The Last City-Madrid

Today was the last city exploration of our entire trip. Tomorrow we will leave for the airport and embark on our long, bittersweet journey back to the states. 

We began our day with a very delicious dunk n doughnuts breakfast and then joined a free walking tour at 11:00. Being in a city with this rich of a history, we felt the need to learn more about it. Our guide told us about two monarchies, two republics, a dictatorship and the democratic system that exists today.

We also learned a lot of interesting facts about the city. Like how the royal palace has 2,800 rooms and is the largest in all of Europe.

 Or that on the Madrid crest there is an image of bear eating from a berry tree. 

There is a tree here that produces a berry that contains alcohol and many years ago, bears would roam the city streets at night and eat all of these berries! It become such a popular phenomenon that this image can be seen almost everywhere. 

After our free walking your we decided to do a tapas tour through the same company where we went to 3 bars, got 4 tapas total, and a drink at each for only 12 euro! It was a nice lunch and a cool way to meet some friends and try more Spanish food. 

After a good nap, we went to a very central food market in the Plaza de San Miguel and had more paella than we could finish for only 4 euro each, it was incredible. This market had full pig legs, raw fish, and almost any food or drink you could want in Spain. 

Going along with the plan, were turning in early tonight so that we can have an early start to our travel day home tomorrow. We're homeward bound!

Toledo

If anyone is confused by the title, yes, we took a spur of the moment day trip to Toledo, Spain because it was only a 33 minute train ride, and we get it for free!

Once in Toledo, we bought a map and started to see the main sights. We quickly figured out that it does not take long to walk around the city. According to Austin the city was built like a maze so all the small streets are very complicated. Some of the things we saw were the Alcazar, and old fortress, and bull fighting arena, and a famous Catedral.

 Once we ate and saw all of the main sights we decided it would be fun to get lost so we chose a couple random turns and just walked around streets we thought were cool. In the blazing Spain heat, we were tired and boiling so we took an earlier than planned train back to Madrid. Once back, we rested a while, then had a nice dinner of more kebab then people watched a little in a square. Tomorrow is our last full day which makes us so sad!

Yes Everyone, We Are Still Alive

After a very long and very fun evening experiencing the night life of Pamplona, we found that construction workers began their toils even before 5:00 am constructing fences in the streets so that the bull run is controlled. 

Without having been to this event it would be hard to imagine how big it really is so ill put it into words through something Ben said: Imagine time square, on New Year's Eve, with everyone in the city wearing the same thing, and bulls running through the middle. It was absolutely insane. 

This is a picture of the small street, packed with people running. It was so packed up against these fences with people trying to get a good view that we had to stand for over two hours in order to secure our spot. Two hours of standing, inches from a boat load of strangers all pushing and shoving to get to the front...we made friends pretty easily. After only a 15 minute cat nap instead of a full nights sleep, we were exhausted. So after the bulls ran, we made our way to the train station and boarded a train to Madrid and slept the whole ride. After arriving, we went to our hostel and slept some more. 

After our nap we decided we needed some dinner and went to a place recommended to us for paella and it was quite delicious!

Tonight will be one good nights sleep but tomorrow brings a new adventure!

We Made It To Pamplona

Since all the trains were booked, we took a coach bus from Barcelona to Pamplona. We arrived to find out we had no idea what was in store for us. We got off the bus to see EVERYONE dressed in all white and red belts and bandanas. Naturally, we found a great deal on the whole wardrobe and changed right away. We checked our bags and made our way to a field that everyone seemed to be flocking to. After sitting down and making some friends. We watched an incredible fireworks show to start off the festival. 

After the show was over, us and our new friends started to experience the festival, and we ended up having an amazing time. Seeing as we didn't book a hostel, we now have to wait a couple hours for the bulls to run before leaving for Madrid. Pamplona is crazy, we love it!

Thank You

Nearing the end of our trip, we are done meeting people we know and so we can't help but look back and once again thank everyone who took us in or just met with us. 

Thank you to my grandparents in Chester, England, for showing us an awesome time and taking us to all those meals! 

Thank you to Richard in London who was very helpful in our exploration of the city and who was an awesome host. 

Thank you to my Aunt Caroline and my cousins who took us to a great meal in London and showed us around for the afternoon. 

Merci to Jochen in Paris who was awesome enough to drive us to all the sights late at night, and then show us a little French cheese, bread and wine, along with letting us stay a night. 

Dank u to Graham and Liz who taught us about Belgium, let us stay with them, and Liz showed us a little of Brussels and showed us the famous Belgian chocolate!

Dank u to Wijnand in Amsterdam who took us out for a great dinner and to the oldest and coolest pub in the city!

Danke to Wouter in Berlin who showed us an awesome music festival location,  let us stay in his home, and was helpful with what to do in Berlin. 

Danke to Tyler in Vienna who let us stay in his apartment, and took us out to a restaurant with famous Wiener schnitzel and drinks too. 

Muchas gracias to Pedro and the family of Laia for having us over for an amazing dinner and Pedro showing us the best time ever during our stay at his house in Barcelona. 

And again to all, THANK YOU!

Classic Barcelona

After another day of sleeping in, we felt so well rested and ready for the last five days of the trip. After waking up we went to the train station and realized a train to Pamplona was hopeless. Therefore we consulted the bus company and realized a bus ticket cost only a few euro more than train reservation! So tomorrow at 3 we leave for Pamplona to see the bulls!

Ben, Katie, and I decided to spend some more time at these amazing beaches and it was well worth it, Ben is even getting noticeably tan! We then went back to our gracious host's house (Pedro) and left from there for dinner at his girlfriends parents house. (To explain our loving situation here, we had a very nice student teacher for Spanish this year named Laia and she is from Barcelona. She and I became friends and said that we could stay with Pedro, her boyfriend, for a few days and it has worked out so amazingly!). At her parents house we had a very delicious and traditional Spanish meal where there were many small snack sized dishes on the table and we picked at and chose through these dishes with a main plate of homemade pizza! Laia's family was so sweet and our host Pedro is honestly the best. We are so great full for all that they did for us. 

After dinner we went out for anther night on the town and are very excited to leave for Pamplona tomorrow even though we had such an amazing time here in Barcelona. 

Barcelona Day 3

Yet another great day in Barcelona and on our trip! We slept in, then Austin and I, now joined with Katie, met our Venice friends, Dmitri and Michael, at the Sangrada Familia. It is this church that was started about 150 years ago and is still in progress and is incredible. The outside is not done but still looks amazing, and the inside might be more impressive. We bought our tickets online and skipped the line and spent a good amount of time exploring the church. 

Then we spent the rest of the day at the beach again, but unfortunately the weather was not as great and we were a bit chilly, but had fun just the same. After that we all had dinner with Pedro and his friend from Russia who is staying with him now, Victor. We all ate a great tapas dinner then we hit the Barcelona night life attempting to celebrate the 4th of July, and we were successful! One more day in Barcelona and we don't ever want to leave!

Reunion in Barcelona!

What an incredible city this is. We were quite exhausted from yesterday and the trip in general so we decided to take it easy today. We slept in pretty late and had our breakfast/lunch at a panadería (bread shop) that Pedro recommended to us! One thing that we have noticed is that Europeans make some amazing bakery food:) 

After that we took the metro to the beach and let me tell you, Barcelona beaches live up to the hype. The sand was soft, the beaches huge, and the water beautiful. We laid out and swam and such for over four hours and just relaxed and reflected on the trip. Partway into our beach day, our friends from Venice sent us a text that they were in Barcelona and came to the beach with us! 

We hung out with them for the rest of the night and had dinner at a tapas bar! What a great way to eat, tapas are small appetizers that you order for the whole table and share everything with everyone! 

After dinner Pedro our host called us and met up with us and brought our friend Katie who is nannying over here for the summer! All six of us then went to the beach and enjoyed the beautiful night just listening to the waves crashing and telling stories of our travels. 

Barcelona has not disappointed so far and tomorrow will bring a great day no doubt (4th of July!!!) 

Barcelona Day One

The day started off early... Too early. We woke up at 5:15 and left quickly to make a journey to the airport in Rome because we were flying to Barcelona. We landed in Spain, our last country, at about 10:30 AM, but not before meeting Kevin, a friend on the plane. He was also traveling and he showed us this awesome thing called a Barcelona Card, which basically gets us unlimited public transport, and access to museums or attractions for free or at a discount. So we bought a four day pass, because that's how long we have, and it is already worth the money. Once we made our way to the center of the city, we at lunch with Kevin before parting ways. We then took a walk down to the water, and sat to think about what to do next. As we are sitting there, we made some friends with a group of 4 British girls. We all then decided to walk to the beach to see what it was all about. After a longer than anticipated walk, we made it but had no intention of actually swimming, so we just walked around for a while. 

Once we parted ways with them, we decided to use our discount at the nearby aquarium. It was really cool and we saw tons of awesome fish and sharks! 

Then we saw we had a free pass to a chocolate museum, so of course we headed over there to see what it was about. We get in and our tickets were a piece of dark chocolate! 

There were tons of sculptures made of chocolate and we learned about the history of it too! Still with time on our hands, we found an awesome park with people doing all sorts of things, like sports or yoga or just sitting around. So we took a nap! It was much needed. Finally it was time to meet up with our host, Pedro, who is the boyfriend of Austin's Spanish teacher who came from Spain for the year. He brought us to his home then we had an amazing dinner of seafood tapas, that stuffed us all. 

It was a gorgeous first day in Barcelona and we are excited to see what it brings next!

Vini Vidi Vici

This city is absolutely amazing. We took the metro to the coliseum this morning and decided that since we saw the Vatican for free, we would take a guided tour of the coliseum, roman forum, and the palatine hill. This allowed us to skip the lines and walk right in. 

The coliseum was spectacular, I have never seen anything like it before. It was built in the first century and is still standing, the architecture is phenomenal. The tour guide didn't really matter until the palatine hill and roman forum where without our friend David, we would only be seeing very old piles of bricks. We saw what was once the market center of Rome where millions would buy, sell, and trade. An interesting fact is that the Romans built much differently than we do today. We build with materials that can rot and demolish the building forty years later but the Romans built for their structures to last forever. Thanks to this, we have what is left of their society (after former popes stripped the buildings of their marble to build churches of course). 

I can't describe well enough how grand these structures were, photos can't even do them justice though we did try. 

After about four hours of Ancient Rome, we found some pizza and relaxed a bit. Knowing that Italians are incredibly proud of their coffee, Ben tried a cafe latte and I had a caffe espresso, both of these were amazing. 

While we didn't stumble onto another music festival or see the Pope, we found a restaurant with a 4 course roman meal for quite cheap, seemed fitting for our last night in Rome though. With an early flight to Barcelona tomorrow, we are going to get to bed early. We came, we saw, and we conquered Rome but tomorrow we will be in a new city, a new country, and continue the adventure. 

When In Rome!

As the title suggests, we experienced Rome like the Romans would. Well, at night we did, but more on that later. 

First we woke up ad headed straight to the Vatican. Keeping with the incredible luck that is our trip, we just so happened to choose the one day a month (last Sunday) that the Vatican is free! So we waited in a 2 hour line to see the museums for free! We were instantly struck by how many sculptures there were, and how old they are were too. Most of the were first century or older. We slowly but surly made our way to the Sistine Chapel and we were awestruck by the church. We sat in there for quite a while until our legs could take no more and we headed out. 

Next we found a great pizza place and ate there. We then wanted to see the Spanish Steps and Trevi Fountain in the daytime, so we went over to those again.

After a little rest at the hostel we then went for a dinner in the form of a kabab, which are delicious, although not Italian. We had nothing planed for the evening so I pulled out the map and saw a nice looking plaza with gardens nearby so we decided to hang out there. 

As luck would have it, in that very plaza was the final night of the Music Summer Festival Tezenis Live. It was this huge stage set up with crowds filling the plaza, thousands of people! Instead of just one main act playing a set, they had about 25  popular Italian or international musicians playing a wide variety of genres. There were a couple songs in English, but every thing else wasn't, and that just made it that more fun!

It was an incredible night in Rome! More sights tomorrow, hopes full more luck too!

More of Italy

This morning, we woke up quite early and embarked on another train adventure to Rome. The ride was about five hours

through beautiful Italian countryside. We got here at 1:10 and began the task of figuring out how to get to Barcelona on the second of July. Our choices were over 30 hours of train travel, or a quick flight...we chose the flight. 

With that out of the way we found our hostel, checked in, and got some dinner at a pizza place near the Vatican. 

Afterwards, we took a quick nap then went out for some gelato and saw some sights. We walked awhile and saw both the Spanish steps and the Trevi fountain. Both lived up to the hype. 

With a big day planned tomorrow we decided to go to sleep earlier than normal. Next stop, The Vatican!

Venice Day 2

Today we slept in a bit and woke up with one goal: exploration. Yesterday we saw all of the main sights Venice had to offer so today we figured we could see the less touristy parts. So we walked across the islands and made our way to the train station where we booked our next train, then we took a different, long route back to the hostel. We stopped and had ice cream while sitting and people/sight watching on the Grand Canal. Once we got back to the hostel, we were overwhelmed by the aroma of a dinner being made by fellow hostel-mates. We then decided to make our own dinner consisting of pasta, meat sauce, and sautéed veggies. After making friends with the girls who cooked before us, we all decided to hit the town and test some nightlife. We tried a bunch of different places, had another great time, and made some more friends! Venice is so great. We are sad to leave in the morning but excited to get to Rome as well!

Venice

When Ben and I were in Bruges, we heard that it was the "Venice of the North," but trust me, nothing can compare to the real thing. 

Last night Ben and I had a sleeper car on the train and met two guys who were in our car which made us four people in a six person car. We become fast friends and spent the day in Venice together and even got a hostel together. Dimitri and Michael are going to southern France next but we're  going to meet up in Barcelona on the fourth in order to spend it with other Americans!

We arrived in Venice around 8:30 this morning and as we stepped out of the train station, we are awestruck by the initial view. 

We then took a water bus to our hostel which was 7 euro for a one way ticket and took us through the entire grand canal because our hostel was one of the last stops. We dropped our bags and began our day in this beautiful city. Luckily we followed the pattern of Vienna and took it easy today as we toured the city. 

What an interesting concept, no cars, no motor bikes, just canals and sidewalks. The city is slowly sinking which is quite interesting because you can see steps leading down into water where you used to be able to walk! 

While there aren't any super popular sights here, we saw a cathedral or two and some pretty cool castles and museums (all from the outside because of our limited budget of course). The awesome thing though is that Venice is a sight to see in it of itself. The place is breathtakingly beautiful and is one of our favorite cities so far! 

Food here was a lot less expensive than expected, the only trick was eating out for our multiple lunches. The price almost doubles if you sit inside of the restaurant. Here is one of the classic Italian dishes we experienced. 

Yes, this is a hot dog wrapped in pizza. 

Anyway, we found that we were sticking out too much as tourists so naturally we attempted to blend in. At one of the open air markets, we found a wide variety of scarves (which are ever so popular in Europe) and we each got one for the evening segment of our adventure. 

We decided that since we are in Italy, and want the full experience, that we would have an authentic Italian meal on the grand canal no less!

We had a great first day in Venice and are excited for a second tomorrow!

Vienna!!

Vienna was a great experience because we actually got to relax while we enjoyed yet another amazing city. The city itself was beautiful with buildings similar to Prague, so we loved walking around. After our night with Tyler and being shown some of the sights, we were given a list of places to see. We woke up for tyler to go to work, so really early, so we had over 12 hours to see the sights. 

One of our favorites we did early was the castle. It was this sweet building, and when we went around back, the grounds were surrounded by vast gardens that were beautiful. There were fountains and statues that were awesomely detailed. Then we walked up the hill that was in the back and hiked to the top to get the most spectacular view of Vienna. We could oversee the entire city and castle grounds and we stayed there for a little while just observing the skyline.

After that we wandered to the great Stephansburg Cathedral where, for free, we could go in and look around inside.

Then we saw the oldest Farris wheel in all of Europe and that was attached to a carnival area with other rides. Of course we got rained on again so it wasn't very busy and we could roam pretty freely.

Then we made our to the government buildings and then to a really cool island with a ton of cool bars and restaurants that all were deserted because of the weather. We saw all Vienna had to offer and were able to do it at a slower pace which was greatly refreshing. 

Halfway! Vienne!

Today is a monumental day of our trip because we are halfway done. Two weeks of traveling down and two to go. It's been an amazing time so far and we have many cities and sights yet left to see and are excited for them. 

With that said, we continued our usual routine of waking up early and going to the train station to catch a train to the next city. This was a long one and we didn't get to Vienna until about 5:00 when we met Tyler. Tyler is Ben's sister's good friend a friend of mine from ski team doing an internship here for the summer so he agreed to let us stay with him and show us around a bit. 

We dropped our bags at his place and got a taste of what tomorrow will bring. He took us out to eat and we had authentic Wiener schnitzel with potato salad. We then walked around quite a lot before finding an relaxed outdoor bar to unwind and have some nice conversation over some cold beers. 

All in all today was another relaxing travel day in preparation for a new city tomorrow. Vienna here we come!

The City of 1000 Spires

Prague is the first city on our trip that we have not met or stayed with on our trip. It was very exciting setting out with no one to contact or anything. We were given a pamphlet at our hostel of various activities, one of which was a free tour of the city! How perfect!! We immediately decided to go and planned our day around it. 

It was one if the best decisions ever. Our tour guys was an awesome Australian guy named Callum and he was young and hilarious! We started our tour at the oldest working astronomical clock in the world! Every hour on the hour between 9 and 9 the clock puts on a little show! There are these 2 small doors that open and it reveals the 12 disciples rotating around one in each window at a time. At the same time, these four figures all move their heads. It might not sound like much, because it really was not impressive, until you consider that the gears and everything were built in 1410! 

We learned that and so much more about Prague, the buildings we were seeing, and the whole history of the Czech Republic on our tour. We were taken through the old town square, to the Charles Bridge, through the Jewish Quarter and much much more. It was so great seeing all the sights and learning so much at the same time. 

We loved Callum (man in the picture) and we were very thankful for the great and free tour! We both love Prague so much because of the buildings. Everywhere you go there are beautiful old buildings with many different architecture influences, all differently colored; it was breathtaking. 

Then we had an amazing night on the town! We both loved Prague and will forever hold it in our hearts as one of our favorite cities!!

Traveling to Prague

Today we embarked on another grueling train ride, this time from Berlin to Prague. I finished an entire book on the trip and Ben got through most of his before dozing off, these train rides are exhausting. 

The train ride from Berlin to here was beautiful though. There was one point that we looked out the window to see a wide, winding river that we followed for awhile with large cliffs on the opposite side and lush fields between us and the river. There were wonderful looking homes in this area and we both imagined how cool it would be to retire to a place as beautiful as this. 

We got to Prague and bought a map first thing, and dropped our bags off at the hostel. Following our friend Jessica's advice (she spent a semester here last year) we went to dinner at kolkovne and each got a classic Czech dish and beer in order to be apart of the culture here. 

Walking through the streets of Prague is incredible, every road and sidewalk is made up of brick pavers and cobblestone, and every building seems like is either very old and well kept, or simply was built to look old fashioned. Either way the scenery is a sight to behold. 

Tomorrow we are going on a free walking your and are very excited to see more of Prague!

Berlin!

Today was another day of our own version of traveling; walking as much as possible and seeing as much as possible in little time and for little money. Berlin was a great place for this style because almost all the sights were fairly close and everything (food and beer) is less expensive than our pervious cities. 

Let me start the list of places we visited by saying we did not go into pretty much any of these places because of either time or money, but we saw them and got the gist nonetheless. We saw the TV tower, Saint Hedwig's Cathedral (we did go inside here), then we walked down the Main Street where there were many museums like the Berliner Dom, the Palace of the Republic, and a couple university buildings. At the end of the street was Brandeburg Gate

which lead us to the Reichstag. We wanted to go in the Reichstag but the line was staggering! 

Then we walked along the River Spree as we heading across town to the Eastern Art Gallery. When we got there we found the gallery is actually a 1.3 km stretch of the Berlin Wall that had been painted by artists in remembrance. The paintings ranged from messages 

To all sorts of different styles and colors of patterns and distorted images

All the way to different people and forms of people, like the famous Dmitri Wrubel's depiction of east and west German leaders kissing!

We also took a tour (free of course) to the Holcaust memorial museum. It was so sad but incredibly well done and we learned a ton about WWII. Then came the night... The music festival is still in full swing but today has a new twist: GAY PRIDE! There have been countless men and women wearing rainbows, crazy costumes, glitter, or almost nothing at all, all of them going just crazy. The scene was unbelievable and nearly impossible to describe, but I'll do my best. It was similar to last nights music festival activities except the ratio of gays to straights was probably 6:1 in favor of the gays. There was a different stage every 200 yards on the street in front of the Brandeburg Gate and there were thousands of gay men and women going buck wild in celebration of the rights they have in this country. It was an... Interesting sight to say the least and Austin and I very much enjoyed it, no matter how many things we saw that we cannot un-see. 

Our day in Berlin was incredible and we saw as much as humanly possible. We are sad to be leaving tomorrow but excited to see a new country and city as  well; Prague, here we come!

Berlin Music Festival

Yes you read the title correctly, we just happen to be in Berlin on the one day of the year that the Fête de la Musique Berlin takes place. 

The day started in Amsterdam where we left the hostel at 7:30 to begin a day of travel. We returned out bikes and hopped a train to Berlin. As usual our train was delayed about 20 minutes and our connection was delayed 40 but after 11 long hours of traveling, we arrived in Berlin and sought out the Ducker Berlin building to meet up with Wouter, a Ducker employee that Ben knows through working in Ducker Detroit. 

He informed us of the music festival so after dropping our bags at his apartment, we took the train to northern Berlin and found thousands of people crowding fields and streets as a myriad and plethora of bands played their own unique genre to the crowd around them. One particularly large field had electronic dance music and a couple thousand drunk Germans dancing to the beat. 

Just another crazy stroke of luck that the city we are in has an amazing event the same time we are here, tomorrow we begin our site seeing phase of Berlin and are excited to see what all of our friends have been raving about when it comes to Germany. 

Amsterdam!

Bikes bikes bikes bikes and more bikes. That is the first thing I will forever think about when someone brings up Amsterdam. There were so many bikes it was unreal; we read that bikes outnumbered cars 4 to 1!!! They are so popular that there are bike lanes on every street and even separate traffic lights! So naturally we rented a bike for the day in order to properly explore the city. First we checked in at the youth hostel (our first one of the trip) and dropped our bags off in lockers there. From there, we rode around the whole city for about 5 hours, only stopping for lunch once. We saw all the major sights, yes, including the red light district. It wasn't bad at all during the day!

After our adventure on the bikes we took a short nap before meeting Austin's cousin Wijnand. He bought us dinner and drinks and we had a wonderful time conversing with him about Amsterdam, Holland, and everything else! He showed us the oldest pub in Amsterdam that has hardly been changed, and it turns out that the pub is older than America! It was a great day and new city, but we do have to leave in the morning! Next stop: Berlin!

Brussels and Bruges!

Last night we decided to courageously take on two cities today instead of just one. Suffice it to say, we are exhausted. To begin the day we took an hour train to Bruges and started a long day of walking old cobblestone city streets along canals and thousand year old buildings. It was amazing to see a city that is older the United States itself. 

We came upon an open market area and remembered the four things we were told to try here-beer, chocolate, chips, and waffles. Naturally we went for the most appetizing option and got our first taste of real Belgian waffles and let me tell you, they were delicious. 

We walked past cathedrals, museums, and other incredible buildings in Bruges until our legs needed a rest and we sat down at a cafe for awhile. 

We took the train back to Brussels and met up with our lovely host Liz, and we saw the Grand Place or central square of the city and had a nice cold refreshing Belgian beer. 

After a bit more sight seeing we went to the train station and got our train reservation to Amsterdam tomorrow morning sorted. 

As the trip continues, the pace quickens. It was our goal to see as much of Europe as we could and we're right on schedule, and excited for the next 3 weeks!

Paris!!!

With the grace of God and the help of two literal and figurative angels and one very kind man, we made it to Brussels. 

Our day in Paris was, by most people's standards, not possible. We took the metro from our awesome host's (Jochen Kemnitz) house and started at Notre Dame.

We walked from there along the Seine River and saw many amazing buildings, mostly government offices, and many gardens. We made our way along to the Eiffel Tower to see it in all it's wonder in the day time. It seemed so much larger than at night! We planned to sit around there for a while, but someone was climbing where they shouldn't high up the tower, we left as police got involved. We then walked to the Arc de Triomph where we would have gone up, but on our limited budget we decided pictures from the bottom would suffice.

Then we walked down the famous shopping street that is he Avenue des Champs Élyées which landed us at the Palais du Louvre where we took more pictures outside without going in. Many of you may not realize I said walked for all of those distances in about 4 and a half hours, and our legs are very sore now because of the great speed and distance we covered. Looking back on describing Paris, one word comes to mind: grand. All the buildings and monuments and statues were all so grand , it was amazing to see. The main difference in our travels through France was the language difference. We learned a few phrases like "thank you" and "do you speak English?" And once people saw we were American, they were happy to try their English on us and it was easy to convey what we wanted to say. Sometimes, it was even fun! Now we look forward to Brugge and Brussles tomorrow!