Day 27

Ciao!

I know we are a little behind on the blog. Our apologies for that.. but Chris promises to get us caught up as long as I start clean and fresh with Roma!

Day 1 in Italy.

We are staying at the TwinCities Hostel, which is on the very outskirts of Rome. I know that this means actual Italians live here. Why? Because there is laundry hanging from every window. We have a 3 bedroom dorm with a cute little balcony that overlooks the neighborhood street. The only downfall is that we don't have air conditioning and it was 86 degrees, but I can't complain since dear old Salt Lake must already have frost in the morning.

In our hostel, there are two bathrooms. That's it. They both have bidets, which Chris admitted this evening that he turned on out of curiosity.. but didn't admit to trying it.. Pfft ;) One has a shower curtain; however, the shower curtain is attached to this metal contraption on the ceiling that acts like a slinky so it really only covers about a foot and a half of space.

This morning when I woke up, I jumped at the chance to grab the bathroom before anybody else. I grab my stuff, run to bathroom and rip open the door. What do I see? Some guy going #2 while reading the paper. Oh. NO.

I hid in my room until that poor man left for the day and went to grab breakfast. I noticed they had a little 1 cup coffee percolator and I thought, why not? I have yet to have good coffee in Europe so my hopes weren't too high. I make the cup of coffee, take a sip, add about 2 tablespoons of sugar, and drink up :) Talk about an energy boost! I was speedwalking to the train station and poor Chris (who hasn't had D. Mountain Dew in over a month) was lagging behind like the chubby kid on a hike.

The first place we decided to go today was the infamous Colosseum. We took the metro to get there, which is too easy. They only have two lines, A and B. You practically cannot get lost. When we got off at our stop, the beautiful structure was literally across the street from the metro station.

The Colosseum.
Talk about huge. It was completed in 80 CE, can seat 50,000 spectators, and it is estimated that the games played in the Colosseum have taken the lives of over 500,000 people and over a million wild animals.

Here's our little video:


Right next to the Colosseum is Constantine's Arch to commemorate Constantine's win over the army of Maxentius in 312 AD.

Then there was the Roman Forum, or Rome's old city-centre where ancient Romans dealt with politics, business, and everyday life until 46 BC when Julius Caesar decided to build a new one because of the rapid population growth. Since then, the debris has caused the current city to be 25 ft. higher. There is a huge fenced outline of the ancient city and it's an amazing sight to see.

There is a huge road that leads from the Colosseum to the Vittoriano. This street is the equivalent of Grafton St. in Dublin with street performers working hard for their money and passersby taking it all in. This was a little unusual though - there were the regulars that you see everywhere, but here there were two different Native American flute bands battling for crowds and little asians carving things out of carrots.

Our native american flute players.

The Vittoriano is, by far, the biggest building we have ever seen. Pick any building and times it be at least two. Construction of this building was completed in 1935. Some of our favorite things: the huge equestrian statue centerpiece of Victor Emmanuel II (for whom the entire building is dedicated), the Eternal Flame which is guarded by soldiers and burns to mark the grave of an unknown soldier from World War I - and also to commemorate all of the soldiers who perished but were never identified, the two fountains on the sides of the building that are meant to represent the two seas surrounding Italy (Adriatic and Tyrrhenian), and last but not least the two enormous bronze structures that represent the roman god Victoria which symbolizes unity and liberty.

After all this sightseeing, we were craving a SNACK. There are these little carts full of food everywhere and we stopped at one to get one of those small cans of Pringles and a Gatorade. Guess how much? 6.50 Euros! My heart about stopped.. we said no thank you sir and he scolded us in Italian until we were out of sight. It was then that we realized Italians are loud, blunt, and not very polite.

It was my special day, because Chris had a date night planned and stop one was none other than a pizzeria.. italian style. We've learned a couple things from that experience though. 1) The basket of bread they place on your table is NOT complimentary. If you eat the bread, you will have to pay for it. 2) We ordered the Bruschetta for 5.70 Euros and what we received was four little pieces of crispy bread on a saucer 3) And "regular" water = 4.50 bottle of agua.

BUT that wasn't even the best part. He got me a little surprise. I finished the book I bought in London and I've been searching every bookstore in both Greece and Italy for the book, One Day. Nowhere has it and if they do, it's not in English. When we were at dinner, Chris made me shut my eyes, promise not to peek, and then layed out my ipod on the table with none other than One Day downloaded and ready to read :) How did I get so lucky?

When we left the pizzeria, it was already getting pretty dark but we had two more stops to make before heading back. The first stop was a gelato shop. Not just any gelato shop.. the Il Gelato di San Crispino. If anyone's read Eat Pray Love, that's the same shop in the book. The name supposedly roughly translates to "The Gelato of the Crispy Saint". Haha.

Il Gelato di San Crispino

We took our gelato and walked down to the Fontana di Trevi.

The very central figure of the fountain is Neptune, God of the Sea, with two tritons that flank him on both sides. One triton, is struggling to control an unruly "sea horse" while the other is controlling a docile animal; this is meant to depict the two contrasting moods of the sea. Legend has it that if you throw one coin into the fountain, it guarantees a return to Rome. If you throw three coins with your right hand over your left shoulder, it guarantees either a marriage or divorce. We both kissed just ONE coin and threw it in. We're too poor for three ;)

When we were taking pictures of ourselves and being silly, a guy came up to us and offered to take our picture. We said "no thanks" about three times before finally saying, "sure". He takes a few pictures and then asks us how long we've been dating, that we look happy, that he'd like to take a picture with his instant camera for us. We say, "no thanks.. that's ok". He insisted and he snapped the two photos. After he hands them to us, he says that we owe him money. Chris pulls out 1 Euro and says that's all he's got. The man said he had change if we have a bigger bill. We say we ONLY have the 1 Euro. He starts yelling at us, explaining that this is a business. I offer to give the pictures back and he says that is pointless. We start walking away and he storms over to us and demands the pictures back. Haha.

As we walk away, the first thing Chris said is "I bet he won't use that sales pitch again".

All in all.. he took about four awesome pictures of us in front of the fountain and we officially realized how naive we are.

We took a few more pictures by the Colosseum on our way home.

We thought one of the Colosseum by itself would be nice. When we got back, we noticed something strange about the lower right hand side. Haha. 

Ope.. before I forget. Here's our new hostel, TwinCities.

We're back at the hostel now - sleepy and ready for a good nights rest.

:)

Alicia & Chris

Day 14

Good morning Munich!! We wake up and try to have a little more chipper of an attitude.  After a full day of travelling the previous day anything sounded awesome. We are in Munich! We want to enjoy the city and have some fun. Since we left London, I am trying to be the little ray of sunshine in Chris’s big grey “I Miss America” thunderstorm… which was fine for me, until after the showers.

The showers, which are also in one huge enormous tent, did not have enough of a shower curtain to cover the entranceway of the shower. The wind coming through the tent was freezing, there was mud all over everything with no place to put your clothes or your towel. I tried to just suck it up and get it over with. So I get in the shower, and the water is ICE COLD and only stays on for about 30 seconds. This is a prison camp. I’m at the end of my rope – I get back to the bed where Chris is waiting and I can tell in his eyes we are thinking the same things, "let's get out of here".

We take a taxi back to the train station and are now headed to Amsterdam. What’s a good road trip without a few bumps along the way, right? From the train station, we make a reservation at the Mevlana Hostel in Amsterdam. The train there is not too shabby ( we, in our journey to munich learned to pre-book our ticket so we can have a seat) and things are starting to look up.

When we arrive, the city is breathtakingly beautiful. It's 10:30 at night but the city is still bustling with people. The canals everywhere, the old architecture, and the city lights, it was amazing! Our new hostel is right smack dab in the middle of the city. We walked straight to it and notice that it’s an Asian restaurant with rooms above it. haha,  as we check in I think we are both a little anxious to see what this place looks like. It has one of those New York City doors where you have to buzz in to the building and then there are just winding stairs going up and up and up to the different floors. Here’s a little tour of our new home…



We’re excited to see Amsterdam but its late and we're off to bed Much more tomorrow!. :) zzzzz.... 

Day 13

Press Play...

Rise & Shine! We left the Queen Elizabeth at about 6:30am, all packed and ready to go. We already had our EuroStar tickets to Brussels ready and we were excited to head towards Munich! The train station has security checks and all that – but the ride was so nice. We got to see the French countryside, the little farm villages full of sheep and cattle. We watched Old School and relaxed and just had a good time.

When we got to Brussels, we hit a little bit of a bump. First, we’re starting to leave English speaking countries and English is the last on the list for translations. Second, buying a Eurail pass and then immediately attempting to use it to get to Munich on such short notice is apparently not that great of an idea. Instead of taking direct trains, we had to get there by local trains. That’s right… from Brussels to Munich via local trains. We said OK, and got our itinerary. We had 4 connections to make, some with only 10 or so minutes to make it to our next train. When we get off our first train, nothing is in English. I mean that… not one thing. We managed to find our next train by the broken English that some of the people thankfully had.

The next stop, we had literally no idea where we were. We walked around looking at different signs, attempted to ask different people, thought we saw our train about 5 times, and in the end decided just to sit and wait.

Here’s a little video that Chris decided to make, to commemorate the moment. Haha.



  Thankfully, we saw none other than a couple of sister missionaries! The first thing they said was, “What are you doing in Belgium without knowing how to speak French” and we said “Oh, that’s where we are!”. They translated for us and we found out how to get on the train to Koln, Germany.

The next train stop wasn’t so bad; people still do not speak English whatsoever but we’re closer to Munich and we thought, the next train is a night train so it should be faster and more comfortable. It definitely was faster and supposedly more comfortable, but it was also the last night train to Munich (arriving at 12:30am) and everyone else also wanted to be on it. Because we had not previoulsy reserved our seats,  we had to sit on our luggage in the entryway for 3 of the 4 hour train ride. When we finally pulled in to Munich, we were so happy to be there that we celebrated with PIZZA! Everything was still open because of Oktoberfest and we even saw people in their lederhosen.

We took a cab to The Tent, since it was pouring down rain. Our cabby didn’t speak English but our new home away from home wasn’t too far, so we were happy about that. We pulled up and went to the reception area. We knew pitching a tent was out of the question; it was pouring down  rain and cold and we could already could see tent after tent getting flooded. We booked one night in the main tent, grabbed our 4 wool blankets each and headed to bed...

It. Was. Awful.

And I don’t mean the kind of awful that’s not so bad. I mean the sad kind of awful. Every hostel and hotel in Munich was booked solid because of Oktoberfest, so we were left with this place. The Tent. The huge circus tent has, probably more than a hundred bunkbeds sprawled out everywhere. There is mud all over the place because it’s pouring down  rain and there are drunk people everywhere. I went to open one of the lockers, and a young man came up and introduced himself, then said “I’m so wasted” and smashed his head into the locker beside mine twice and then walked away. No joke. We built a fort around the bunkbed with our blankets and layed down for the night. After about 10 minutes of silence between the two of us, I hear Chris say, “We don’t deserve this.”

I honestly can't describe well enough how rough that day was all in all . It will always be one of those days we can talk and laugh about for years to come.


The next morning we made this video:

Day 9-12

With no internet connection and all the touristy sites taken care of pretty early on, we spent the last days wandering the streets of London, riding the buses and window shopping. On the 15th, we had the best afternoon. It was relaxed, we watched soccer in the bar with our new friends, we had snacks, played cards, and then finally set up the laptop and watched Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

 After we went to sleep, we had a not-so-pleasant surprise when 7 Dutch guys game rumbling through the doorway at 4:30am. Out of a 12 person room, there were the 7 Dutch guys, Chris, me, a Canadian girl, and a lady with a broken leg. We were kind of outnumbered! Earlier that day, the girl at the receptionist explained to us that there had been a mix-up and she gave one of the guys the wrong bed – so his stuff was moved to the new bed, which was a total of maybe 10 steps from his “old’ bed. When they came in, they turned on the lights, they lit up cigarettes in the room, they drank whiskey from the bottle, and guess who didn’t like that his bed was moved? Yep. Guess who he so generously took it out on? Yep. They started smashing the beds against the wall, they were trying to provoke Chris into fighting and after certain &#$words were exchanged, it was all I could do to keep the two guys from fighting.

What were the other Dutch guys doing? Stripping down to their underwear and taking pictures of each other. The girl with the broken leg explained to them that she was allergic to smoke and was constantly coughing and their response… was for her to shut her mouth. I can’t make this stuff up people. It was without a doubt, the worse night we’ve ever had. I’ve never seen Chris so mad and I’ve never had to deal with that much testosterone and anger!

We decided to get up and go into the bar and eventually it was us and the Canadian girl watching Cash Cab on the bar TV between 5-8:30am. After the day, we decided to make our evening twenty times better than our morning and we got everyone together to go out for the evening. The first stop was of course, the Queen Elizabeth. The girl in our room with the broken leg went to the doctor earlier in the afternoon and they said she’s ok to finally go home. She had been there for weeks and that was the best possible news (especially after last night) and on her way home, she picked up wine, crackers, and a bunch of different cheeses from the store to celebrate!

It was the whole group – us, the two Canadian girls, the about 5 New Zealanders, 3 Aussies, 2 Irish guys, and the guy from Munich. It was so much fun!! Talk about confidence when you walk through the street – we practically had a gang of people with us. We were out until about 2:30 or 3am and when we got home, where did we all immediately head? The KITCHEN! Haha. I made soup and Victoria (one of the Canadian girls) had chips and soon we were sharing the chips and dipping it in my soup. We had the whole bunch of us smooshed into this little corner kitchen all hunting for our food.

Saturday was a relax day. First thing in the morning, we went back to Notting Hill for the Portobello Market. Talk about beautiful! We saw the home of George Orwell and the streets were packed with vendors selling everything from antique china to wallets to weird kinds of meat. We said we’d walk down the market and back, but we didn’t realize how big it is. We walked for one hour straight in one direction before we started going off into the little side markets. After a couple of hours, we were starving and headed towards the food section.

I am not kidding you when I say I have never in my life seen fruit like this. Everything was triple the size of what grocery stores sell. There were stands for so many different nationalities, all selling their signature dish. Chris walked by a Greek stand selling “Big Burgers”. We stopped and the Chris asked the lady politely, “I just want one big burger please”. She said, “Have you pay yet?” He pays, and then she says, in this exact way: “What you wunt an yurr beeg berger”. We could not stop laughing! Later on, Chris took me to get a book, which was super exciting for me anyways ;). That night, we went on a date, out to Bodean’s BBQ (the ONLY place we have found to have BBQ sauce in Europe). We walked around and finally, did laundry!

I know that’s not very interesting, but it had to be done. One thing I do not like about European Laundromats is that they insist on washing and drying the clothes for you. You put your coins in the machine and then when it’s done, the guy working at the Laundromat takes out your clothes and puts in it a basket to wait for the dryer… then puts your clothes in the dryer for you. Awkward!! No thanks. Tomorrow is day 1 on the train. That should be interesting   Alicia & Chris

Day 8

Well, here I am again. I guess I did well enough on the last blog’s post so I have been approved again to write today's J

Day 3 in London, today was the day we were going to the Stonehenge, the thing Alicia and I were both really excited to see in England and to get a photo in front of the Stonehenge replicating our own windows screensaver. 

The bus to Stonehenge however didn’t leave until 12:45 and it was a 3 hour bus ride out there so after breakfast we decided to go see Buckingham palace. It was pretty cool J Its just so big and maybe Alicia and I weren’t on the right side of the palace but we both felt a little let down that we weren’t able to get close enough to the guards to make funny faces or try and make them laugh. We've been practicing practically since we got here. 

See, big.. but not crazy :) :

We did talk about though how crazy it is that England has a queen, she has no power really whatsoever, she is just a face who is given money to by the country. She has the best job ever, its not like she is stressed with hard decisions or really gets the blame for anything going wrong in the country.. Alicia has decided she would like to have tea with her and just talk things over. Haha J

From Buckingham palace we headed over to where we were supposed to meet for our bus to Stonehenge.  First things first though.. we saw our doppleganger for the day. Guess who? Haha

ALBERT EINSTEIN

Ok, the bus to Stonehenge was a trip, it seemed like we rode for forever and never seemed to get there, we were out in the middle of nowhere and then all of a sudden the bus driver announced, we are 10 mins away. We pull up and there they are; rocks.  Big ones J As we all unloaded off of the bus our bus driver told us we had one hour to tour Stonehenge and then he would leave. To the dismay of the passengers, one lady said “But the brochure said 1 hr and 15 mins”..haha, Really? Tourists.. Anyways as we walked up to the Stonehenge I thought they were on the left in a big field where nothing seemed to be, but in fact those were just sheep that Alicia was crazy about.. haha



but as we got there we decided to sit down and eat our sandwiches and just enjoy looking at the Stonehenge and enjoy a little bit of people watching. 

There were some funny people, like one girl in our group from California was doing yoga poses with a toy dinosaur on her head while her friend took pictures of it..hahaha, weird. Anyways, we both really enjoyed the Stonehenge. It really is crazy to think about that in 3000 to 1000 BC people were able to bring these huge stones together up and over the hills in England and for them to mean something.

Our scottish night receptionist from the queen Elizabeth (you will hear more about him soon) informed us that supposedly there are about three other places with artifacts like the Stonehenge, one in like Ireland and the others in other places in Europe that all line up in a perfect line. To me, that is pretty amazing from people before facebook..haha. Stonehenge day was a really good day, the weather couldn’t have been better and we just had a fun day. Back at the queen Elizabeth deciding what tomorrow’s day will undertake.  J

Day 7

London Bridge is falling down… :) My first post! By me, Chris.

Day 2 in London and we are already in love with the city. We could honestly picture ourselves living here and it brings about a Chicago feeling, and everyone knows how much we loved Chicago…

First thing on today’s list was to go visit the British Museum. We had met some more of our 10 roommates from the Queen Elizabeth and one in particular named Alex (from Chile, lived in Greece) suggested that we had to go to the British museum. So as to not go back empty handed and not able to report that we had missed the British museum we thought we would head there first.

The tube station that we got off at must have been the wrong one because we were nowhere near the british museum but we were a lot closer to the London Tower and London Bridge. But before you go on…what would you imagine the London tower is? Something like a tower right? That is what Alicia and I assumed and apparently we are not too good on our London tourist information.

London tower is actually a huge castle overlooking the thames river  and is also along the same street as the London bridge.

The London bridge doesn’t even look like a real bridge. It looks like the kind of bridge you see on little model train setups or something. It really is such a cool bridge… haha. After crossing the London bridge without it falling down ;) we were headed to the Tate Modern museum. Again, at least for me, not too sure what the Tate Modern museum was, we headed there with much enthusiasm.

The Tate modern museum is actually more of a project that London created to feature their modern artists and for them to create something that would collaborate modern art today as a whole. It is seven floors of just modern art. They had everything you could imagine from sculptures to paint that looks like it has been flung across the canvas, heaping piles of sunflower seeds, and weird... I don't even know.. It gave me a new "appreciation" for modern art. Lol.

My favorite part of the museum however was the café on the 5th floor :)

We also got an awesome view of the Millenium bridge. For all of you harry potter fans, that is the same bridge that gets destroyed in the beginning of Harry Potter six. Walking across the bridge was a pretty cool experience, no deatheaters though..haha

Don't mind all the talking.. lol



After crossing the bridge we still figured we had to go see the british museum so we didn’t go back empty-handed. However, fate had different plans for us. After walking around for quite a while we decided to experience another staple of british culture, FISH AND CHIPS.  I don’t think Alicia was too big of a fan but I thought it was pretty good. :) No burger and fries but.. what can you do? :)

After finishing our fish and chips we decided to scrap the british museum for the day since it was so hard to get to and to head east towards abbey road and the Sherlock holmes museum.

Abbey road was way fun. Just being there and walking across the street of such an iconic photo was a blast. After you cross the street it’s a funny feeling, you feel like you just crossed any normal street but at the same time you also know some of the greatest artists have crossed that same street.

 

Here's our attempted video with Abbey Road :)

Not only is the street there but it is also the famous Abbey Road Studios. A lot of movie scores have been produced there, John Williams seems to be a big fan and also a lot of other bands have produced soundtracks from that same studio. Us pions weren’t allowed in but you were allowed to stand outside the gate, which seems cooler actually just because you can see where people have visited the wall over the years and signed messages to the beatles.

Some were creepy..haha, but other were just cool to see from not so long ago. 

Oh... and we found those red phonebooths too :)

Well I think that about raps up day 2 in london. We’re starting to figure out the city and get a feel for what London is all about.

:)

Alicia & Chris

Day 6

Sunday, September 11^th

The night before we washed our clothes, packed up, and set the alarm on our little cricket phone for 3:50am. Guess what didn’t go off in the morning?!

Thank goodness Chris woke up at 4:05am. We busted a move and made it down to meet our taxi at 4:45am. Our driver, a native Irishman, had about the thickest accent we’ve heard yet in Dublin. On the way to the airport, he was filling us in on the behind the scenes of the city. Apparently, being a bank manager in Dublin is an extremely high risk job. Thieves will kidnap a bank manager’s wife and children and hold them ransom. We also found out that they have not yet solved any of the cases; these kidnappers are getting the money and walking away scott free! Pfft.

My favorite part of the morning was in the security line. Me and Chris were sleepy, grumpy, and hungry and we’ve got some of the longest faces as we’re shoving our bags through the security scanner. When I walked through the security checkpoint, the airport employee asked me if I had ten minutes. I, of course, said, “Sure!”… in the back of my head, I’m thinking “Oh no, this is September 11^th! Maybe having an American girl on the plane is too risky”. What does he do? He hands me his ID badge and says he’ll be back in 10. He’s going for a smoke.

Our flight from Dublin to London was through Ryanair – the ghetto cheap way to fly throughout Europe. You stand in one huge line, board the plane from the tarmac, pick your own seats, and you have to pay for everything on the flight (no beverage is GRATIS!). When we landed, the pilot put a horn noise over the intercom: the one that goes DA DUN DA DA DA DA DUN DUN DA DA DA DA and everyone on board cheered and clapped. Me and Chris stared at each other and said, “If they were so worried, why on earth did they board this plane?”.

Remember that rough start video from day 1 in Dublin? That happened all over again in London. New currency. New town. New transit system.

After a lot of walking and a lot of asking, we ended up boarding the easybus to West Brompton, London.

When we got off, we had no idea where to go and when we asked for help, we got a response in thick British. We stared, nodded politely, said thank you, and just kept on walking.

When we first got off the bus, we could have sworn that we saw a Dominoes and a Papa Johns around the neighborhood and pizza would be just the thing to turn our frowns upside down J We decided that we’d put our backpacks in the hostel and head out for dinner. We searched and searched and searched – with no pizza place in sight. At all. We finally settled for splitting a sandwich from a little marketplace. What do we see on the way home? Two different delivery mopeds.. one for dominoes and one for Papa Johns. Life has its moments! 

We finally made it down Bagleys Lane in Chelsea. Our hostel is The Queen Elizabeth! It’s quaint and has “character” – Chris would use the parenthesis when using that word ;) We got settled in and found out that the whole of the place is a bar but there is a little corridor that goes from behind the counter, to a little hallway where the showers are, and finally to a back patio and a little building that just has bunkbeds. That’s where we’re staying J

Here's a little video of our new home away from home:

The majority live there temporarily. Our friend John from Norway moved here for work. Alex is a Chile native who has lived in Greece for many years. We also met two Canadian girls that moved here to teach high school (one reminds me exactly of Robin from How I Met Your Mother!). We sat up in our bunkbeds and chit-chatted for about 2 hours with our new roomies. It felt exactly like a co-ed camp for kids. Haha.

First stop was the Tube Station – London’s underground transit line. A 7 day pass for the both of us was 64 pounds, or about $100! This city is EXPENSIVE. We have yet to find a city map so we decided to just hop on and off the subway and buses and scavenge the town. Our first stop was none other than Notting Hill J The perfect first stop. The sunshine must follow us because we’ve had amazing weather. The streets are bustling and there is shop after shop for everything you could ever imagine. There was a shop of replica jewelry worn by British celebrities. There was a flower shop with the most beautiful bouquets. There’s vintage boutiques, fruit and vegetable markets, and antique shops! After Notting Hill, we rode the bus through the city to Trafalgar Square. Having no idea what we were looking at, we started taking pictures with pretty much everything – just in case ;) There were the lion statues, the ship in a glass bottle, all in front of the art gallery. There was also a live performer doing a bunch of random flexibility tricks. It wasn’t anything special but we got a huge kick out of this part; it’s supposed to represent REBIRTH:

The art museum was free and a nice place to wander around. My favorite painting was called Cupid Complaining to Venus.

Cupid complains to his mother, Venus, of being stung by bees when stealing a honeycomb. This is supposed to be a moral commentary showing that life's pleasure is mixed with pain.

:)

Afterwards, we were so hungry that both of us were getting the low blood sugar shakes. We went to the museum espresso bar and each got a big fat COOKIE :D What did worry us about London is that there are signs everywhere that say, “Pickpockets work this area. Beware”. Eakk! We’re watching our behinds more than ever.

When we got to the city center, there was Big Ben and the rest of the Parliament building

Over the Thames River Bridge, we found a park bench overlooking the city and relaxed for a little while. With the city moving so fast, it was nice to sit down and watch the people, the double-decker buses, and the taxi cabs. With the 2012 Olympics, the city is growing, being remodeled and refurbished, there are construction workers everywhere (try being out at about lunch-time! It’s you and a bunch of men in yellow glow in the dark vests).

The last place we saw for the day was Westminster Abbey J What a beautiful church and right in the middle of such a big city.

The Abbey has been the coronation church since 1066 and is the final resting place of seventeen monarchs (and where Will and Kate just got married)

Well, we’re exhausted but we’re enjoying every minute.

:)

Alicia & Chris