Day 16

Our hotel has a bedeaux...which is scary. But easily made up for by the balcony, computer, air conditioning and television. Not the room we requested but apparently they were overbooked! We actually may not leave this room. We had a little change of plans and ended up in Rome. We took a ferry all night from Split to Ancona and then a train the next morning to Rome. We have only been here for a few hours but we have seen some amazing stuff. The center of the city is just full of ruins and parts of buildings that date back to hundreds of years BC and they are illuminated at night making them that much more erie to see. We also just ate a ton of pasta. The Atkins diet is not going strong anywhere in Europe that I have seen. Although some guy from the UK told me that it is pretty big there. Furthermore, I now longer believe that any native Italians celebrate weddings, anniversaries and nationalization at the Olive Garden. You have to admit the commercials are convincing...
We are going to the Vatican in the morning. The Pope is giving an audience and we are going to try and get in; disguised as Catholics ofcourse. Maybe my vast breadth of knowledge relating to all things Catholic will finally come in handy! Thank you School Sisters of Notre Dame.
In other news: Mike is continually questioning what parts of Angels and Demons is true. If he tries to get me under the city in the sewer system looking for the Popes secret tunnel I may have to draw the line on the dark underground places.

Day 13?

We are in beautiful Dubrovuik! It is unbelievable here. It is a Croatian town on a peninsula. The old town has a huge wall around it like a castle. The water is sooo blue and you can even see your feet! The real story is our trip here... To begin with we were up for 40 hours and 24 of them were spent traveling (once we got here it was so amazing that we had to go explore). We took a train from Budapest. When we asked the ticket person how long the trip was she said 7. Well, since we were leaving at 3 we thought we would be in Split (Croatia) by 10 that night. What we later understood was that she meant 7 in the morning! That is right, 16 hours. O.K. no big deal right, just sleep. Well, since the train was so crowded and there was so much confusion regarding seats, we ended up having to stand for the first 3 hours. Mind you it is about 90 degrees and there is no A/C (apparently in all of Europe) and certainly not on trains. Once we finally got seats we had to be in different cabins. Everyone was very nice and that was fine. The main problem was that you had to sit 4 across facing another 4 in each cabin with no arm rests so basically we had to sit up the entire trip. The train was so dirty that Mikes (there are no apostrophes on this computer) white shirt was brown! Honestly. But, it was totally worth it once we got here. I cant wait for everyone to see the pictures. The towns are breathtaking. We reanted a car in Split because it was 4 or 5 hours and we could not stand the idea of being on more public transportation that day. Plus we heard it was a great way to see the country. Driving from Split we just followed the rocky coast and went through about 20 little beach towns.
We sat on the beach all day yesterday. And we were going to take a boat trip to an island today but there was a storm last night so all of the trips are postponed. Guess we will just have to sit on the beach again. Darn. The place that we are staying is in a private home. Lots of people rent out rooms in their homes which is the cheapest option. We ended up finding this great room. We have our own bathroom and we share a kitchen, dining room and balcony with another couple. The house it up on a cliff so the view of the ocean from the balcony is great. Well, we have to figure out how to get to Venice now (we are trying to take a ferry). See you all soon.

What Mike saw....

He didn't see anything. But, I will say that there COULD HAVE been any number of scary creatures to see.

Day 9

We are in Budapest right now. We left Vienna two days ago and took the train here. I feel like I am at fat camp because we have been walking so freaking much. Honestly, like 8 - 10 hours a day of mostly walking or standing. Still, very fun. We went to the Statute Park today which is just outside of Budapest and is home to 30 some odd statutes relating to the communist era that were preserved in this park. We also went to the Buda castle area. Amazing. Underneath the city they have a labyrinth of caves. We walked through some of them today and I think we will go caving in some others tomorrow. I again wet myself a little because it was really dark down there. Good thing I brought tons of underwear...
We have hit up pretty much every major church/cathedral so far....They are all amazing and we have some great pics to prove it. How wants to be the lucky people to sit through the mass of pictures we have taken? OK, so I took most of them against Mike's will. He may kill me if I take another picture of a random statute. We have also climbed some major church towers. St. Nicholas in Prague was the scariest (and hottest and smallest too) but it had the most spectacular view.
We miss and love you guys, see you soon....

Days 3

Prague is amazing. The first day we were here by noon and went exploring the city i.e. we got lost for awhile. The second day we took a day trip to Terezin which was a jewish ghetto and a concentration camp of sorts. It was a deportation center for other larger camps. It was really evocative. Mike made me follow this undergroud tunnel that was where they lead prisioners before execution in the time before WWII because it was originally a prision. I did not want to go down there AT ALL. It was maybe 6 foot high and very narrow. Did I mention dark. It took about 10 minutes to walk through and we had no idea when, where or if it was going to end. Then Mike °°°saw something° and I wet myself a litttle. We also stopped at another town, Litomerice.
Today we went to Prague Castle and a few other places. Have to go now hope everyone is well.

Introduction

This is my attempt at making some record of our trip. I hope it ends up being interesting. If not....