing, I could see all across the bay at the many craggy islands. Then I took a 16 hour ferry ride to Bari Italy which actually was not too bad. I talked to a guy named Peter that I met on the train from Australia. He is a 60 something coal miner that reminded my of ... read more