The Hills are Alive in Austria!

WOW! This trip was probably one of my favorites! It was so much fun! Each day was completely different! The first day we were in Salzburg, we went on a Sound of Music Tour and got to go to each scene of the movie and it was so neat to be there in real life! We went to the back of the VanTrapp house, the lake in their backyard, the trees where the kids hung out of, the gazebo where they sang "I am 16 going on 17", the church in Mondsee where they got married, and the 5 scenes in the Mirabell Gardens! It was so fun to sing the songs in each place! My friend Teal ran through a field in Mondsee and sang "The Hills are Alive with the Sound of Music"! We got her on tape! Ha! Then we climbed up to the Fortress on top of the city and got to see the Nonnburg Abbey and a great view of the surrounding Alps!

On Friday, we walked around town and saw the house where Mozart lived and then went to a cafe on top of a hotel and had a great view of the Fortress and of the mountains around Salzburg! Then in the afternoon, we had a salt mine tour. Little did we know that it was in Germany! That's right! We got to go to GERMANY! Two trips in one. Two countries in one day! Woo hoo! We drove by the base of the mountain where Hitler's Eagle Nest is and got to see it from a distance. Not that I wanted to get any closer! Then we went to a little German town called Burchesgaden (I can't spell it) and we got to go on an underground tour of the salt mines! I had no idea what to expect, but it was better than anything I could have expected! It was so neat! We got to take a miner's train down a shaft and it was pitch black. There were no walls on the train either. We basically just sat on a bench facing forward and held onto the person in front of us. It was so fun. They had fake explosions go off periodically throughout the tour. I jumped evertime and grabbed the person in front of me! We got to go down a miner's slide and it was pretty fast and long! It was so fun! We went down as a group! We also got to ride across a salt lake on a boat and while we were pulled across, there was a light show going on around us on the walls of the mine. It was so neat! Then we got to the other side and got to taste clean salty water! Eww! Then we took the train back to the beginning! I think dad and Caleb would have loved it even more b/c it showed all the science involved with the making and production of salt and then it showed how the salt is pumped and how a rig moves all of it. I didn't understand all of it though, b/c our tour guide only spoke German! Ha! There were English audio tours, but it was a lot of facts and I was more interested in the light shows! It was really funny though, because I jokingly decided to "translate" to my group what I thought our guide was saying, but I really had no idea what he was saying. My friends thought it was really funny, b/c I was saying random things. But I finally decided to stop "translating" when an English family turned to me to ask what he said. Hahaha they thought I had been translating the whole time! ahahhahahah it was so funny. I just made something up and then decided not to "translate" anymore. I was just doing it for my friends, but apparently others were listening too!

We decided to got to Zell am See on Saturday! I'm so glad we did! The train ride was gorgeous! I can't even begin to describe how pretty it was to be following a river next to the Alps in Austria! I keep having to pinch myself while I'm over here to make sure I'm actually awake and not dreaming! We got to Zell am See and had lunch by the lake! (GORGEOUS!) If you've seen Band of Brothers, the lake that the Majors swim in at the end is the lake in Zell am See. We also went up to a lookout point that looked out over the city, the lake, and the surrounding Alps mountains! Then Briana and I (yes, there is another girl named Briana and her middle name is the same as mine too! Crazy) anyways, we decided to go hiking! We hiked all the way until we got to the top of the ski lift that they use in the winter time. We climbed until we reached the first patch of snow. We also took our pictures on the ski lift while wearing shorts! A little ironic! The view we had was picturesque! It could have been a postcard! We just got back to Oxford a few hours ago (Sunday) and I'm dreading doing my homework. Guess I got a little spoiled while I was in the Alps in Austria and Germany!

C.S. Lewis Tour, Blenheim Palace, Easter Weekend, and a psycho sheep!

On Thursday, we took a tour of C.S. Lewis' house and got to walk around the pond and the woods around his house! It was really neat to be in the same room where he wrote the Chronicles of Narnia! I'm actually reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe right now! It's so fun to be able to be reading a C.S. Lewis book in Oxford!

Katie Gager, Katherine Barnes, and I went to Blenheim Palace yesterday! It costs 12 pounds to get into the palace and 7 pounds to get into the grounds. However, we were sneaky and we snuck in a back gate and got in for free. Apparently, if you know about the public footpath, you can get in for free. Thank goodness Katie Gager had good eyes. We saved 7 pounds. Once we were in, we walked over to the sheep that were grazing. One of them had it's legs sticking straight up. When we came over to it, we realized that it was not dead, only stuck on it's back. Katherine and I gave it a boost up and saved it's life! We video taped the whole thing! It was great! We also got to ride a free kiddy Winston Churchill Express train! It didn't really go anywhere, but we were all about free adventures throughout the day! It's also Easter weekend. On Friday, we set up stations of the cross and also had a picnic at the park for 3 1/2 hours! I actually got a tan in England! We fed the duck and played frisbee too! Saturday we took a day trip to Woodstock. Today, Sunday, we had a sunrise service. We are about to have a burger and hotdog cookout in the backyard and then we will head to University Parks to hunt Easter eggs! I'm so excited! The girls exchanged Easter baskets this morning! I got a pint of icecream and Cadbury creme eggs from Kasey Morgan!

Cinque Terre, I love you!

When we stepped off the train, we were literally on a cliff that overlooked the ocean! Never in my life will I be at a train station with such a view! I was so amazed at how beautiful this place was! I had heard that it was gorgeous but until I saw it, I had no idea! We walked up the hill and found our hostel and this little old lady helped us find our room which was 135 steps up the hill! We had all of our luggage, so our hearts were pounding when we got to the apartment! We put our stuff down and then I opened up the window in our room and gasped! We had an AMAZING view of the ocean and the mountains! We ate at a litte cafe in town and we had the best lasagne we had ever had! Cinque Terre is know for having the best pesto and we got pesto lasagne! Incredible!

The weather on Friday was perfect! The sun was out and warm with a slight breeze! Pefect hiking weather! We hiked from Riomaggiore to Manarola and then part of the way to Corniglia, but had to go back to the train station in Manarola b/c of a landslide. We took the train to Corniglia and then hiked 382 steps up to the city! Quite a staircase! Once we got to the top, we still had to walk uphill to the trail that lead to the next city. The trail was really pretty and followed the coastline the whole way. It took us almost 2 hours to reach Vernazza. We ate pesto pizza and went to the water. We took pictures on the rocks and the beach while some people climbed the tower of the little castle. Then we took a train to the last city, Monterosso b/c it was getting late and we were all tired! Once we got there, we skipped rocks into the ocean and I got sand to take back! Then Kay Lee and I made a video of us running into the ocean! It was pretty chilly! Then Katherine, Meiko, Dana, and I stayed and watched the sunset. Then we went back to Riomaggiore and split a bowl of Ravioli from the guy's restaurant across the street from the hostel! It was delicious! Every night we were there, we went to bed at like 10PM b/c we were so tired! We felt like we were in Elementary School again! ha

Most of the group went back on Sat. but Kay Lee and Teal and I stayed one more day. It was overcast on Sat. so we decided to take trains instead of walk the trails in case it rained. We got a round trip ticket to the last city and back and stopped at each one to shop and look around. The cities were so cute and little. Every family had a shop and their boat was in front of their shop and house is right above the shop with laundry hanging out the window! It was so quaint! We met these two old women who were sisters from Arkansas and it was fun just to hear a real twangy accent! When we got back to Riomaggiore, the girls were tired, so they went to the room, but I wanted to explore some more. So, I was looking out at the ocean from the train station and I realized that there was a gate along the edge. So, I walked over to it and followed the trail. When I rounded the corner, I realized that we had missed the most beautiful part of our city we were staying at. I was so glad that I had decided to look around. There was a rock beach and places to hike all along the coast. The rock beach sounded so cool when the water washed up on the rocks and then made its way around the rocks back into the ocean! You could also climb down the rocks on a path to the water! I climbed down and sat on a rock and watched the waves crash against the rocks around me. Apparently there was a cave right behind me that was covered up by the rock I was sitting on b/c I could hear the waves wash up and then crash on the rock wall behind me. It scared me at first! I thought the rock behind me was crashing down, but the water was just so powerful and the hollowness of the hole made it that much louder! It was incredible! Then I started feeling bad that I was down there and the girls were missing something so amazing, so I sprinted back up to our room! Let me tell you that this is not a simple task! I wanted to get them back down there before the sun set and I knew I didn't have much time. First of all, I had to quickly walk back up the trail to the train station and then I had to climb up the hill to the city and then up the 135 steps to our room. Once I got there, they were laying in bed. I tried to tell them quickly through my heavy breathing that we had completely missed the coastline in our city! The other cities were amazing, but we had joked that our city didn't have much. Boy were we wrong. I felt for sure that they would knock me over at the chance to see the sunset on the beach, but they both said they were tired. Kay Lee changed her mind and came and found me on the beach and we went and sat on some rocks and watched the sunset and it was gorgeous! I'm so glad we decided to go!

The next day was probably the most stressful day of my life! Ha! I'll tell the short version since these blogs have turned into novels! We got up early and even got to the train station early, but what we hadn't realized and what no one had told us was that during the night while we were sleeping, the time had changed. It was one hour later than we thought, so we had missed our train! We had to catch another train to a bigger train station that left in 4 minutes! We barely made it(I mean literally, I had to buy and validate the tickets while the others got on the train and I jumped on the train and the door shut behind me!) What we didn't know was that this was just a glimpse of the stress that was about to unfold before us! When we got to La Spezia, the train we wanted was on strike, so we had to wait another hour until our train came. We met 2 girls from Michigan who were on our same flight, so they tagged along with us. Then we had a 2 hour train ride to Genova. Once we got there, we got off and ran into 3 other girls from our group that were on the same flight too! So our group was now up to 9 people! We found out that we had to take a bus to the airport but that they only left from a different train station in town. So, we had to take another train to that train station and it left in 4 minutes again! So, we ran to that train and barely caught it too! Once we got to the train station, we realized that the buses didn't leave for another half hour. We got to the airport at 12:44 and our flight left at 1:20! They close check in 40 minutes before departure and we had missed it by 4 minutes! We were so upset! By that time, we had a girl from Norway tag onto our group so we had 10 people on the same flight all late, so this guy finally said that he would give us a present by letting us on! We literally jumped up and down and screamed and thanked him repeatedly. Once we landed in Stansted, our flight was 45 minutes delayed, so we only had 10 minutes to go through baggage claim and find our bus! We barely made it in time! Surprise surprise! We got to Victoria Coach Station in London and our connecting bus wouldn't take our tickets, so we had to stand in a long line and the lady had to manually print them off! Ha! Then we finally got back to the house about 8:30PM! The whole day felt like Planes, Trains, and Automobiles and Home Alone all in one day! We had all of our luggage and were running everywhere we went all day! Now that I think back on it, I laugh but at the time, it was a nightmare!

An Italian Spring Break!

First of all, I just want to apologize for my inconsistency with this whole blogging thing! I think that they took a few hours out of the day when we got here. I feel like I'm doing homework all the time or planning my next trip! So, needless to say, I am just now getting around to writing about our spring break trip to Rome, Assisi, and Florence. If it's any excuse, I've written about a million papers this week!:D I am also trying to keep a journal so I have to keep up with that too!

Anywho, we left Sat the 17th and flew out of London to Rome! There were 36 of us, so it was CRAZY! We got to Rome in the late afternoon and Janine's cousin, Mike Paden, was at the airport to pick us up and show us around town. He took us to a few churches and on a bus tour of all the big places around Rome. That night, he took us to get gelato which was AMAZING! I think I had it everynight after that! Then we went to Trevi fountain and 2 drunk guys jumped into the fountain (a 400 Euro fine)! They were all decked out in green, white, and orange for St. Patrick's Day! Then we all took turns tossing coins into the fountain. If you threw one in, you would come back some day, for 2 coins, you would fall in love, and for 3 coins, you would marry. So of course, I threw in 3 and hoped that I would fall in love with someone and marry them at the fountain! Ha j/k Then we went to the Lover's Fountain and I drank my fill! All the girls were like camels! haha Then as we were leaving, someone dared Scott Morrison to jump in and he did! It was so great! Then we walked to the Spanish Steps and raced to the top! A little more than I was used to...I had to stop and walk the last 5 steps! It was so tiring. By that time, we were all dead on our feet, so we went back to the hotel and crashed.

The next morning I got up early and went to the market and looked around. It was fun, but I decided to wait to buy stuff in Florence. Then we made our way around town and had to be escorted by security guards across the big streets b/c there was a marathon going on. We went to St. Peter's Cathedral and the Pope was speaking when we got there! That was really neat! Then we went shopping on the bridge where people had blankets laid out with fake Prada purses and Chanel sunglasses. I got a cute colorful purse and bargained down to half price. Then we went shopping at a square and saw some drunk Americans dancing in the streets! It was funny! Then we ate at a pizzeria and took it back to the room and ate and talked and played games in the room!

We went to the Colliseum the next day and it was huge! That was really cool to be standing inside of it! We also went to the Circus Maximus and had our own horse races! Ben and I got last place :( I guess I don't make a very good horse! ha Then we went to the mouth of truth (the one on "Only You")! By that time, it was pouring rain, but we still wanted to enjoy our last day in Rome, so we just walked up and down the river, but it ended up being about 3 hours! Ha By the time we got back to the hotel, we were all soaked and cold from all the rain! But we had fun!

The next day we drove to Assisi and when we got there non of us were prepared for the weather. We had driven up into the mountains of Italy and it was FREEZING! We took a tour of the Basilica of St. Francis and when we came out, it was snowing/sleeting! Most of us just had on light jackets! We walked to the city center and by the time we found a good cafe, we had to thaw out! We got spiniach pizza! Wonderful! Then we shopped around in little shops and took pics of the gorgeous view! Then we headed to Florence! The drive was absolutely breathtaking! We were driving by the Italian Alps covered in snow! WOW! When we got to Florence, we went to our hotel which doubled as a convent! Ha! There were cute old nuns everwhere! Then we went shopping at a market and looked in little shops and walked by the river. Mike took us to get gelato again and he recommended getting the pistacio gelato and I'm so glad I did! It was incredible!

We went to the duomo and to the markets the next day! I got a lot of souveniers for cheap and it was a huge market. One of the markets was covered and was about the size of a city square and the other one was an outside market and was HUGE! In fact, we got lost a couple times! It had to be a couple miles long! Needless to say, it was a money trap! We had such a fun time bargaining! Then we went to Michaelangelo's David and he was huge! For dinner, we had a 5 course meal at a palace! It was great! It was so nice! We all ate soooo much!

Thursday we got up and walked around the shops and market areas and then went to the train station and hopped the train to Pisa. Once we got to Pisa, we had to switch trains, but everything was in Italian, so it took us an hour to figure out what train we were supposed to be on and to actually get on the right one. We got to La Spezia and had to switch again to Riomaggiore. We were so tired and mad at Trenitalia(the train station), but as soon as we stepped off the train in Riomaggiore, we were in AWE!

"Another winter day has come and gone away in even Paris..."

As soon as we stepped out of the metro on Thursday night, we could see the Eiffel Tower all lit up! The next morning, we saw it 3 times! ha! Once when we first set out on our adventure for the day, once when we took the lift to the top (AMAZING), and once up close when it was all lit up at night! After we saw it the first time, we walked down the road to the Arc de Triomphe and then took the metro to Moulin Rouge. After that, we saw Notre Dame and then stopped for lunch. My parents gave us directions to a cheap alleyway for food and souveniers and I'm so glad they did. We shopped in the little shops and ate lunch and then came back for dinner! It was cheap and good (which is often hard to find)! We then went back to the Eiffel Tower and went to the top! It was really neat to be there! We wanted to see the fashion area of Paris, but only stayed for 5 minutes since we knew we couldn't afford anything. We then shopped at little shops by the Louvre and then got into the Louvre for FREE! They had a special deal where you could get in free on Fri. nights if you were under 26! We looked around for a couple hours and saw the Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, Athena Nike, the Marly Horses, the Raft of Medussa, and so much more! It was huge! We decided that we couldn't go to Paris and not see both the Eiffel Tower and Moulin Rouge at night, so we did! I'm so we did, b/c it was so neat! The next morning, we went to Versaille and this was definitely worth a trip. We took a tour around the Palace and it was SPECTACULAR! It was massive and each room was GORGEOUS! We saw the king's bed and the queen's bed (where 19 heirs to the throne were born in front of the public as proof that they were legitimate heirs!) I don't think I would be up for a public viewing of a birth! haha Anyways, before we left, we watched Marie Antoinette about the French monarchy that lived at the palace, so it was really neat to see it in real life! The gardens were AMAZING and were so big! We took the metro back into town and then stopped at St. Michael's before heading to the airport. I'm so glad we did, because as soon as we stepped out of the metro, there was a huge rainbow over Notre Dame! It was so PRETTY! I also found a really cute scarf too! We flew out last night and then slept in today! It was so unreal to actually be in Paris, France! Well, I'm about to start on the massive load of homework that I should be doing right now! Ha! OH, btw, the pic of us making sad faces is b/c we didn't want to leave! :(