End of Rome

Hey all!

So we left rome last night and took a night train down to Sicily. So far Sicily is really really hot. But our hostel here is really nice so that was pretty good.

While I was in Rome I ended up meeting up with my friend Will from U of I. We all ended up just getting dinner and then hanging out on the Spanish steps. I think those might have been my favorite thing in Rome. They weren't the most breath taking or interesting, however they were the most fun area to go and visit. Another thing which I really liked was the Trevi Fountain. I'd put up pictures, but I don't have my wire to connect my camera with me now... sorry.

The last night in Rome we went on this bar crawl sorta thing. It was with a bunch of other college aged tourists, but it was kinda nice since none of us speak Italian well. We went to this one club at the end of the night which was a great time. Lots of dancing and I made friends with a couple of Roman guys, so I still got to hang out with the locals. And peggy and Jane met some Ukranian guys which was pretty funny.

That next morning we were supposed to check out of our hostel by 10am and since we all got home a wee bit tipsy at 4 or 5 am we forgot to set alarms and were rushed out of the hostel without time to really get ready at all. We then just spent our last day in Rome hanging out in this park... catching up on some sleep and then just relaxing a bit. We then took a 12 hour night train down to Sicily. However, the last stretch of it something was wrong.... we don't know what, as we couldn't understand what people were saying.... and ended up getting delayed for about 2 hours on the hot hot train. We are in Sicily for 2 nights now and then we head to Athens. Tomorrow is the half way mark of our trip, which is kinda exciting. We have been typically doing so much during the days and evenings it's hard to believe it has only been 3 weeks. I feel like i've been here for months already. Great times though.

If you read this leave me a comment about what you have been up to lately as I haven't been keeping in touch with everyone!

Roma

We have been in Rome for the last couple of days. I feel like there is so much to see here, everywhere you turn is some fancy old building or church. Although Rome has some great things to see like the Collosium and Vatican city I don't really like it all that much. It's dirty and smells like a toilet everywhere. We are leaving for Sicily tomorrow and then to Greece. Should be fun!

pictures

http://picasaweb.google.com/amharpy

italy

Hey all, so we are in cinque terre now. It has been a very relaxing couple of days. The hiking here is beautiful, and there are beaches.... well sorta, they are kinda rocky so its, more so people laying on rocks instead of sand but it's very pretty and a nice little break from museums and monuments. I am uploading pictures now from the trip so far, but they are taking really long to upload so I am only putting up a few. Peggy put up pictures on her facebook though, so if you want to see them her name is Peggy Spinato she is one of my friends on facebook. Tomorrow we leave for Rome, which should be lots of fun and then down to Sicily for a couple of days. Fun times, oh and I randomly ran into my friend Will from U of I here. We saw each other on this little ferry boat at these beach towns.... talk about random meetings.

I'll add some pictures now.

Italy

I'm in Italy now! Venice was pretty cool to see and the beaches are always fun.

Since I haven't updated this much at all, here is the link to Jane's blog. I think her's is up to date. Otherwise I will do this eventually just not now. :)

http://www.xanga.com/janehuang

London and Germany update

First, all of the options in here are in german so I'm hoping I actually get this posted.

Ok, so in London we did as much stuff as we could. All of the museums there are free so we went to a lot of those, the London museum (i think thats what its called) was amazing. We saw the rosetta stone and tons and tons of other things from all parts of the world. England has been taking other countries things for a long time aparently. After the museums we went and saw the major sites around london, like Big ben, the london and tower bridges, buckingham palace and quite a few other places. There are a couple different castles and palaces throughout the city with really pretty gardens and parks also. We didn' really go out much cause we were all so exhausted by the end of the day. Overall a very good time!!

Next Jane and I went to Berlin. There we saw a part of the berlin wall and things associated with that. We were only there for one full day though so we didn't do a whole lot. Berlin was ok, but not my favorite city at all.

Now we are in Munich. We have been here 3 days now. It's been amazing!!!! The first day we got in we were pretty tired so we just went to the munich museum then came back to the hostel and crashed for a while. Our hostel here is really awesome! They have a bar downstairs and lots of free tours and things like that. We took a wakling tour of the city and learned a lot about the city. Like all of the buildings in it look really really old but they were almost all actually destroyed in the ww2 and just rebuilt to look old. Also this city is all about drinking beer, all of the time. They have special breakfast lunch and dinner beer. I couldn't handle the breakfest drinking but tried some for lunch and dinner. We went to this beer hall that was huge, it seats 5000 people. And everytime we went in the place was packed. Also they serve the beer a liter at a time.... thats a lot. The city itself has been pretty amazing and the people are really nice and most of them know english. Today we went and saw the castle that the disney world castle is modeled after. It was really breathtaking. The inside actually has fairy tale sort of stories painted on all the walls, so it's pretty easy to see why disney copied it. Then when we got back to Munich we went to this restaurant that had traditional german dancers performing. It wasn't like people that worked at the restaurant though they just came there for dinner and to entertain some work friends so the dressed up and kept doing dances. It was pretty neat to see, and we were sitting right next to them so they kept coming over and trying to get us to join in with them.

Thats about it for now. We are taking a train tonight to Italy so our german part of the adventure is done. Italy should be really pretty to see though, I'm excited!!

Ireland and London

We got into London this afternoon, it has been pretty fun so far.

Our last day in Ireland we walked around the city a whole lot and saw quite a few different things, some of which were planned and some just stumbling upon. We went to a couple different museums which were pretty interesting. Throughout the city though there are some really pretty gardens so we would stop to rest for a bit in them. We walked to close to the edge of Dublin and had a pretty view of the countryside. There aren't very many people with red irish looking hair in Dublin though which sorta disappointed me. :( Oh, and we met a leprechaun!! It was this little old lady who couldn't of been more than 4 and a half feet tall who came up and helped give us directions and then talked to us for a minute. She totally reminded me of a leprechaun though.

We got into London a bit ago, so far I like it alot. I'll update more about it later though.

Bye!!

Dublin

We made it to Europe!!! Today we got into Dublin. None of us got a lot of sleep on the plane so it was a long day, but we still got to see some of the sites. We saw the Dublin castle.... which was ok, not awesome or anything but kinda cool to see. Then we went to see how Guiness is made. It was a 7 story tour where on the top level you got a glass of beer. It was a really cool place, I just don't actually like the taste of Guiness all that much so the beer at the end I barely drank. Very fun tour though.

Well, I think we are going to head out soon. I'll try and put pictures on here later.