We're Baaaa-aaack.

From Ireland

Hi all. Yes, we never posted pics but I still have the intention of doing it...one day. So we've decided to try to keep this blog for any traveling that we decide to do in the future. If not so much for you all to read but for us to remember all the things that we've experienced.

We've been home for about a year and a month now. When we first arrived home it was surreal. It was just so different from what we had experienced for almost 6 months. Before we were able to just wake up and decided what we wanted to do...what would make us the happiest that day. And yes, we should all try to live our lives that way everyday but pesky things like work can prevent that from time to time. So needless to say, the travel bug bit us again and much quicker than I thought it would.

Italy has long been on our to do list. In fact it was originally going to be where we went on our honeymoon but cheaper Costa Rica won out. Then on our last trip, once again, we needed to stretch our dollar as far as it could go, so Italy was out. The third opportunity arose for us to go and we had to say yes. This opportunity showed up in the form of Uncle Don and Aunt Aurora going again. Having been there already and having made connections with the Galassi's that still live in Italy, we had to be there at the same time. The potential for fun, craziness and familial connections was too great to say no to. We had to be there when they were there, so we made it happen.

Though we always wanted to do Italy in a month, we'll have to settle for just about 2 weeks. I know, I'm not complaining. Here's what we know so far:

July 3...leave Cali and fly to Milan via Frankfurt. Take shuttle and train to Reggio Emilia (I'll learn to spell it correctly soon enough). Meet up with Don, Aurora, Cara and Maren and meet the fam..hang for a few days. Do a two night jaunt to Venice, come back to Reggio for a few days and then on to the Northwest to Piedmonte...wine and food. We have one appointment at Renato Ratti in Barolo on July 14th. Other than that nothing is set in stone...just the way we like to roll. We will be camping in Piedmonte, so hopefully it will be drier than our past world camping adventures. If not we're bringing a (much smaller)tent with a real rainfly (lesson learned) so we don't have to create one out of a blue tarp and feel like we're inside a plastic bag that's trapped in a sauna. We want to save our money for food and wine, plus European campsites are so much nicer than the ones here. Full kitchens, hot showers, flushing toilets, running water, bars and restaurants on site. We will be back in Milan on the 18th and will fly home on the 19th.

O.K. I've rambled enough and as you can tell by the writing style this is Heather writing and not Chris. I'll try to get him on the machine again because he's much more entertaining to read. Which brings me back to this blog. We would like to keep it up, but there's no guarantee. We are not bringing a phone or computer and may not have the time to look for or hang out in internet cafes. We shall see what happens. Hopefully this is not the one and only post about Italy....lame. And we'll try to post more pics along the way this time....or at least very shortly after we get home.

Everyone have a great 4th of July!!

Ireland

From Ireland

We were excited to finally go to a country where the locals spoke the same language as us. Well our hopes were fruitless. In Ireland they speak something that resembles english, but is very hard for us to understand. It took us a few days to figure out what "feck" meant. You may think that Ireland is the land of lepracauns, football brawls, drunks, and all this with an average of 3 days of sun per year. If this is how you envision Ireland then you are completely correct.

Ireland has green pastures, big cities and tons and tons of beer. Not only do they have beer, they have serious beer drinkers. This is no pastime, this is real business to the average pub local. There are distinct rules of engagement that have to be followed when at a pub. Especially when rounds of drinks are being purchased. When in a local pub you must always be careful about talking about politics, religeon, and especially football (aka soccer). If you make a wrong comment you may find yourself on the recieving end of beating. I think we may have been close to some bloodshead on the night of the European cup championships. It was great watching the big game in a real Irish pub. We even spent a couple evenings enjoying drinks and food at a pub that was started in 1198. Quite and old establishment.

Jason, Heather and I had a great time in Ireland. The highlights were visiting St. Patricks Cathedral, the Guiness factory, drinking guiness for breakfast, drinking guiness for lunch, and drinking guiness for dinner. We took a day trip out to the countryside to visit some anchient pagan burial/ ritual sights. This included going inside of a 5,000 year old house that was built of stone and is still standing. The three of us really enjoyed the Irish countryside and the chance to see the tiny villages and green hills.

Other then not understanding the local language, and waking up and smelling like the village drunk every morning we all really enjoyed Ireland. Unfortunately Ireland was the last stop on our round the world trip and with a heavy heart we boareded a plane and flew home. We are still in a state of jetlag and will post a final blog posting in a few days.

Photos

Some of you have been requesting more photos to be posted with our blogs. This will happen but probably not until after we get home....which is in just a few days. I will try to make albums of each group of pics that go with each blog and post them where they belong. So patience my friends, patience and you will be able to see our ugly mugs in all these places we've been soon enough.

Thanks for keeping up with us and following our all too short journey. We'll be home on Saturday. Pretty crazy it's all coming to an end.

Miss you all and see you soon!!!....oh and we will be adding stories from Dublin soon.


Update July 2015:  Here are some working links.  Blogger and Picasa has changed quite a bit since we wrote this.

Jordan

Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Poland...

Poland

CzechRepublic

Netherlands

Ireland

More Hungary

And now that I just did that I see some of the links in previous posts do work.  Oh well.  Sorry for the double pictures post.

Amsterdam

From Netherlands

From Netherlands

Amsterdam,

Wow what a great city full of fun things and beautiful scenery. We were very fortunate to have a freind available to give us a nice place to stay and show us around (thanks Sabine) We got to Amsterdam one day before Jason did so we got used some of our time and went to visit the Anne Frank house. I had been there before, but it still was a moving experience. It brought both Heather and I to tears. Our friend Sabine is half Jewish and some of her family was deported to Auschwitz with Anne Frank. When at the museum you could see their names listed below the Frank family. It added an additional personal connection to the entire holocaust history for us.

After the Ann Frank house we met Jason at Dam square in central Amsterdam at a cafe. It was nice to see a familiar face from home after 6 months on the road. We relaxed at the cafe for a while in traditional European fasion drinking beer and coffee before heading off to Sabines house to drop off Jasons stuff.

Jason had a direct flight from SFO to Amsterdam and had been traveling for around 9 hours, but it was only noon in Amsterdam so he had to push on through the rest of the day in order to adjust to the time change. He did good, we managed to drag him around town visiting the red light district and coffee shop area. This is the main tourist area in Amsterdam. We went to dinner at a local Tapas place and Jason held tough all the way to midninght before going to bed.

The next morning we headed off for the Van Gough museum. It was a rainy day and so we really took our time in the museum. We spend over 4 hours wandering around the various artworks and exhibits. I have no artistic ability whatsoever and it is truely amazing to me to see so much natural ability spread out on the various canvases. We spend the remainded of the day wandering Amsterdam just explorling the beautiful city with the wonderful canals, at the same time trying to dodge the endless groups of bicyclist as they pedal around the city.

On Sunday Sabine spent the day with us and was able to take us around the city and show us some neat stuff from a locals point of view. We did go on the hop on hop off canal ferry tour which meanders around the various city canals and is a easy way to see a large part of the city from the water. This was a really neat experience. Afterwards we went to a local cafe that served some of the best apple pie any of us have ever had. In the evening Sabine drove us out to a local beach that had a hippie sort of resteraut/ cafe that has live music every sunday evening. It was a jam session and the musicians were very impressive. At least they were impressive to me since i have no musical talent at all.

Monday Sabine took us to a local market that sold antiques clothes etc. Heather could have spent quite a bit of time and money at this place. We then drove to the local small town of Utrecht where there is an impressive cathedral and quant streets and of course canals. On the drive out to Utrecht we saw so many beautiful Dutch houses and farms. The Dutch really do have a wonderful way of life.

Our time in Holland was way too short and it really was one of the highlights of our trip. I think anywhere you go is better with the help of a local. It was also nice to travel with Jason. It added a different energy to our travels. Holland is deffinately on our list of countries we would like to revisit someday.

Czech Republic

From Czech Republic

We said fairwell to Poland and took a night train to Prague. We ended up having a full compartment so it was very cozy. Its difficult to fit 6 grown adults and all their baggage in a train cabin. It was a very tight squeeze and we are thankfull that it was our last night train experience. We arrived in Prague, took the metro to our hostel which was situated outside of the city center in a more residential type neighborhood. It was early in the morning so we left our baggage at the hostel until our room was ready and we headed out on the town.

I had been to Prague 4 years ago so I could somewhat help get us around town. We had a typical European breakfast and capiccino in the central square overlooking the famous clock tower. We checked out the old town and walked around getting a feel for the city before heading back to our hostel to relax for a while.

On day 2 we woke up early went to charles bridge, the castle on the hill and the church. One of the attractions of the church is to climb the 260 steps of the spiral staircase to the top of the belltower. The climb was arduous, but the view was worth it. Prague is an amazing town and has so much charachter and history. We ate our normal lunch in the park consisting of cheese, meat, baguette and a bottle of wine. We never really indulged in the Czech cuisine since it is more or less the same as Slovakia and Hungary.

On our 3rd day in Prague we took a day trip to the town of Kunta Hora. Here they have another very impressive church that rivals the one in Prague. They also have the bone church. It is a very strange place where the bodies of 40,000 people were burried durring the great plague. A couple hundred years ago the bodies were unearthed and the bones were arranged into strange ornaments in the church. their is a royal coat of arms made of bones, light fixtures, etc. A very odd place. We also go to see a slice of rural Czech replublic while in Kunta Hora and I even bought myself a beautiful Gnome as a momento of our time in the Czech Republic.

Our last day in Prague we went and visited the local jewish part of town. There are a number of very old Synagogues and a very old Jewish cemetary that dates to the 1400's. We also visited the Synagogue where the Golam was supposedly burried.

Zacopane

From Poland

So we're a bit behind in blogging but we'll try to catch up. We have already gone through Prague and are currently in Amsterdam with Jason!!! But lets start from where we left off, shall we?

After our intense time in Krakow we needed an energy booster and they way to do that for us is head for the mountains. We headed to the snowy peaks of Zacopane, which is just 100km away from Krakow. It's actually a part of the Tatra mountain range. We took an easy and scenic bus ride and landed in the town center. We had no accomodation booked and thought we'd just head to a couple of hostels we heard about and check them out. As soon as we got off the bus there were two different people offering a Pokoje, or room. Now in the States you'd be very weary of taking up this offer thinking you might end up in their torture chamber in thier basement but in Europe it's much more common. After having a complete conversation in no common language with a local lady, we were wisked away in a car and off to our room. It was heavenly!!! Our own room, our own space...not a dorm!!! It was a cute little room at the top of their attic, so the ceiling was low and slanted in some area but so cozy.

We immediately headed for the hill, literally. We went straight to the gondola that takes you to the top of the mountian. It's very much like the ones at Squaw Valley. We had to stand in line for a bit with a mix of tourists and skiers. I think that this place is a very popular vacation town for the Polish because we heard no English being spoken and really not many signs in English. That just makes everything more interesting.

As with many of our sights the ride up was just truely amazing. So beautiful. It was exactly what we needed to give us this burst of energy for this last bit of our journey. As we went further up, and with one gondola change, the scenery changed from green pine trees to snowy cliffs. It was so wonderful and different from anything we've seen lately.

We got off and hiked in the snow, with our regular shoes so I should say slid around to the top of the peak. There you could stand with half of your body in Poland and half of your body in Slovakia. Can't say I've ever been in two countries at the same time. We stayed outside as long as we could. It was sooooo cold and we began to turn pink. We looked like a couple of balls of cotton candy. The grins on our faces couldn't be wider.

We headed back down the mountain and enjoyed the rest of our time there just bumping around town.

I must go. We are headed out for our canal tour in Amsterdam. We'll be back to update you some more. Hopefully soon.

Auschwitz

From Poland

We visited Auschwitz in southern Poland a few days ago. We didnt realize that Auschwitz is actually made up of 3 different camps. The original Auschwitz was a small military baracks that was converted into a prison and torture camp in 1939. Once the Nazi's decided they were going to exterminate people in mass they needed a larger camp. This is when they built Burchenau AKA Auschwitz 2. We started the tour by visiting the original camp that is completely intact as it was 60 years ago. It is fairly small and was mainly used for political prisoners, prisoners of war and a few Jews. Over the entry to the camp is the words in German "work will set you free" A very misleading saying.

We spent a few hours at the first camp and then we took the free shuttle bus the 3 Kilometers to Auschwitz 2. As you drive towards the camp the huge fenced off area comes into view. It is amazing how large it is. Almost 500 acres of torture, terror, and death. Many of the wooden buildings have deteriorated over time and all that remains are the brick chimneys. This just adds to eerieness of the place.

We were let off in front of the famous brick entry know as the gate of death. Through this gate the train cars rolled into the compound to the unloading dock. The Jewish passangers were then unloaded and seperated into 2 groups by the Nazi SS guards. Those that were to live and become slave laborers were stripped of their clothing shaved bald deloused and given striped uniforms. Those that were destined to die were taken straight to the gas chambers. Approximately 75 percent of the people that arrived were taken right to the gas chambers.

The place is absolutely horrible. I cant image a worst place on the planet. Up to 2 million people were murdered at this small part of the world. I had chills running up my spine on numerous occasions. We walked up to gas chambers 4 and 5 and stood in the trees where people had to wait to be led into their death. In any other part of the world it would be a beutiful spot, but knowing the horrors that took place here. It is so unreal.

About 30 or so of the original barracks surrived and are open to walk through. Some of them still have their original bunks in them. Up to 1000 people were shoved into each one. The horror of it is too hard to express with words. I stood looking out one of the windows thinking about all the people 60 years ago who stood right where I was standing, looking out this window upon all the horror and wishing it was just a bad halucination. But it wasnt, it was reality for them. It is very unlikely that any of the prisoners looking out that window surrvived. Absolutely terrible.