things we'll never forget.....or figure out.

(some of this will not make sense to everybody....some of this does not make sense to us and we will spend the rest of our lives trying to figure out exactly why we wrote it down to remember. thank you wine.)

dublin: horrible jet lag and going to the movies just so we could sleep, hot accents, sexy men, cougars, counting cougars, quay bar, beer, deciding that you can't possibly have anymore beer, larder cafe, amazing cappuccinos, fish & chips, guiness is good!, malt vinegar, polite children, "i thought you didn't know how to spell?....'i can spell bitch though!'...", "what the hell is brown sauce?....I LOVE BROWN SAUCE!".

london: again, hot accents. "i'd like to get to know you better, meet me here in 15 minutes and i will take you on the bus". more beer, MIND THE GAP, the tube, ace hotel, 12 year olds knowing more about american politics then we do. LONDON BABY!, the tate, francis bacon, aussies EVERYWHERE, italian food....the only good food in london.

barcelona: "staying in the same, staying in the same, staying in the same....", "SEX?!?! NO!", gaudi gaudi gaudi, "i hate facebook....but can i have your facebook", paella, 7 euro diet cokes, cheap beer because we are girls, the mediterranean sea, plaza del dol, thank god for picture signs!, como what?, "where the hell is the brown sauce!", "i dont even like olives", jesus christ = haysoos creesto

madrid: 6 french boys, 1 aussie, 1 brazillian and 2 americans. "MY AMERICAN FRIENDS!", "excuse me!?! water is boring.....senoras?....french girls?....", "dude did you just pee off the balcony?!?!.....I JUST PEED OF THE BALCONY!", vicky christina barcelona....wait what are they saying!, new found admiration for picasso, PHONES DO NOT EXIST, salami!!!, irish pubs, pitchers of sangria, "i found the brown sauce!".

paris: "ooooh i like american girls, i'd like to get to know you better", the louvre, mona lisa, OOPS!, eiffel tower, what?!?! you can take pictures in the louvre?, MOM PICTURES!, wine, cheese, creme brulee, eiffel tower has seizures every hour, scarves, rain, chocolate, croissants, chocolate croissants, richard and his keyboard ties, more aussies, italian food, starbucks in the louvre....weird, french guys on bikes giving me picasso postcards with their email, "cream on my pizza!", "looks like we're drinking wine tonight!", "commentating?!?!....GOOD ENGLISH!.

lyon: our own room!!!. 10 hour train ride to venice?!?!, "puppets?!?! whats with all the creepy puppets!", "why is everything here miniature? MINIATURE MUSEUM!!?!?!". "I SAID 5 O'CLOCK, NOT 5 MINUTES!".

venice: "yeah the market is about 3 bridges away", egg spoons, pizza, guys making fun of dumb americans. "Beer? Food? Beer Food? No food... Beer? You want food? Yes Beer food!". So many americans. "Allison! when you go to the bathroom PLEASE bring your camera". "we are lost AGAIN". tortellini, gelato, rigatoni, lemoncello, ravioli, calzones the size of your face, pizza and cookies :)

florence: "i am too drunk to function". "alexis, you've become dumb, i'm not kidding". one more day!. "more wine, blanc!". "ugh, its rose water". "and i might show you my boob, for 30 euro". "i think i might pee my pants!". Allison: "I just said that." Alexis: "Oh."

lucca: man down!. "my ankle is the size of my face". more wine please. giant walls. puppies. old men & young women. alexis trying gnoochi for the first time = obsession. fastest trip to pisa and back. "ciao bella...." "oh god, lets go!". "i just body slammed some old lady!".

rome: "Allison it looks like someone took a baseball bat to your leg". "how many plastic bags can you possibly have!?!". "i just put deodarant on to go to sleep, THATS how bad i smell".

"paste ass? do you see that the menu says paste ass?!?! excuse me, could i get some paste ass with my coffee! thanks!". damn good coffee! DEVIL CHILD! ROLLY BAGS! superhero blanket. "they forgot one thing on the menu....me covered in chocolate sauce". 16 continuous pictures! "ciao! ciao!?!?! Allison RUN!". free champagne. free lemoncello. free bottles on wine! 3 point one 4. vagina!

sorrento/capri: "its like an old people convention!". william on the scooter, 3 times!. 200+ stairs. 11 euro deodarant! "the toilet has a vagina baday (sp?).....i think". "effing flies!!!".

a few things we learned while being in europe:

1. ireland and italy have the best coffee ever

2. you have to pay to use the bathrooms....ugh.

3. it pays to be a girl :)

4. public transportation is 50 times better than the US systems

5. validate your train ticket BEFORE you get on the train or the ticket taker will make you feel and look like an a**hole.

6. no reservation fees for the local trains, but they take 7 hours longer.

7. they won't tell you what gate you have to be at at the airport till 10 minutes before your flight takes off....run like hell.

8. 26 year olds are not made for bunk beds.

9. you have to pay before you order.

10. post offices are organized, make sense and pleasant.

11. watch the locals to figure out how to open the metro doors....or you'll make a fool of yourself.

12. in some places it will take you about 10 minutes to figure out how to open the bathroom door.

13. eurorail passes are pointless.

this was the most amazing trip ever and we would go back in a heartbeat. it changed our lives for the better and even though we're both broke and have some serious debt....it was all worth it!!!

we're working on our pictures...its going to take a LONG time to get them all done. stay tuned....:)

xoxoxox

allison

I got my tooth fixed!!! and we are both back at work, working hard to pay off our debt

rome, sorrento and capri

last night in rome........
we went shopping, then we went to a bar, and as we were walking home by the colosseum we wound up IN a protest...what they were protesting we have no idea, but somehow we became part of it. 
capri
capri
capri
capri
capri
good advice
capri
capri
arriving in capri
sorrento
more wine...more wine i say!
vatican
st.peter's
inside the vatican
inside the vatican on the way to sistine chapel
inside the colosseum
first night in rome.....first time we actually enjoyed drinking red wine
rome
rome
our view from dinner.
first day in rome...made it to see the colosseum right before sunset

pictures from florence, lucca and pisa

leaning tower....there are better pictures but not from the little tiny camera i used.
there's a wall that surrounds lucca from way back when, i cant remember all the details, but this is from the top of the wall.
FINALLY NO BUNK BEDS!!! lucca.
view from our room in lucca. <3 tuscany
on the ponte vecchico (sp?) in florence.
the duomo in florence.

last week in italy....

oops. sorry about not updating...but here it goes1

we took a train from lucca to florence and then from florence hoped on another train to rome. we had decided that for our last week in italy we just wanted to stay put. this is mainly due to the fact that we were exhausted and basically needed a vacation from our vacation. so with that said, rome it was.

we got to rome and immediately headed to the colosseum (sorry if i continuously incorrectly spell that, its a bad habit). we got there just before sunset so we had to to explore the area around it and see some of the roman forum from afar. after sunset we found this cute little place right across from the colosseum and had huge glasses of wine and pasta...what more could you ask for on your first night in rome! 

the next few days we saw the colosseum (went inside, AMAZING!), ridiculous amount of museums and ruins, the roman forum, trevi fountain, spainsh steps, went to the vatican, saw st. peter's, losts of priests and nuns, the sistine chapel.....i know im missing some things, but you get the point. there's so much to see there and never enough time!

on thursday we decided to head down to sorrento to see some of southern italy and i was going to spread a loved ones ashes off the amalfi coast. we wound up taking the ridiculously slow train from rome to naples so it took almost 3 hours to get to naples, its only supposed to take half that time. ugh. so once we got to naples we jumped on another hour long train to sorrento. i think we finally got there around 4pm and since we had only planned a day trip, we had no time to hang out in sorrento. so we just wandered around and got down to the water just in the enough time for the sun to be going down and for me not to be able to spread the ashes. soooooo

we hiked back up the 200 stairs we went down, decided to have a beer and relax before journeying back to rome. while sitting there and feeling the beer i suggested not going back to rome and alexis 100% agreed, so we got a room in sorrento, bought some toothpaste and toothbrushes and enjoyed our night there. the next day we decided to go to  capri. thank god we did, its worth the money and probably the most beautiful place i ever have been. i was able to spread the ashes there, which was the absolutely perfect place to and then we spent the day in the sun, soaking up the views and relaxing....well mostly sweating...but still :)

after capri, we took the ferry back to sorrento, took the train back to naples, took another train back to rome (this time the fast train!) and passed out at our hostel with only 2 days left on the adventure.

the weekend in rome turned into more of a shopping and wine. ah, love the wine! we bought extra suitcases because we had shopped a little too much. oops :) oh well....

so we ate delicious food and drank wine saturday and sunday, took as many pictures as we could, splurged on a hotel room the last night there and got on a plane yesterday morning back to the us.

alexis is in virginia now and i am in chicago, then im heading to jersey for a few days before we both return back to sf this weekend.

ill post some pictures now and when we're both together again, we'll write some more thoughts on our entire trip. thanks to everyone for checking this out while we were gone and for all the advice!

kisses and hugs to everyone!

oh and alexis's tooth is still in tack and my ankle is slowly healing. it still kind of looks like some took a baseball bat to it. good times!

almost forgot!

besides me having an ankle the size of my face....alexis chipped/shifted/broke one of her new front teeth. eeeeek.
we're not sure whats happening to us but its been a very tramatic couple of days!

man down!

so where to begin. i guess i should explain the title. yesterday after a lovely day walking around exlploring and enjoying lucca, my ankle gave out (its known to do that) and well now its twisted/sprained whatever you'd like to call it. its rough and its huge...about the size of my head. good times. one week left and im out! ugh. so now im hobbling around and luckily alexis had an ace bandage but seriously, my foot barely fits in my shoe. so today when we went to pisa to see the leaning tower and the town, i moved like a slug. booooo. AND i couldn't go to the top of the tower because it has 300 plus steps and well theres just no way! so im bummed about that but all in all we still had fun and it was beautiful.
besides the tower and the duomo there pisa is very boring and dull. was very suprised to find it that way, but oh well, time to move on. now we are back in lucca till tomorrow morning then back to florence to catch a train to rome for our last week in europe!

lucca and tuscany in general are breathtaking. we are trying to figure out how to live here. we're thinking bed and breakfast...some of the tourists pay an arm and a leg for rooms that are the size of shoe boxes here, so we figure we'll make a decent amount owning and running one. haha. we can dream!

anyways thats all for now, internet is still really expensive so i gotta stop rambling.

kisses and hugs to all our families!

xoxox

updates...

hello hello everybody...

yes it has been awhile but can i just tell you how EXPENSE the internet cafes are in italy...ugh. so yes, thats why yesterday there were no captions added to the pictures and why today im typing like crazy to get the words out as quick as possible.

okay lets start.

lyon was goreous, absolutely gorgeous. we woke up at 4:30 in the morning on sunday to travel 12 hours to venice. ugh. the night before we had realized that the guy at the train station had booked us going to venice through geneve..which as you all know is in switzerland. switzerland is not one of our countries on the eurorail. PROBLEM. so we got to the train station earlier than we normally would to try to get some advice and see if we were okay...basically we didnt want to get kicked off the train in the middle of nowhere. so after we finally found a person that spoke english we were told the first part of our journey was not valid and we had to pay. ugh. so after it was all fixed we headed to switzerland. BEAUTIFUL. it was completely worth having to pay for that part of the ticket. the scenery and the swiss alps! now i know where i'm going next time theres a europe trip! so we finally arrived in venice at around 6 pm on sunday and the place was swarming with americans. SWARMING. we got our room and had fantastic calzones the size of our heads...delicious and then passed out.

when the water in the canals in venice is calm, it looks like glass. its so pretty. i believe we read that there were 117 bridges in venice. i believe it up. up and down, up and down all day. AND the streets, or shall we call them alleys, walkways...whatever yóu'd like to refer to them as....wow we got lost A LOT. but thats what it was all about, wandering through the alleys and canals of venice. we had some lemoncello (STRONG!) and yummy pasta....pizza....gelato....yes we are in italy...delicious food!

on wednesday afternoon we boarded a train for our 2 and a half hour journey to florence. anything is better than 12 hours! oh and to add, we've been able to travel first class on the trains, SO NICE. the seats are huge, free drinks and snacks. yes!

today we have been exploring florence. its warm and on the verge of rainy so we don't have to deal with the hot sun all day. the hostel we are staying it is adorable. MOM, our room is the same color as our old puerto rican dining room at the canterbury house! its awesome!
the guy who runs the hostel is adorable, he gave us his number in case we needed anything from him at all, "do not hesitate to call me at any hour". haha.
we woke up and went to have coffee and got haggled by some gypsies....they are everywhere!
went an explored piazza duomo then wandered over to galleria dell accademia where we saw the david. we only had to wait in line about 20 minutes which was really nice. the david was breathtaking, far better than i had expected and huge! no pictures, of course...sorry.

so we've got some more to see and more to research so im going to say bye for now... hope this update was good for you all!

tomorrow we are off to lucca for a few days, and in there we are going to pisa!

kisses to everyone :)

today

off to florence today!

:)

venice pictures!!!

this is a toilet, about a foot off the ground...kid you not. not fun.

lyon pictures

paris pictures....finally!

no time for captions, sorry!!