Our European Adventure

We are 15 hours and counting until we have to be at the airport to catch our flight home. Just 15 hours left in Europe. Man, these two weeks have flown by!

This is honestly been one of the most wonderful experiences of my life. I feel like I've really accomplished something. Isn't that kindof silly? We just went to Europe for two weeks - there's nothing eternal about this trip really. But I feel great about it. I don't know exactly what that's about, but will have to think/pray on it.

Thoughts from the trip:

I am really far too stuck in American culture. I found myself getting frustrated too easily with cultural differences like personal space. I used the word "backwards" too many times when describing some difference in cultures.

Europe must be one of the most beautiful places on earth. We (somewhat inadvertently) hiked up a mountain right in the center of athens yesterday in search of a geocache. Derrick, Krystal, and I spent about 4 hours following the GPS to the top of Kokkou Hill, which supposedly used to be the sight of the temple of Zeus. The views from the top were just breathtaking. Everywhere you turned there was city and you could following the tiny little streets all the way out to the ocean where you could see ships coming into and leaving port. Just amazing. Oh, and we found the cache hidden on the side of this mountain! (Mind you, the cache was only rated a 2.5 on difficulty of terrain...ummm, i beg to differ!)

I think I still don't trust the Lord like I should. I am just unable, it seems, to respond in faith to crazy circumstances. Haha! I guess it's not really all that funny. But if nothing else, I am once again reminded of how great is God's grace and mercy to me and how much I want to remember that at all times so I can, "paint Him well."

The chocolate is better in Europe and so is the bread! Man, America, what are we doing with our time? We need to work on this...

Gyros in Greece are even better than at Greek restaurants in the states. Imagine that! I have had nothing but gyros for two days now and it's been awesome. Man, I gotta install one of those whole animal rotisserie things in my kitchen!

Derrick has still not bought a souvenier!!! Isn't this just wrong? I hope we find him something cool today.

And I am clearly out of profound thoughts about this trip, so I guess I will stop for now. We are going to get dressed, hang our clothes for travelling home out to dry, and then go out and enjoy our last 14 hours and 45 minutes in Greece! Love to all!

Derrick and I have had a very interesting time trying to leave Italy. We made our train to the coast with no problems only to find that Bari, our port city, was having a festival celebrating Saint Nicholas. It was kindof a Christmas meets July 4th day. This caused streets to be blocked off and the city buses to run extremely behind schedule. The bus to the ferry was 45 minutes late and took 25 minutes to get us to the street the port connects to. We had to jump off the bus, run (with our very heavy packs) down to the port, only to find out that the ticket office decided to close early and the boat left the dock 10 minutes before its scheduled time. Needless to say, we missed the boat. I was in quite a panic for several reasons, most of which I won't re-hash here. The major problem was where to sleep that night. We weren't planning on missing the boat, of course, and our planned sleeping arrangements where on the boat we were watching sail away. The guys who worked at the dock told us our only option was to sleep on the beach or at the port terminal, which they locked at 1am. That meant we'd be sleeping outside. I was pretty upset about all of this. Derrick did a much better job of staying calm and eventually found a couple of guys who spoke enough English to tell us how to get back to the train station. There we found one other person who gave us directions in Italian to a pension. We paid 63 EUR for a room for one night, but it was worth it not to sleep outside at the port. The next day we were at the ferry terminal at 10am to get tickets for our 8pm ferry. We just sat in the waiting room all day, sleeping and reading and watching Sherlock Holmes on the ipod. haha!

The ferry ended up being really cool, like a small cruise line. I was excited that I didn't get sea sick at all. We met some really nice people, from Canada and Minnesota. We hung out with them most of the night. But since we had not slept well in several days and I had taken a Dramamine just in case, we went to bed pretty early. Once we docked in Greece, we had a fun time trying to catch the trains to Athens. Neither of us know any Greek whatsoever and the trains weren't labelled with numbers. It was a good time! But we made it, despite getting on the wrong train for the Larissa station in Athens. We are now at Krystal's apartment and enjoying our last few nights in Europe. We will definitely have to come back to Athens sometime since our ferry mishap cost us a day in the city and we only had 3 to start with. Oh well, we needed a good excuse to travel again!

Well, we are about to head out for the day. We're gonna take Krystal and do some geocaching this morning - she's never been before! Oh boy, a newbie! And hopefully, we'll get to see some of the University today or tomorrow as well. Oh, I had my first real Greek gyro - it was absolutely amazing!!!! Totally did not disappoint.

We love you!

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We've been in Rome for 3 days now. It's been quite an adventure...here are a few highlights and pictures!

We finally managed to navigate a European train successfully. The trip from Florence to Rome went great with no incidents. We ended up sitting next to a priest-in-training who was very nice, helpful, and eager to practice his English! He is being placed in a church in San Francisco this coming October. He did fairly well except I think he thought we were Catholic. Consequently, when Derrick, in the course of a conversation about church services, told him our service lasts 2-2.5 hours, he said we should report our priest to the Pope while we are here! Woops!

Another highligt of the train trip were the hot air balloons we saw. They were breathtaking, floating acrss the Tuscany countryside, the early morning (our train left before 8am!) sun reflecting off their sides. What a treat!

Sunday afternoon we headed to town to participate in an age-old tradition: biking the Appia Antica. You know the saying, "All roads lead to Rome."? This is one of the roads that saying referred to. It is the oldest of the 7 original roads leading to Rome. We came across a group of men and women reinacting a Roman battle - they were in full dress with period weapons and everything! We took a tour of Saint Callisto's catacombes, the largest of all the catacombes found in Rome. It held 500,000 bodies, of whihc 100,000 were babies. So sad - they're tombs were so tiny. It was quite an experience to be 2 stories below ground in the dark, walking around a maze-like, giant grave! While we were waiting for it to open after lunch, we met a nice lady who ended up in our tour group. When the tour was over, she gave us all tracts, saying, "You can't visit the catacombes without thinking about the after life." I thought that was really neat.

Monday we toured the Vatican Museum and St. Peter's Bascillica. As we were walking up to the church, someone told us there was a free tour in English about to begin. So, of course, we joined it. As it turns out, the guy leading the tour, Jason, was from Lafayette, Lousiana!!! Talk about a small world. He got excited when he saw my LSU tshirt and dug in his bag to find us like the last two ear pieces he had! He did a great job on the tour and we learned some fascinating things, which I won't take the time to type out here.

We hit our first patch of bad weather that day. All our evening plans were rained out, including another guided tour with Jason to some of the monuments at night. This tour, of course, wasn't free, but we didn't get to go anyway.

Yesterday morning was our first potential disaster. We tried to take money out of the ATM, as we were completely broke! Our card was denied by the machine and because we were unable to pay for the hostel in Rome with that card, we just knew the bank had locked our account for some reason. We called every number we have for VISA and our bank, but because it was 2am in the states, no one answered. I paniced, had my first good cry in Europe (hopefully the last), and we sat down on a street curb to figure out what to do. We debated spending €1.50 of our last few euros on 15 minutes of internet to check our account online, but desided against it. Instead, we decided to go back to the bank and try my ATM card. When we got there, there was a nice American lady in line in front of us. Her card was denied, too, and she just casually said, "Oh, the ATM's out again." We thought our card might still be frozen, so we followed her into the bank. As we all waited in line, we told her the basics of our dillemma and she was very helpful, offering advice and directions to other ATMs. Then, after she finished her business, she walked back to us and handed us €20!!! She told us that would at least buy us some food if we couldn't get to our money. We refused, but she insisted, so we had to take it. We both stood there, speechless, wondering if maybe she was an angel. Everyone else we had asked for help was very unhelpful. In the end, our account wasn't frozen and we didn't even need the €20 she gave us, but she was long gone. I wish we could find her to thank her and return the money.

With our money issues solved, we spent the rest of the day at the Colloseum and the Roman Forum. We walked through what was once the downtown area of ancient Rome - you could still see the shape of what used to be little shops/stalls along the roads. We walked across the Circus Maximus, the chariot race track of ancient Rome. We walked down the Via dal Corso, the street where they used to race horses. We did some geocaching and found a cache on the backside of the Colloseum and one on an island in the middle of the Tiber River at the base of the oldest bridge in Rome. We went to Trevi Fountain and the Pantheon around dusk - they were both beautiful in the sunset. We returned to Trevi after dark and that was really pretty, too.

To add to the list of places we've met people from:
Padua, Italy (the priest)
Pennsylvania
Lafayette, LA (the tour guide)
Houston, TX (the lady at the bank)
Missouri (the lady at the catacombes)
Paris, France
Bologna, Italy

GELATO (ice cream) flavors we've eaten:
Derrick:
Chocolate
Chocolate Chip
Tiramasu

Ashley:
Chocolate
Chocolate Chip II
Crem Caramel ***
Strawberry
Crema
Ferrore Roche
Nuttela Variegeta
Chocolate Mousse **
Caramel

OK, as promsied, here are a few pictures:

So, I started posting this a few days ago and we ran out of internet time so it never got published. The references to dates may be a little confusing because of that, but here you go:

Hello from Firenze (Florence)!

We arrived safely in Florence Friday afternoon. We had a close call on the train. We forgot to validate our Eurail passes and the conductor noticed and almost charged us a 100 EUR fine!!!! He must have seen how upset we were and let us go with just a warning. Whew! That definitely wasn't in the budget.

Once in Florence we headed to the hostel to drop off our bags. Then we headed to the Piazzale Michelangelo, a square that overlooks the entire city. It was there we set out on our first geocache of the trip. After about an hour of wandering the streets, we finally found the "staircase" the cache mentioned that was more like an old path. The ground was cobblestone with little speed bumps (presumably for the horse carriages going up the path) and it was enclosed by two very old stone walls on either side. It was the passageway between two really nice neighborhoods tucked into the hillside. About halfway up we found the cache hidden in a little crack in the wall. I was surprised by how many other travellers had discovered it too. What a great find - the view from where we sat to look through the contents was incredible! THANKS STEVIE AND JESSICA FOR THE GPS - YOU GUYS ROCK!!!

After the caching, we made our way up to the Piazzale and caught the sunset. There really are no words to desribe that scene. We were there with about 100 other people and it was just beautiful. The sky changed from blue to dark blue to orange and red and pink - then the city lights turned on, lining the River Arno. Derrick stayed with me after dark to take some night shots. I'm hopeful I got some really nice photos after dark.

We then caught the bus back down to the city center and wandered around looking for a bank for a while. In the process we stumbled into the Piazzale Republica and found a girl singing beautiful opera on the street (it was funny cuz she was in jeans and a t-shirt and this beautiful singing was coming from her) and a pretty carousel. Of coures, I took pictures there as well.

Today we woke up at the crack of dawn to get in line at the Uffizi Gallery cuz we couldn't get reservations. It worked and we were in the first group to go in. The gallery was all but empty for the first 20-30 minutes we were there. We saw paintings and statues I studied in college and that was really neat for me. This afternoon we had reservations at the Accademia Gallery and got to see the David. It was really impressive and I snuck a photo. Haha!

hey guys,

we finally made it to venice. what an ordeal! all in all the trip was good. we really were doing great until we got to the train station in milan and then things got a little complicated. we were told not to bother reserving our seats and, consequently, had no seats and had to leave the train, missing our trip to venice. luckily, there was another train leaving an hour later and we reserved seats for that one! the train was a really nice trip. we were able to sleep a little and meet some really cool people. so far we've met people from sweden, greece, verona, italy, colorado. i'ts been a lot of fun!

highlights of the trip so far:

- we bought yummy sirup waffels in the amsterdam airport - they are SO good. (thanks melissa for the tip; we did get the waffels but we could not find the alberheins. )
- i (ashley) ate a pizza with french fries on it for dinner last night - it's like they knew i was coming!
- the view when we walked out of the venice train station, after alot of stress and no real sleep in almost 48 hours, was absolutely worth it all!!!
- we got a free bus ride out to the camp ground last night because the driver felt sorry for us - we were a tad lost again and had somehow managed to find two other lost people who decided to follow us. talk about the blind leading the blind!

so, last night we got to bed around midnight, after settling into the hostel, and slept until 9am, 2 hours past our alarm!!! i have to say, though, it was the best sleep i may have ever had. and we definitely needed it!

after we got dressed this morning, we caught the bus back into town and have been walking around venice. we took a ride on a water bus, called a vaparetto, down the grand canal and it was beautiful to say the least. we saw gondolas a-plenty and some of the most gorgeous buildings ever. the weather here is amazing, which makes everything even better.

hopefully, we'll be able to update more soon, but the hostel's internet cafe is open at weird hours and the cafe's in town are expensive! this little update is costing us around $7!!! yikes!

so, we're gonna run for now. we love you all!

I made Derrick pack up the backpacks and pose for this picture in our backyard. I mean, this is a historic moment, right? So, here we are looking all cute while we still don't mind the insane weight of those packs!

Funny moment when we went to wrap our packs up for their flight through airport luggage and I realized I packed my tarp under all my clothes! Haha - I hope we get better at this as we go along!