Ciao Italia!

Hello everyone! So we concluded our exploration of Italy with the 5 town area known as Cinque Terre and the canal filled city with 444 bridges also known as Venice. Cinque Terre was indescribably beautiful- offerring a nice break from the chaos that was Rome. We stayed in the first town (Riomaggiorre) but decided that the 3rd town Vernazza was our favourite, we already know where we will be staying during our next visit! Our main day there was spent on a 5-6 hour rigorous hike between all of the towns on the coast (see photo below). Honestly there was a point when we asked ourselves, " Can there possibly be anymore stairs?" Dan found the best strawberry gelato in Italy and finally got some color on his pasty chest :). Otherwise we hung out on the huge rocks in the surf sipping Corona and lime...

Venice is so cool. Previously home to Marco Polo and Cassanova (we saw their houses), it sports hundreds of canals, 444 bridges and consequently you cannot find your way anywhere! Having an itinerary for the day is practically useless because the chances of finding what you are looking for are slim to none. Definitely more than once we have found ourselves going in circles, or at dead ends facing the waterway with no bridge or simply just a crumbling wall. Thus our plan most of the time was just to go in a gerneral direction of something we were trying to get to, or we just wandered around these crazy streets and stumbled upon really cool things like music museums, crazy bookstores and cool churches. Everything is ancient and crazily still standing in this sinking city- our hostel was over 600 years old! We took a gondola ride which was beautiful but crazy expensive!- definitly a splurge, but well worth it... Dan has taken to saying "Gondola?! Gondola?!" everytime we pass one, like the Gondoliers do. We're now off to Vienna, Budapest, and then Prague for the week before heading back to Germany. See you all in 2 weeks! (We can't believe we've been gone 6 already!)

PS- WHY do the Italians like marble so much?? honestly each of us have slipped or tripped on marble stairs AT LEAST once a day. Erica bit it in the hostel (huge surprise there) but only suffered a bruise. Honestly, we're both shocked and thankful that, knowing us, we haven't broken anything... :)

Roman Holiday

Rome was awesome!! It was really crazy how old everthing was, for example we would just be walking down a random street in what we thought was part of the newer city, and stumble upon some random excavation site with ancient ruins. On our first day here we dropped our bags off at our hostel and pretty much just ran straight to the Colosseum and the ancient part of the city. Jon, you were right, we just wanted to take pictures of everything... unfortunately our camera was not up to the task. We learned that the Colosseum in the early years used to sometimes be flooded so they could hold mock naval battles. After the Colosseum we jumped over to Palentine Hill which holds most of the ruins of ancient Rome. We were able to see the house of Augustus, the Roman Forum, and many other cool pieces of architecture that we were amazed still existed after over 2000 years. Maybe the coolest and most impressive structure in Rome was the Pantheon. It was commissioned as a temple to all of the Roman Gods 2000 years ago and still stands fully intact today, which is incredible because of its size and the construction of the dome. It was rather extrordinary. It was funny because when we arrived at our hostel, the owner, Giovanni, who is the funniest little Italian man, told us when we asked about the metro, yelled, "No metro! In Rome you need NO metro! Romans, we walk everywhere!" And that was that. We walked all the way down to the Southern part of Rome so that Erica could pretend that she was Audrey Hepurn in "Roman Holiday" at the Mouth of Truth, which legend has it, will rip your arm off if you have told a lie. She still has both of her arms, as do I. We split our journey into the Vatican into two days, just because it is so massive and there is so much to see, and also because the late July heat really takes it out of you by 1pm. Hence, our excitement in the picture when we had just been handed FREE water. On the first day, we went into St. Peter's Basillica and the mausoleum. On the second day we went to the Vatican museum and into the Sistine Chapel, which was amazing and beautiful. We both agree that it is not quite what we expected- it was not jaw-dropping, but it was more beautiful and we liked it much more than we thought we would. The picture belowis of the Vatican guards whose costumes were designed by Leonardo Di Vinci. We have determined that it was a joke he decided to play on the Vatican by designing those outfits. The picture in front of the fountain is in the main courtyard of the Vatican where citizens wait to watch the smoke and hear the announcement of a new pope. Rome is awsome, hot, but awesome.

A French Beach, and then another French beach- St. Malo and Nice

Following Paris, we headed to the small beach fortress of St. Malo on France's west coast. While there, we took advantage of our opportunity to relax in a small city with great food (thanks Dad)- during which Dan tried his first ever beef tartare and lobster. Though the weather wasn't ideal we didn't let that stop us from enjoying the beach, running around the city's old fortress wall and climbing around on the

islands when tide was out.

We were happily surprised by the local fireworks show

taking place upon our arrival in honor of France's Bastille Day. One of the coolest things about this place is that we seemed to be the only tourists who weren't French and rarely you could find someone who spoke English... it was pretty awesome.

Onto the next French Beach in Nice, as we make our way to Italy.

Today we pretty much just spent the day laying in the sun and swimming in the Mediterranean- hard life right? We have free internet access in our hostel which is why you are receiving this free little post in which there is not that much to write. Pretty much just that we are not beach-starved at the moment in any way.

Post from Italy!

WIlly Wonka and the Land of the Three Musketeers

On our way down from Scandanavia, we made two stops on the way to Paris- Copenhagen and Cologne, Germany. One word describes Copenhagen-disappointing. People who say the French are rude haven't been to Denmark and we don't suggest it. Oh, and btw, if you're going to see the Little Mermaid... she's in Beijing for the next three months.



Onto Cologne, where we visited the coolest museum of the trip thus far- the Lindt Chocolate museum and factory. Legitimately, this was "Willy Wonka made real," as our guidebook said. We tasted a lindt ball fresh off the press and it was 100X better than the packaged ones at Barnes and Noble. We tried one each, looked at eachother in amazement, then quickly ran back to get 10 more. THis is Dan in front of one of the actually working "chocolate spinners" that molds hollow chocolate shapes evenly. It was deliciously awesome.

Onto Paris, the best city in the world, in Erica's opinion. Dan was almost convinced of this as well, due to the deliciuos èclairs and macroons. Honestly, the food in France is unbelievable- hence, you'll notice why there is so many pictures of food on this post. Continuing on the food topic, on our last night in Paris we went to Refuge des Fondues at 17, Rue des Trois Frères, in case any of you are in Paris looking for a excellent place to eat sometime. This is Erica's favourite restaurant in the world, and is now Dan's as well. Btw- they give you baby bottles full of wine included in your meal price, it's awesome. Other than eating delicious food, our days were spent at the Mussée d'Orsay, le Tour Eiffel, les Catacombs, Sacre Coeur Church, Notre Dame, Sainte Chapelle, the Opera House and Shakespeare and Co. -the coolest bookstore in the world (rivaling Powell's). Paris is still Erica's favourite city, and has now made Dan's top three. Love you all update from Italy!

Princesses, futbol matches and the place where the sun never sets.

Scandanavia was incredible!!!! Hence, our decision to stay there for an extra week instead of heading down to Spain like we planned. Stockholm, Sweden is one of the coolest capital cities we have seen so far. The entire city is placed on a group of islands, which, though beautiful, makes navigating the city quite difficult. Oh by the way, everyone is going nuts there about their princess getting engaged to a "commoner." It's pretty funny because in literally every store window they have placed a massive portrait sized poster of their engagement photo to show their support. We also went to the Nobel Prize museum and toured the royal palace and stole a box of cocoa puffs from our hostel... they were delicious.

After Stocholm, in our quest to go above the arctic circle, we took a 12 hour train ride (though it was probably longer because the Swedish rail system does not know how to tell time) to Boden, Sweden, which is a little town that is very enthusiastic about their local futbol team. There, we went to our first European futbol match and they won 2-0! They even gave us free team scarves when they found out we were visiting!

Onto Narvik, Norway, which is above the arctic circle! It is surprisingly warm up there. Check out the picture of the random street- that is outside our hostel at 2:30 in the morning- it never gets fully dark there in the summer. THe first night we were there, we had planned to go hiking but the combination of fog and rain kept us inside. However the next morning, in our slight over-eagerness we set out for the mountains armed with trail-mix at 7 am. Yet to our dismay, upon reaching the peak, we were still fogged in. So, as there was no chance that we were going to head all the way back down without seeing anything, we hung outside at the top for about 1.5 hours in the fog- but when that fog finally broke, it was so amazing. We've never felt so small. We could see mountains, ocean, waterfalls, snow, beach, and seemingly everything in between. If you've read our earlier posts, this place beats the alps of Iseltwald, Switzerland, which we thought impossible. Paris posts coming soon! Love, Dan and Erica

Norway, the land of awful night trains and trolls...

So, Norway is pretty sweet, but getting around is a bit of a hassle. Oslo is cool, but this is "Europe on a Budget" so it was a bit out of our price range. However, we would like to dedicate this post to the awesomeness of Bergen, Norway the "gateway to the fjords." We spent a good deal of our time in this area hiking around the lakes and mountains that surround the city. We toured a 700 year old Norwegian castle and discovered the greatest hotdog stand in all of Europe (and possibly the world). One night we really lived it up, and stepped into an ancient church to listen to an organ recital, it was beautiful, but unfortunately Dan missed some of it as he was nodding off in the corner... to which he admits. Oh by the way, it doesn't get dark here. At like, 11pm it looks like its 5pm outside, which makes your sleep schedule confusing, that is when you get any sleep due to the night trains here :). Other than all of this, we enjoyed taking in the Nordic culture (Nan- what is with all of the trolls btw?) and seeing "Norway's second largest city", and buying Erica new shoes to hike in because her feet started to bleed in chucks... We're now off to Sweden, Norway's arch-enemy, if the Norweigan armory museum is any indication... ;) Watch out: we're heading above the arctic circle, will post in France upon return.

Deutschland!!!!!

Hello everyone! Sorry its been awhile again... So, Munich is amazing, for one of Europe's fairly modern cities. We spent a good part of our first day falling in love with cars that we couldn't possibly afford in the BMW museum. THen jumped over to Munich's Olympic Park, which housed the facilities from their summer Olympics in 1972, all of which is now open to the public (they're vying for the Winter games as we speak~ but we dont know where they'll fit them... ) We took daytrips out to Nuremburg and saw one of Germany's oldest medieval castles and drank german beer in our first German beer garden while watching the US lose to Ghana in the world cup. Our second daytrip was to Dachau, Germany which was the site for one of Germany's concentration camps during WWII. We are in agreement that touring the remnants of the camp was both disturbing and life-altering. Our last day in Munich consisted of walking through Munich's version of central park, eating massive pretzels and watching Germany beat England and wathcing the Germans go CRAZY for their country! Following Munich, we began our journey up towards Scandanavia (in which we currently reside). This journey consisted of an awesome overnight boat taking us from Copenhagen to Oslo, Norway- thanks for the mutual birthday present Liz, it saved us two days by train. Posts from Scandanavia soon.