europe trip

5/8/05

2005-05-13T20:21:00.000-07:00

(caleb)
Today we had a little last minute shopping to do and we wanted to take in the sights of Amsterdam and Europe in general for our last day in our trip.
We both agree that a trip before the wedding(especally one that tests your ability to communicate and make decisions together) was the best way to go for us and would recommend it to anyone considering a long term relationship.
This has been one long adventure full of mishaps and good times. We learned that no matter what we are always going to be with each other and we will always love each other. I think that this trip has definatly made our relationship stronger and we cannot imagine life without each other. We are so glad that we got to share it with everyone that we met on the trip and with the people that we love. Thank you to everyone who supported us and communicated with us. We both agree that we would take this trip again in a second.

5/7/05

2005-05-13T20:09:00.000-07:00

We had one last travel day on our Eurail Pass so we decided to make a couple day trips. We stopped off first in the quaint town of Delft. Delft also has many canals like Amsterdam, but was less scary junkies and coffeeshops. We came to Delft primarily to check out their well know Saturday Flea market. We just sort of happened upon it while walking through town. So lucky we are! We found some cool stuff.
(caleb)
We hopped back on the train and went to Utrecht. We walked to the tourist office but it was closed. But we took lots of nice pictures. Its a nice place, but everyone still drives those bikes from the 50's so there must be a lot of thevery.
(Angie)
To get out of the train station you had to walk throug one of the largest shopping malls I have seen in Europe, all of the shops were closing though. Everything everywhere was just closing when we got to Utrecht, so we just walked around. It looks almost like Delft. Cobblestone streets, lots of brick buildings and churches and tours. Tulips are in bloom so they are on sale everywhere. Close to 7PM we got a train back to Amsterdam. We took the tram to Dam square. Upon our return to Amsterdam we stopped by Albert Heijn, our favorite Dutch market, to get breakfast for tomorrow. When we checked out the cashier shorted us change back by more than 5 euro! However, we didnt realize this until we got outside. So we had to go back inside and talk to get the cashier and then to his manager. The security officer had to watch the cecurity tape to see if the cashier actually shorted us. Well it turned out the tape backed up our story and they gave us the difference that they shorted us. Such great excitement! hehe
Our tent is snuggly warm. It has been nice and cool here in Holland.

5/6/05

2005-05-13T20:01:00.000-07:00

(caleb)
Today we left France. But before we left we decided to go to the doctor because Angie had somthing strange looking on her tongue. THe prognosis was that it was a fungus so we got some Antibiotics for it so hopefully it will clear up.
(angie)
It was very sad to say goodbye to our great friend Carine. She was such a gracious and generous host and we will miss her and her awesome friends SO MUCH! Caleb and I were just saying how Paris seemed like home for only a little over a week. We took a Thalys train from Paris->Brussels and then Intercity trains to Amsterdam. We have been to visit Amsterdam a few tiems on our trip here. It is familiar to us now. We know how to use the transportation system and where to stay. We are camping for the rest of our trip which we are excited to get back to actually. We set up our tent in the only field we hadnt camped in at zeeburg. Nice location. We just relaxed and hung out at our campsite because the weather was warmish and sunny. Lots of campers here this time and everyone was hanging out at their site. Cool atmosphere.

5/5/05

2005-05-13T19:56:00.000-07:00

(caleb)
Today we visited Carine's brother Benoit, sister-in-law Sophie, and neice Altar. We packed most of our gear then we had brunch at there apartment. The place was decorated with objects from Mongolia. From there we went to an icecream shop that was close to Notredam. The line was 15 minutes long for the "best icecream in Paris". Angie had the Chocolate and Carmel, and I ate the Fig and Ruhbarb. We soaked up what was left of the sun and then went for milkshakes. We then went to a cafe called no stress. The food was nice and so was the Atmosphere. We walked to the Mulan Rouge and then to the cafe where Amile from Motmare was filmed. It seems like they changed it a little for the movie.

5/4/05

2005-05-13T19:52:00.000-07:00

(caleb)
Finally, the Lourve! It was a marathon museum day, we spent over 6 hours in the museum but we saw the WHOLE THING! We hardly took any breaks and we were moving through pretty fast. Its funny how when you look at that much art that at the end of the day your brain feels like mush. But there were many wonderful things to see. Even though the building has been remodeled many times over the centureis, you still get a deep sence of history just from being there.

5/3/05

2005-05-13T19:51:00.000-07:00

(caleb)
We took the day off today. We were plannin on seeing the Lourve, but instead we did laundry and relaxed at the apartment. It has a balcony that is very Parision. It rained and it was sunny at the same time.

5/2/05

2005-05-13T19:47:00.000-07:00

(caleb)
We slept in today and then went to meet our friend Davi. We got on the wrong train and then ended up being an hour late. We then met up with Elodie and then took us around the largest flee market in Paris. Afterwards went to Carines friends house for snacks and drinks.

5/1/05

2005-05-13T19:44:00.000-07:00

(caleb)
Today we rented rollerblades and skated to the Eiffel tower for brunch. We spent the afternoon in the sunshine on the grass under the tower. Angie had a little trouble getting uste to her skates but she soon found her self keeping up with everyone. After we turned in our rollerblades we went to a cafe by the Basteel to have drinks.

1/30/05

2005-05-13T19:39:00.000-07:00

Carine, being the responsible business owner that she is, had to work all day today.
French food is so wondeful, we are so happy to be here. There is somthing very romantic about this city. The city is also suprisingly clean. I don't know if it is the new mayor or the fact that everyone was sick of living in trash, but it seems like people really care about what stuff around here looks like and dont litter very much.

Honistly neither of us can remember what exactly we did on this day. Thats what happins when you don't keep up with your journal very well.

1/29/05

2005-05-13T19:35:00.000-07:00

We met our friend Davi again in Paris. First we went to Per Lachaise Cemetery to se where among other famous dead people, Jim Morrison from the Doors is buried there. It is a huge cemetery. We spent abouth an hour just walking around. Ive never seen such beautiful grave markers in my live. Some where a but creepy too, like there was one where only the arms were reaching out of the sarcophagus. Next we walked to the Montmare area and the huge cathedral on the hill. Sacre Cauer. There is a fantastic view of the city from up there. We had some great chinese food for not to expencive. We met Carine at her office and then went to her friends house to drink wine and eat some snacks and hang out. We took a taxi home, and so did Davi.

4/28/05

2005-05-13T19:29:00.000-07:00

(caleb)
We decided to do some sightseeing on our own today. We went to the old oprahouse, from there the Madeline. Built in 1764, it was finished in 1842 and is a nice big building(it takes up a whole block) and the entrance is free. Then the Concord with the Egyption Obelisque. Then we walked though the Jardin destuileries to find at the end, the Louvre. We walked along the Sen river until we came to Notredam. We didnt want to wait through the giant line to go up to the top so we snuck in through the exit. It is much more impressive on the outside than the inside, but there is a giant stained glass window that is very impressive.
We then jumped onto the metro and went to "chinatown" which turned out to be just a bunch of Asian restraunts. We decided to call it a day.

4/27/05

2005-05-13T19:28:00.000-07:00

We unintentionally slept in this morning. Once awake we called our friend Davi from Brazil who is also in Paris for a couple of weeks visiting his sister and her husband with his mom, dad, and older brother. We met Davi on the champs Elysee Virgin Megastore. I have to say that although much larger and more intricate, the public transportation in Paris, compared to Berlin, is much easier to navigate. From the Champs Elysee we went to see the Arc De Triomphe. From there we walked to see the Trocadiro and across the bridge is the most famous hunk of metal...the Eiffel tower. The line to go to the top, though usually an hour long, was short when we arrived. So we only waited like 10 minutes in line for entrance tickets. Unheardof good luck! The view from the top is unbelievable. You can see everything in Paris. The Louvre is by far the largest structure around. We had to walk up a lot of staris to get to the summit but each one was worth it. We tried to go to Pere Lechaise cemetery however, we arrived after 6PM, the closing time. We went with Davi to meet his family for dinner. They invited us to go with them to Bistro Romain. Fantastic food and so kind of his family to invite us. Davis family are genuinely nice people and we had a great time with them. They are so kind to try and speak english with us as much as possible, but Davi's dad speaks no english, so it is more difficult to communicate which is sad because he seems like a cool guy. Davi's mom is a force and is pretty great. She designs clothes in Brazil for boutiques and is doing research here in Paris. We took the train back to Carines and crashed after a long but super day!

4/26/05

2005-05-08T10:54:00.000-07:00

About 1am the conductor set 3 indian people in the car with us. They spoke a litle french but no english. The one lady took up the two seats next to me by laying down on them. Fortunatly I got my small revenge because the potato salad wasnt quite out of my system yet. Muh hahaha
The one erson was playing Hindi music however, the earphones were not in his ears so it was very winey and high pitched coming from those little earphones. Angie came within seconds of smashing his CD player. About 2am the train aquired more cars. After spending 2 hours trying to get comfortable on the floor I finally convinced Angie to move to a less crowed car. The one person that was occupying the cabin that we moved to moved right away which was very nice of him because that ment that we got the cabin to ourselves for the last 2 hours of the train ride(much more comfortable)
The train to Brussels was a bit late but we had no problem catching our next train to rotterdam. We try to suck the marrow out of every train day so we squeezed in some sightseeing in. Rotterdam is very much a big city.
There are several good museums which we didnt have time to see. We took several photos, there are 2 bridges near each other that are quite beautiful. It is a lot of skyscrapers and shopping in Rotterdam. We are beginning to miss the mountians and forests of southern Germany and France after being in Berlin this past week. We missed our connecting train to Brussels to Paris so our schedule was thrown off 1 hour but no biggie. The French Thalys trains are quite nice, even 2nd class feels like 1st class. They are fast too. Probebly at least 150MPH. The colored pencils and anime coloring book we just got are coming in very handy. It really helps to pass the time on the train and there is somthing infinitely zen about coloring. God bless Crayola hehe.
We took an RER underground train to meet Carine, my close friend I have known for nearly 16 years, that lives in Paris. It was so fantastic to see her again. The last time was in 2001. We are staying with her for about a week while we are visiting Paris. Carine has the coolest job. She owns her own casting agency. Carine was also nice enough give us her bed and bedroom while we stay here. She is so generous :)

4/25/05

2005-05-08T10:47:00.000-07:00

(caleb)We woke up and Angie gave me a nice hair cut. We checked out of the hostel at 12 and checked into some lockers to store our stuff. We walked out and saw the Judishes musem. We picked up a manga and some colored pencils for some on train entertainment. We got some food and beers for the train and then hung out at our hostel until it was time to leave. We made it to the train station with plunty of time to spare. We made small talk with the other passengers until it was time to leave. We had to sit somewhere else then our assigned seats because there were already other people in them. We didnt mind because we got lucky right away and got our own compartment. We wanted to keep it that way so we armed ourselves with german potato salad for dinner. The one mistake we made is that it got to stinkey in there even for us so about 12:30am we opened the window.

quick may update

2005-05-02T10:08:00.000-07:00

hi everyone
we are in paris right now staying with my friend carine. we are having a fabulous time. not much time to internet tho so the full update may have to wait. next week is holland and then may 9 we fly home. mixed feelings about that. we cannot believe 6 months have gone by!

4/24/05

2005-04-25T08:03:00.000-07:00

We got up bright and early at 1 in the afternoon. We had our breakfast and then hit the town again. We went to a flea market that was super overpriced. I think that you are suppost to barter but how can you barter when they ask 15€ for a pair of 20 year old sunglasses.
We got caught up on the blog and had pizza outside of the Kiserwhilhem Kirche(I will have to correct the spelling later) This church was heavily bombed in WWII and what remains is just the shell. The top is broken off so it looks very eerie.

4/23/05

2005-04-24T09:56:00.000-07:00

Did we see Berlin, ir did we see BERLIN? Holy touring Batman! We got lucky and had beautiful weather for our sightseeing megathon today. We started off by going to the Pariser Platz where the Branderburger Tor(=gate) lies. This is the only surviving city gate from WWII and markes the western side of the main road. Unter den Linden. It was once the boundary beteen East and West Berlin. There was a huge children's festival going on all day so we walked around the gate to walk the length of the festival. Cool music and lots of fun stuff to look at. We stopped to have a Frickadelle for a early lunch. At the end of that blocked off road we saw the Siegessäule, a 67 meter tall tower/obelisk. Bulit in 1873, it commemorates 19th century prussian military adventures. Than we walked back thrugh the Tiergarten, a central Park equivalent for Berlin. Next to the huge Tiergarten was the Reichstag. Another landmark. It is a miyture of modern(the glass dome) and a more classical style of architecture. It bacame the seat of the German reunified Parliament in 1990. We wanted to go inside but the line was 100 meters outside the door. Then we walked to where a portion of the Berlin wall is still standing. They had an outdoor museum called Topography of terror that recounts the actions of the Reich befor and during WWII and the aftermath of the East/West Berlin, Germany and wall(built in 1961) It was very upsetting. Germans didnt have a chance once Hitler took control. Anyone who resisted was simply killed. Jewish or no. Then we walked just 200 meters to checkpoint charlie. The checkpoint remains in the middle of the street. It was eery to see. So many, over 1000 were killed trying to escape east berlin. There were black crosses setup on each side of the street to signify each person killed. A picture with their name and how thex were murdered was on each cross. I began to cry. Caleb and I signed this giant, no really, guestbook right next to checkpoint Charlie. A lift had to raise us off the floor ro sign it. It was the first time I ever signed my soon to be married name and I got very emotional. hehe
We walked back towards Unter den Linden on Friederichstrasse and came across a film that was shooting right on the street. They had blocked off a section of the road. We watched for a bit, interesting. Next we saw the Berliner Dom. Built in 1905 in the New Renaissance style, it is a former court church of the Hohenzollern family. We walked through an art fair and then continued across the Schlossbrüke, 4 marble statues line each side of the bridge. We kept walking until we came to the MarienKirche, a red brick Gothic style church. Just beyond is the Neptunebrunnen, a huge fountain on which king Neptune sits atop, hence the name. From there we could see the Rotes Rathhaus. We were also next to the 365 meter tall Fernsehturm(TV tower) Anywhere you are in Berlin you can see it, sort of like the space needle in Seattle. We got some groceries quick because everything will be closed tomorrow(crazy Europeans take a day off!) and continued onto AlexanderPlatz. It was bombed in WWII and reconstructed. This is where nearly 1,000,000 people rallied to have the Berlin Wall torn down and the GDR regime done away with. Thew were successful in 1989 the wall came down! We walked across Alexander Platz to see the world time clock. By then we were hungry and pooped so we went back to our hostel to eat, rest befor our Techno fest tonight. WOO HOO!
We went out to the Icon Club. They dont open until 11:30 and we got there just a little early and the guy at the door told us to come back in 3 minutes. It was getting cold by then so we just shivered until he let us in. The Place was like an underground bunker totally made of bricks with several different rooms and leather couches. The DJ started at 12 and it was nice D&B beats. It started out loud and as the night went on it just got louder. We met some nice people around 2 in the morning and had a nice political (among other topics) "discussion"(shouting is probebly a better word). We had a very nice time with good music until 4A. We were planning on closing down the bar but we were both exausted by this point and the music showed no sign of stopping. We missed an S-bahn and got on the wrong one so we didnt get back to our hostel until 6a.

4/22/05

2005-04-24T09:48:00.000-07:00

Finally...Berlin! I have wanted to visit Berlin since I came to Germany in high school and every time since then, so I am pretty psyched to finally be going there. We packed up camp, but we had to wait for the tent to dry before packing it up because we will be ytaying in a hostel in berlin and at mz friend Carine's house in Paris so we won't camp again until May. We didnt want it to get all moldy and gross sooo...we missed our train. But no biggie cuz there was another one in 1 hour. We met a nice german man at the train depot. He and his wife are living and working for the past 3 years in ElPaso Texas. He is a military liaison of some sort. Finally the train. We get to take 2 high speed ICE trains today which makes the trip from Würzburg->Berlin much faster. Entertaining ourselves on the train is getting harder and harder. you can onlz play cards for son ling. Berlin is a HUGE city. It was a bit overwhelming at first especially since the first hostel we went to had no dorm beds so we had to find another. The guy at the hostel was nice enough to call ahead for us and check for availability. He even gave us directions to the other hostel. So the people at the Sunflower Hostel are super nice even if zou don' stay there. :) Our new hostel is pretty nice for the 14€ per night/PP price. The staff were extreamly welcoming and friendly, which at that point I welcomed because it took us a while to find this hostel. Very modern and classy decorations both in and out of the rooms. Caleb and I took showers right away after not showering at the last campground for 2 days(yikes)

4/21/05

2005-04-24T09:37:00.000-07:00

Both of us woke up very early in the morning(middle of the night) to pee and saw that it had gotten so cold that there was a layer of ice all over the tent. I guess if we were Eskimos it would be insulation right? hehe So apparently Germany hasn't gotten the memo about it being the end of April and spring is here and winter weather should be over now. Brrrrrr it was freakin' cold last night! We do have sun today and no rain so we console ourselves with that small favor. :)
We really packed in the sightseeing in Würtzburg today. We saw the Residence and surrounding gardens(a palace designed by famous 18th century Architect Baltazar Neumann in the Baroque style). All the wall paintings were done by the famous Venetian Painter, Tiepolo. The palace has an adjoining "court church" where more paintings are found by Tiepolo. The baroque style just isn't fancy enough for me though. hahahaha It is a bit gaudy. So many architectural embellishments and everything is covered in gold. So they went cheap...Not! hehe We saw several churches in the Marien Kapelle(my fave!), Sehönborn Kapelle, St. Micheals Kapelle, st. Peters Kirche, and another Neumann work, the Käppele which is a top a very steep hill. We also went to see the Alte Mainbrüke on our way to the Fortress Marienberg(another castle) atop another very steep hill. So we got lots of exercise :) We snuck in seeing the basilica Neumünster. For a small city Würzburg is packed full of things to do and see. It is a very pretty city. It seems most people are quite well off here. No street people at all. We got some food cuz we really hadnt eaten a real meal all day. We made a German favorite, bratwurst with mustart for dinner. It is going to freeze again tonight. It is cold, very cold already. Once again we go to bed with the sun.

420 2005!!!

2005-04-24T09:24:00.000-07:00

6:25am we awoke and packed up camp. fortunately the only thing that is wet is the tent. we packed up everything in the laundry room. we had to wait for the reception to open. they were supposed to open at 8am but they didnt actually open the doors until 8:20am. Luckily we still made it to our train with breakfast from our new favorite bakery in Oberammergau. We actually purchased a Bayern ticket today cuz it was cheaper to travel that way than to use a train day from our eurail pass. We made it to the train with only 30 seconds to spare. Our first change of train was Murnau and next Munich HBF. However the train we wanted to take to Wurzburg at that time only runs on Saturday and Sunday. So we had to wait for an hour an a half for the next train to Treuchtlingen to connect with wurzburg. So we went to do some cheap interneting. It is amazing how much more long distance international calls cost than internet and internet is very expensive. We did something very German today. We rode the train and ate our lunch on the train of prezels with mustard and german bakery bread with sausage and cheese. It was gut! Once in wurzburg we jumped on a tram (without paying! so naughty but cheap hehe) which took us right in front of our campground. This campground is right in the city on the west bank of the Main River. Surprisingly, it is fairly quiet and nice and comfortable for city camping. When we took our tent out it was completely soaked. As we arrived in Wurzburg it stopped raining and it didnt rain all night! Miracles do happen folks! It was the first time in almost a week that we went to sleep with a totally dry tent. It felt good in a way I thought I could never feel about a tent. we go to sleep with the sun when we are camping cuz it is tough to do anything without lights. For the second time in 2 weeks I had to do major surgery on mz big backpack. Thank god I thought to bring the sew kit cuz the whole bottom of my bag was coming off.

4/19/05 Tuesday

2005-04-20T02:55:00.000-07:00

Still raining. It rained all night but we are dry inside our tent. We went into Oberammergau downtown to get breakfast. We found this little bakery(Backerei - Konditorie Franz und Roswitha Gschwendtrer) on Schnitzlergasse II and we shared what I believe is the best bakery I have ever eaten! We got 3 different kinds and all 3 were fantastic. After that we were equipped with enough energy to run a marathon. We took some photos of one of the most ornate painted buildings and the Pilatushaus and a couple of other buildings that have wall paintings. That is the big thing about Oberammergau, the painted buildings and the Passionspielhaus. Oberammergau puts on the largest inside passion play every year at easter. It is pretty famous. We got a phone card and called our families like good kids and did some internet then we went to the supermarket to fill up or food bag. We took back the food to our tent and made sandwiches and went for a hike. Like I said before, the trails are like 500 feet from our campground, so great. We ended up hiking over 3 hours. It was beautiful on our hike with mountians all around us and green grass and trees as far as the eye sees. It even slowed to a light trickle of rain for us! (caleb) there are huge snails and slugs everywhere. We touched one 4 1/2 inch black slug and it felt really cool. (angie) Upon our return Illi invited us into her caravan again. She is a strict Catholic so whe was watching the whole hullavaloo over the new pope in rome. Lots of change going on in the world right now. We played cards with Elli and had some snacks and then retired to our small tent home. It rained all night again! glad that we move on tomorrow.

4/18/05 Monday

2005-04-20T02:47:00.000-07:00

Oberammergau, unfortunatly I believe is a bit colder then Schwangau and Füssen. It also rained all day and night. We do have a fantastic view of the mountians and forrest from our tent wow! This campground is nicer then the one in Schwangau. The ground is much softer which is great because that means we could put the tent up properly so that we remained dry and warm. There is a polish lady that works for the campground who has been very kind to us. She lis letting us keep our backpacks in her caravan so they dont get soaked. It has been raining since sunday and from sunday to monday caleb's backpack got soaked. So it is super nice to have a place for our stuff. She also had us over for tea and snacks in her caravan. She only speaks polish, a little more german then us, and like 6 english words. So communicating was a small task at times. But suprisingly successful. She lives in Poland about 150 K from the border of the Ukrainne and Chernobyl. Apparently her daughter and son and law and grandson lived near Chernobyl and there is still enough radioactive contamination in their area that her grandson was born with birth defects- so sad.
The campgrounds in Germany are more expencive the all the others at which we have spent time, but it is still 1/2 price of staying in a hostel. We did go on a short hike in the rain after dinner. It is awesome how close we are to several mountian hiking trails. We must only cross a bridge and voila!

4/17/05

2005-04-20T02:42:00.000-07:00

We decided to rent bikes today to get a chance to tour around Füssen and rode though the Altes Stadt. We also saw the Rathaus. We discovered that it would be better to take a bus to our next destination- oberammergau while stopping at the train station. We once again forgot that it is Sunday, so our attempts to find an open bakery or market were thwarted until we came across a gas station close to our campground. (caleb) its so nice to see 100 different beers in a gas station. It takes a while to decide, I wish I could try them all. It rained so we took cover in our warm tent. Man it is COLD today Home Oberammerwau is warmer.

4/16/05

2005-04-20T02:29:00.000-07:00

Wow! We saw a whole lotta castles today. We are lucky because we are within hiking distance of both Hoenschwangaw(origonally called Schwanstein) Castle and Neuschwanstein castle. We ate breakfast and got on our way. It was a 5 km walk to where you get tickets for the 2 castles. We toured Hohenschwangau first. Hohenschwangau was the castle king LudwigII grew up in. It isnt as large or ornate as Neuschwanstein but it was a cheery castle(golden yellow outside). Caleb thought that the castle looked more like a Museum inside than a castle. Paintings everywhere. The tour was a recorded audio tour but there was still a girl there to take us from room to room and point to the things of intrest mentioned on the audio tour. The climb up to Neuschwanstein was a bit steeper then the other castle. We were assigned a time to enter the castle for our tour, so while we waited for our number to come up we climbed a bit more to stand on the Mareienbrüke. This is a bridge that spans between tow peaks and over a waterfall. You also get a fantaistic view of the Neuschwanstein. I had been here before in high school and was to afraid to go out on the brige at the time, but this time No problem. Ok it was a little scary, but overcome. The we went on the guided tour through the castle. The tour group was large. Not all of the rooms were finished in the castle because King LudwigII was suspiciouslz found dead in inches of water(and was an excellent swimmer) So we only really toured 10-12 rooms. The most impressive rooms were the kings bedroom and the chapel and the singing hall. The kings bedroom was cool because we have never seen such intricate, beautiful woodwork anywhere. The bed frame top was several models of famous cathedral steeples. Very cool and gothic. The chapel was cool because it was one of the most colorful and cheerful chaples I have seen anywhere in europe(besides madrid) And the singing hall because of all the wall paintings and stage backdrop. It was designed by a theater designer and not an architect and you can tell. We walked back to the campground by following the waterfall which turned into a river behind the castle. It was very peaceful and pretty. Today was a great day.

4/15/05

2005-04-19T05:06:00.000-07:00

We packed up camp at 8am to start moving towards or next destination, Schwangau. We are suing another one of our train days. We go from Bühl-baden baden-karlsruhe-stuttgart-augsburg-Füssen and from there we have to take a bus to our campground. All of the trains were on time and all of the rides went smoothly except for the train from Augsburg to Füssen. It was a small, 2 car train that was packed so full for the first 40 minutes of the ride that everyone was packed in like sardines. All of the corrigors were packed too, we were 2 of the lucky people who got to stand. After an hour and 4 stops the train cleared out enough so that we could have a seat. The weather is gorgeous today, sunny and super warm. Füssen and Schwandau are right next to the mountians. Our campground in Schwangau has a lake right next to it. Unfortunatly our campsite doesnt have a full view of the lake, but we have A view of the lake and a full view of the mountians. On the busride to the campground we got a peek at the Neuschwanstein! So awesome! It is staying light out longer and longer. It is snuggly inside our tent, but we can tell that it is going to be cold tonight since there is snow right by our tent.

to be continued...

4/14/05

2005-04-19T04:54:00.000-07:00

Wow, it is crazy to think that is has been over 5 months that we have been traveling. This last part of our trip is going by much faster then the first 2-3 months. The first 2 months of our trip seemed to take a lifetime to pass. Other long term travelers told us that it would be this way. Today we got moving around a little earlier and took took the bus into Baden-baden. We payed for the first leg of our journey from Seestrasse in Oberbruch to Bühl(3€) but we just hopped on the back of the bus from Bühl->Baden-baden. Such rebels. It was a beautiful ride. The scenerz onlz got better as we got closer to Baden-baden. It is a prettz citz. There must be at least a little monez around here for some of these giant houses in the black forest hills. Our first hike was to the summit of one of those black forrest peaks where the spookey remains of an alte Schloß(old castle) reside. It was quite a hike and straight up. It got our hearts pumping. I can see where those hiking poles would come in handy for these kind of hikes. Lots of people use them here. The castle was really cool. You could climb all the way to the top for a fantastic panoramic view of the city and forrest. We found an area to sit for a while and take in the view. Caleb lost his "found watch" and was sad. As we climbed down there was stairs descending to a dungon area. I was scared but Caleb finally talked me into it. It was so spookey down there. Caleb said that it made the whole climb up there worth it. We were starting to get hungry for lunch so we found some bread and cheese at an open air parmet and some Frickadelles at a meat shop. We sat in the back of the Neues Schloß and ate or Frickadelle picnic. We saw a few more sights, mostly churches, which there are no shortage of in germany. Then we found some interent to update our blog and stay in contact with the outside world. We took the bus back to our sampsight in Oberburch. We made checken noodle soup and Milchrise for dinner. Its funny how early zou got to bed when you camp. Its like being a kid again.

4/13/05

2005-04-14T07:54:00.000-07:00

Today we took the day off. We slept in for quite a while and then we went on a hike around the campground. It is quite a big one but I am convinced that we have the best spot. I only have 2 complaints about this campground. 1 the person mowing the lawn mowed so close to our tent this morning that he bumped the tent pegs and made the area around our tent muddy. 2 there really isnt any place for people who are tent camping to have any privacy its pretty out in the open. But aside from those things, the prices in the small shop are fair and the camping price is fair. And there is great scenery.

4/12/05

2005-04-14T07:49:00.000-07:00

We left Saarlouis todaz for our new destination. Baden-baden in the black forest region. First we made a pit stop in Heidelberg to see the castle there(or what is left of it). We had two hours and we made the most of it. We found lockers right away big enough to hold all of our stuff(woo hoo!) Then we made a bee-line to the castle. I think everyone that was there either spoke english or Japanese. There is quite a view from up there. We wandered though most of the rest of the city but we ended up taking a bus back to the train station just to be safe so that we didnt miss the train. We stopped in Baden-baden too, but we didnt have enough time to see anything because the train to our camground was leaving. We made it to the campground before dark and had a great nights sleep in front of a lake with ducks and everything.

4/11/05

2005-04-14T07:33:00.000-07:00

Today is another take it easy day. Did the last load of laundry. It is super nice weather wise today, lots of sunshine but not to warm. We walked to the market to get bread and milk for breakfast. We walked with MJ to another town 6 KM away from Altdorfweiler(the town she lives in) to go to Eiscafe Europa. There we had some excellent gelatti(Italian stzle icecream) dishes. I went for the banana split and Caleb went for the fruit flavors. It was a great day to take a long walk. We bathed in the sun when we got back and played cards for a bit with Johanna and MJ then we watched some telly(simpsons).

4/10/05

2005-04-14T07:27:00.000-07:00

Slept in. We stayed around the house. We got some much needed blogtime in on the computer. And we helped Marie Josee stuff letters into envelopes for Anes hotel business. We made a norweigen dish for supper with meatballs and potatoes and a great creamy sauce.

4/9/05

2005-04-14T07:20:00.000-07:00

Ane, the aupair mom, is a manager of a 5 star resort hotel. the hotel is within seeing distance of the luxembourg border. so today we were treated to a day at the hotel pool, spa, sauna, steam room, jacuzzi and tanning spa. We even had our own room to change in and take a shower afterwards. It was sooo cool. We were allowed to have a traditional German dinner at the hotel restaurant. It was so delicious. Some guests of the hotel were dancers performing that night. Ane got all of us tickets. The performance was held in this big top tent. It was like performance art with dancing mixed in. The performers were from Israel. It was really interesting. It was a great day.

4/8/05

2005-04-14T07:12:00.000-07:00

We decided to take a day trip today. We saw Köln. There is a huge cathedral there. It is right outside the main train station. We also went to Arnhem. The city was nice. It looked very much like Amsterdam, but much cleaner, easier to navigate and less junkies in the red light district hehe. This took us pretty much all day to do. We didnt get back to Marie Josee until 1am.

4/7/05 Thoursday

2005-04-10T08:35:00.001-07:00

Johanna loved the pancakes so much that she requested to have them again this morning. She didn't go to school again because she was´nt Fehling well enough. We went into Town with MJ to Saarlouis. She Takes a German class there 2 times a week and we went with her this time. Before class, we had time to walk around. We ate Luch from a street vendor. It was a sandwith made from pork and lots of spices. It is called a Frikadelle. It comes on a Brotchen roll and with mustard it is so scrumptious. One of my favorite foods since we started traveling.

4/6/05 Wednesday

2005-04-10T08:35:00.000-07:00

We spent the whole day with MJ and Johanna at the house. It was so relaxing. I made American style pancakes for everyone and MJ being a good Canadian, had actual maple syrup(which we have not had since leaving the states) for them. Deeelish! We played lots of cards and watched the movie “Cat in the hat”, played the game of Life Auf Deutche, and saw a bit of television.

4/5/05

2005-04-10T08:34:00.003-07:00

We had breakfast, late with Alix and then walked to the Hauptbahnhof to catch our train to Saarlouis, where our friend Marie Josee is living and working as an Aupair. We are to stay with them for the next week. At first we thought we were to take a bus from Saarbrücken to Saarlouis. But we Soon found out that only a train goes there. The train to Saarlouis left 5 minutes after we walked into the station. This really kind woman helped us figure out how to purchace a ticket from the machine. We just made it onto the train with no time to spare. Saarlouis is a pretty small Town. Once there, we purchaced a phone card and tried to contact MJ. No luck. So we waited around the train station calling every few minutes. By 4:20 They were still not home. Caleb(through Trial and error and asking questions) figured out that we were Missing a 0 from the number and finally got through. So she gave us directions and told us what bus to take. MJ was waiting at the final stop to take us to her Aupair family’s house. We were so Happy to see MJ and Meet Johanna and Anne and be in a real home. It is like a 4 star hotel to us after Hostelling , Camping, and traveling in General. They live in a beautiful house and their Backyard is basicly the Woods and a gorgeous field. It is so nice here.

4/4/05

2005-04-10T08:34:00.002-07:00

On track again...to Saarbrüken, Germany. We had to take the train from Annecy to Lyon, however our train was late so our original route was a bust. The only other way from Lyon to Saarbrüken toway went through Metz. But we had to wait nearly 5 hours for that train to depart. So we hung out in Lyon for a bit. We couldnt go exploring together because someone must always be with the bags. So I went shopping for food and water and caleb stayed out front of the train station with our bags. We took the tent out to dry weile we were outside at Lyon. It got so Cold last night that there was ice on the outside of our tent so the tent was sopping wet when we put it away this morning. Finallz at 5:15p we departed for Metz France where we changed trains. We had about 20 minutes between trains so we walked around outside a little bit. It looks like a nice City and it is definatly one of the prettier train stations that we have been to. Some celtc motifs in the architeture. The train from Metz to Saarbrüken was so tiny. Only 1 car in length. The ride was only 30-40 minutes long. We met this cool French Girl from Orleans named Alix. She is ging to school in Saarbrüken for English and German. She spoke Great english, and we chatted pretty much the whole way. The train gets in at 12:08a And we didnt exactly know where the Campgrounds were that we wanted to stay at. Alix was so sweet and asked several people for us, in French and German no less, for directions to the campgroundand which bus we would need to take to get there. No one knew for sure where the campingrounds were and the busses to that area, we found out were no longer running. A taxi could take us, but it was going to be 10€ or more. So Alix being the extreamly kind hearted Person that she is offered to let us stay on her floor for the night. We were greatful and accepted the offer. Her Apartment is fairly close to the Hauptbahnhof so it was convenient for tomorrow too! We stayed up until 3:15a talking and we had a really nice time.

4/3/05

2005-04-10T08:34:00.001-07:00

We took it easy this morning. Once we got around to being dressed we had coffee with the Hosts of the Campground (which by the way is just a really Great Backyard of a couple and their teenage daughter) The view from our site gives us a wonderful unhindernd look at the alps and lots of forrest. It is fantastic. We met a nice French couple that was staying in their camper here. The woman is a teacher and invited us to stay with her where she is from near Clermont Ferand France. We Chose to do some more climbing and hiking today.(caleb) The mountian hike was Calleed Le Clay but I think that we passed it though. We were much higher up then we were yesterday. We climbed almost all the way to the summit, but it just got to steep. I am sure that we could have done it but it's’s getting down thats the hard part. On the way down we sampled some Alp water that was fantastic. It tasted even better then the water at the campsite.
(angie) when we got back to our Campground our Hosts were haveing a little soire with a small Group of people. They were playing botchie ball. If we spoke French we would have played but it's just no fun to stand around and smile while people speak a language you cannot unterstand. Both of us want to learn French now. Once the Sun goss behind the mountians it gets much colder outside very fast. We went to bed at sundown since it was so Cold and we must get up early to catch our bus/train.

4/2/05 Saturday Annecy-Savoie

2005-04-10T08:34:00.000-07:00

The alarm went off at 7a. Time to get up and pack our shit before someone notices our tent in the park. No problem. We hiked over to the beautiful lake to enjoy the Sun coming up over the snow capped mountians before the tourist office opens. We are basicly in a Lush Phalli of the alps. Very near Albertville, site of the recent decades winter olzmpics. The tourist office opened at 9 and we were the one of the first in line. We got info about camping, hiking and busses. There are loads of hiking and biking trails in the Savoie area. Lots of Wooded areas and of course the mountians. We took a bus out to our new campground just outside of Annecy in Duingt. The view here is absolutely gorgeous. It appears everyone here rides a bike, walks a dog, or runs. Oh, and we noticed that there is a pretty carousel in every French ville. They are pretty, but it’s cute.
We spent the rest of the afternoon hiking. The trail started out paved and it ended up that we were doing some pretty nice rockclimbing.

4/1/05 April fools day

2005-04-10T08:33:00.001-07:00

We packed up camp at 8a and headed to our bus stop to go into Town. Our train to Annecy leaves at 9:44a but it turned out to be late. We made Turkey and Cheesse Baguette sandwithes on the train for breakfest. You get to see a lot of the countryside on the train. The Flowers are budding everywhere in France. We see a number of vineyards by the side of the track. We arrived in Lyon at 12:40p. Our train was suppost to leave around 2:15 p so we went outside to enjoy the super sunshiney day. The weither in General has been exceptional. It tends to be cool late at night into the early morning and then by 1p it’s nearly hot. Around the time our train was to take off it was cancelled unexplicably. I get into line to ask the ticket office what is wrong and if there will be another train to Annicy todaz. After about 10-15 minutes I get up to the representative and they tell me that there is a partial strike today and that I have to get into line to check to see if there is even ging to be another train today. So I get into the line only to find out that we cannot get onto a train until 5:20p to Annecy. When we arrive in Annecy 2 hours later just about everything is closed, including the tourist's office. We didn’t have an oppertunity to find a Campground before we got to Annency so we were just wandering the streets of Annecy. At first trying to find a map. We found the outside of the tourist's office-closed- there was a fairly detailed map of Annecy there. We thought we saw a camping area Marked on the map and started hiking with our gear in that Direction. We, after a long walk, found a camper camping area in a beach/park Parking lot, but no marked tent camping area. We are both exhausted at this point. Just past the camper camping area there is a park with trees and picnic tables. We experienced our first night of totally free renegade camping. We have never Setup camp so quickly and quietly. Caleb was so proud to camp for free. I was a little scared at first but sleep quickly took over. It was a very Cold night.

3/31/05

2005-04-10T08:33:00.000-07:00

We Chose to stay in Arles another day. We did some shopping in town and found a place to do some Internetting. We spent most of the day at our Campground enjoying the nature and Sun. We made gnocchi w/French sausage and marinara sause w/shredded Cheesse, all from our little Hoetpot. Fairlzy impressive. We met George, the manager of the Campgrund. He does a really good job. He is a nice guy from Holland who is a transplant to Arles. The night was colder and windier then the others.

3/30/05

2005-04-10T08:32:00.001-07:00

We tore our eyes open, before Full sunrise, at 6a. Our bus leaves at 6:37A from about 60 Meters from our campsite. We are using one of our trainpass days and doing the whirlwind tour of the Coted’azur. We start with Marsaille. Marseille is about 45-1hr from Arles by train. Our train left Arles at 7:39a and arrived in Marseille at 8:40a. We couldn’t find the tourism office so we did our sightseeing based on our Western Europe guidebook map of Marseille. And without a compass. not a good mix. By Accident we did get to see the Cathedrale La Major, Lo Vielle Charite’, the Memorial des Camps de la Mort, Fort St. Jean, several points of view from the Port and we saw Basilique dev notre Dame de la Garde from afar. you really can see “La bonne mere” statue shining a top the Basilica from across the port. We found that Marseille is a dirty city because even though there are several garbage cans people still litter a lot. We went back to the train station another way then we came out. Many many Steps led to a fairly impressive station front. The view from the top was choice. Next stop-- St. Raphael.
We wanted to go to St. Tropez first, but only buses Transport people to St. Tropez. St. Raphael was gorgeous. We walked Almost straight to the beach. The sand on the beach was very soft but huge grains. Coral and Terra Colors. So pretty. We found a bakery for more bread (Atkins is really Rolling over in his grave) and back on the train to Cannes, home of the famos Cannes Film festival, which doesnt take place until early may so no luck for us. We walked the streets of palm prints and signatures of stars like Julie Andrews. We found a nice beach in Cannes to plop down on for a spell. Caleb says that the water is really Cold. The water is a lovly blue and so clear. We then walked the Promenade around the beach that goes in front of all the posh Hotels. Caleb had to wear his coat and hood all day because he forgot his hat and he didn’t want to burn his scalp. It is actually warmer in Arles than by the med. coast, but that is sea winds. We start heading back at 6:41p. (caleb)On the train we walk though part of 2nd class, the first part that we walk though looks like baggage class. The Seats are on the floor and are made of sheet metal. Luckily for us we got 1st class railpasses (we would reccamend this to anyone). We are Lucky enough to get a bathroom on the train with a seat and toilet paper. There is still a hole in the floor of the car but I quite like seeing my pee go onto the railroad Tracks. We are Lucky because we got a City train that will go straight through to our final destination city, Arles! We will have to walk the 4k back to our campsite since the busses stop running at 8:45p here in Arles. Good exercise I guess. We will sleep well tonight no doubt. Caleb even fell asleep on the train home. So cute hehe.

3/29/05

2005-04-10T08:32:00.000-07:00

We awoke at 8A. I took a shower, they were nice and clean with reasonably hot water! We walked to the bakery that we went to yesterday to get breakfest. We had These meat pasteries and shared a pastry/tartlette thingy with peaches on top. It was so delicious. The French definatly have a way with bread and other bakery Items. There are several Sites of Roman runins in Arles. Apparently it was inhabited by the Romans for quite awhile around the time of Constantine and the dawning of Chritsianity). We bought 10 bus tickets as a way to tour Arles cheaply and provide Transport to and from the train tomorrow and the next day. Did we say that the weither here is righteous?! So warm that I am sweating. Hooray for springtime in the South of France.
We went to see the Theatre Antique, Eglise San Trophine and the Roman Amphitheatre. We did’nt pay to go into the Theatre and church, but we snuck into the Amphitheatre with an American tour group. We’re so crafty. Hehe. I am glad that we decided not to pay because it was cool, but it wouldnt have been Worth the Money. Inside though there is a tower with a Great view of the City. It was another perfect night for camping. Caleb Thinks that Arles is a romantic place...and I agree.

3/28/05 Easter Monday

2005-04-10T08:31:00.001-07:00

(caleb)
Today is a national holiday in France. We packed up camp and made our way to the train station only to find out that there had been a time Change weile we slept. Angie went to the bakery to grab some bread and I bought the tickets. We shouldnt have bought them though, the conductor didn’t even check. Once we got to Arles, we found out that the busses must not run on Easter Monday. So we walked the 4K’s to the Campgrund. It was wonderful weather again.
(Angie) We tried to find a supermarket to get some food and found a couple that were closed because of the holiday. We picked up a loaf of bread and a tart from the Artisan bakerz (boulangerie) and had enough for dinner with that. We played cards for about an hour at our campsite. We sat out absorbing the Sun until it was gone. This campsite is much nicesr then some others we have frequented. Nice, cushy, grassy, ground that actually allows stayes to be passed.

3/27/05 Happy Easter from Avignon!

2005-04-10T08:31:00.000-07:00

We awoke to chruch bells this morning and found out that the easter bunny had visited us all the way in Avignon, France at a Campgrund! We suspect the German family, especally the little German boy was the culprit. It was very sweet, literally. All of the chocolate was so good! We got super Lucky weatherwise today. Very Sunny and warm. A perfect vacation day. We went first off to a couple of the same places that we went yesterday to take some Photos.
(Caleb)We ended up Getting some French custard Things. It is so cutte how everyone here wraps Things and puts them in a decoritive box. The customer service in this country is Great, and so far garbange wise it is cleaner then Ireland. We take a lunch Break at our campsite and continue exploring the other half of the City. We walked around the entire wall of the City. Tomorrow we will go to Arles and hopefully uze it as a base for a train day.

3/26/05

2005-04-10T08:27:00.000-07:00

We awake in Avigon to... rain. It seems to have followed us to France from Amserdam. We went to the camp’s cafeteria/restraust to make ourselves breakfest out of the rain and upright. We had biscuts and strawberry jam and bread with meat and cheese. Our typical Travel breakfast. This campgroundhas, yes its true! Hot showers so caleb and I plan on taking Full advantage. We are ashamed to admit we havent taken a shower since our last morning in Ireland.
The showers were hot and pretty much a little slice of heaven. A shower can make you feel like a new human being. Still raining after all that. We our out of Room on our digicam so no Photos can be taken from our first day in Avignon, but you can believe us when we say it's is a beautiful city. The Cathloic Pope setup his digs here for about 100 years or so. And what does every poch pope have? A palice! So we walked across the bridge overthe River Rhone and explored Avignon. There is what appears to be a totally intact City wall all the way around the old City. All of the buildings from within the wall appear to be from the same period as the cathedral and the Papal Palice(14th century) Very beautiful. We plan on touring it when we start taking photos. We got provisions- from the market since tomorrow is easter and not everything is going to be open.

3/25/05

2005-03-31T04:54:00.000-08:00

Off to Paris and then... most likely Avignon first.
We got up at 4:20a at our campground in Amsterdam. We packed up the wet tent and gear and caught the 5:55 tram to central station. And caught the 6:56A Thalys train to paris. We must have looked pretty funny with our lidl bag that was full of holes and all of our wet gear sitting in 1st class being waited on by people in suits. We will have to take the metro in paris to another station. More public transit learning oppertunites.
... When we got off the train, some milk had leaked out of the lidl bag and onto the luggage compartment. oops...
Well, the transfer fro, Gare Paris Nord to Gare de Lyon turned out to be pretty simple. The lady even let us on with our railpasses. Thanks travel gods. Once at Paris Lyon, we caught a train to St. Germain des Fosses, a small town in the middle of France. We had almost 2 hours before our next train so we went to get groceries and cash and see a bit of centerville. Cute place. Our next train was to Lyon. We have actually been to Lyon Before with our friend Antonio, from Madrid in January. Much warmer now though! The train ride from Amsterdam to Paris was pretty posh. We got served breakfast and lunch/Snack just like on the plane. And free beverages. We did have to Pay a 1st class reservation fee to use the high speed train though. That is why we are taking slower(Because they Stop more) City trains. We should be in Avigon Before 10 PM. We saw most of Northern, central, and Southern countryside from the window of the train today.
Once in Avigion at 9:45p we hiked the 2 klics to our campsite and setup camp. It’s city camping, but it's reasonably quiet and under 9€ per night. So we were both Happy with that. We were both exausted after traveling from 5:30A.

3/24/05

2005-03-31T04:49:00.000-08:00

We woke up and took care of our camping debt. Then we pack up and head into town at about 3. The first place we go is the train station to get reservations, Once there, we find out that we cant go on the train because at this point, it is already booked up. The soonest that we can get on a train to paris is tomorrow morning at 6:35 a and that is the only train available until after the weekend. So we pay the reservation and pickup some more food for dinner at the campground.

3\23\05

2005-03-31T04:37:00.000-08:00

This morning, when we went to pay for the campsite, we discovered that our debit card did not work at all. Not even for purchaces. So we Made mac and cheese for breakfast(thanks mom and dad) in our hotpot and then walked into Amsterdam to contact our bank via internet. It turns out that we got a message from our bank that there have been several fradulent purchaces in the Netherlands made with visa so all purchaces in the neitherlands have been suspended without notice. Great! So I say "fine, lets just go to the neitherlands to get some cash so we can pay for camping and go" So that is exactly what we did. It is only a 2 hour train ride to Antzerp, not bad. And then 2 hours back. We work hard for our already earned money hehe!
The weather everywhere we have been so far in belgum and holland is decidedly much nicer than when we were here in november.

3/22/05

2005-03-31T04:19:00.000-08:00

We awoke to the sight of a grey donkey and a brown horse eating grass not so far from our tent : They were so cute. We had to catch a bus to get back into namur: We packed up our gear and then hiked the 1KM to the bus stop. Once in Namur we procured vittles and drink (waffles and beer) and got onto a train to liege. Fro, liege we went to Maastricht; holland: Maaastricht; for how big of a city it actually is, is not highly populated or busy: There is obivously a lot of money there: Everyone drove a big; nice car/SUV; which is unusual for Holland, especally: Once there we realized we were short on cash: Problem, our ATM card was not working in any of the ATM Machines So we try to find an internet cafe to check our accounts and find places to stay outside of Maastricht(to expencive or all booked) No luck. It was around-pm when all this came to light and just about everything shuts down at 6 pm sharp. So we walk back and forth on the ,ain road in Maastcht searching for internet until 8 PM finally we find an open intent place: Unfortunately no campgrounds are open around most places in holland unitl april 1st, we were a little early for that. Internetting also didn’t help our catch situation—still waiting to be sloved. Eventually we decided to go to amsterdam to camp for the night and hopefully contact my friend carine in frace to go to paris from Amserdam tomorrow. We were lucky because the train conductor let us ride the train without having the train pass valitated. And we were also lucky because once we got into amserdam we only had 3€ left and so the bus driver let one of us ride for free.

3/21/05

2005-03-24T07:26:00.000-08:00

We got up at 7:30 a and packed and showered. The bust to the airport came around 9:30 a. We got to the airport with plunty of time to spare. We were a bit afraid we would have trouble checking our bags this time because ryanair had a pretty strict weight limit policy on baggage. But somehow we got away with it!
The flight before ours was sent off late because 7 passengers showed up very late. The switched gates at the last minute so weveryone, including us, that had stood in line for a seat together were almost screwed because everyone at the very back on the line was now at the front at the newly announced gate. Somehow we ended up with a seat together YAY!
The flight was fairly short 1.5 hours to charleroi, Belgium. We got these combo bus/train tickets for Belgium for onoy 10 euro. We took the bus into downtown charleroi trainstaion and took a city train to Namur, Belguium. Namur was bigger then I was expecting but still was quaint and had some old world charm. We went to the visitors information office and quickly found out that the only hostael in namur was completlely full. Strike 1 Then we had them call the closest camping grounds in tNamur. Closed until mar 28! strike 2 So this nice guy, Andre3 that wes helping us called his friend Phillippe who works for one of the local sites. He agreed to meet us and take us to the campsite that was open in the area, in nearby malonne(4k ouside namur). Se we got to meet Phillippe at the other info place in Namur at 5:30 p. He didnt show and didnt show around 5:50 we discuss the possibility of him not showing up at all and plan to return to the train station to go to liege or Maastricht in Holland. Just then Phillipe drove up in this little truck! hooray for Phillipe! He agreed to take us to the camping ground, gear and all. So we got some groceries and met back up with Phillippe at 7 then went to the camp ground. The weather in Namur was fabulious! warm and sunny and dry. Camping again was a real pleasure. The people who run the campground in Malonne are quite nice. We were greeted by 2 huge dogs, but they turned out to be quite nice. We setup our tent and said goodbye to phillippe and gave him much thanks :) We made sandwiches for dinner, 1st real food that we had had all day. Then we turnd in shortly because we had travelled much that day.

3/20/05

2005-03-24T06:36:00.000-08:00

Today we left Killarney Youth Hostel to start our travels again. I didn't feel sad until we left the room we had been staying in for the past month and a half. I knew then that we would have to say goodbye toall thenew friends we had made. Caleb took our bags downstairs. First I said goodbye to Lucrece. She was so kind and gave us money for cab to town so we didn't have to haul all our stuff to Killarney Bus station on our backs. What a sweetie. I started to cry ands so did she and we hugged for a long time. She has been a truly great friend to Caleb and I while we wee in Killarney. Next we said goodbye to Cedric and Gaelle. The tears started again on both sides. They are really good friends and great people . We will miss them all, those frenchies :). As we got into the taxi we said goodbye to our tempoary family and got into todwtown killarney. Our bus left for limerick shortly thereafter. We got to see a bit more of limerick this time. It is not "hell" as the gentleman had told us before on our 1st trip to limerick. It is actually a pretty nice looking city. From limerick we took a bus to shannon town. There are no hostels in Shannon and it was pouring rain and cold wo we started looking for a cheap b&B. The first one was full, the second was out of our price range and when we told the proprietor that, he simply showed us the door and made no suggestions. So we walked back the way we had come on the bus and found a couple more b&Bs The next one we stopped at us origonally quoted us 52euro bor bot of us and breakfast for one night. Caleb said again, thats more then we were planning on spending. As asked if the would consider less without breakfast and they said 40 for both of us so we took it. THe people were very nice and so was the house and the room that we stayed in. They put out hot tea and 2 kinds of bread for us to welcom us. The bread was wonderful! We had a tv with cable in our room. We got to watch myth busters and ER. We were just happy to be out of the rain and have a hot shower before our plane trip tomorrow. We had mac and cheese in our hotpot for dinner.

3/17/05 Happy St. Patricks day!

2005-03-19T08:51:00.000-08:00

(caleb)
Today we had to work for a couple of hours, but once we were done we went and walked at the blue pool. It was a quiet little spot in the woods. It looks like it is quite old as there are several old stone walls in the woods and lots of yew trees. From there we ate lunch at a pub near the woods. It was called Molly Darcy's. It seems like the more places we eat here, the better that the food gets. We then decided to see some of the St. Patricks day parade. It was cute, there... to be continuted...

3/16/05

2005-03-19T08:37:00.000-08:00

(caleb)
Today is the day we visit the most famous of all of irlands sights, you guessed it the blarney castle. On the way we stopped at a toy solder shop. It was really intresting to see how they make the little guys. Anyway, blarney castle is quite a site, the several story tall castle complete with a scary dungen and the one and only blarney stone. Dad and I kissed it but Mom and Angie passed. Mom had a cold and she was scared of giving it to people, Angie was scared of getting a cold from other people. It wasnt as scary as I thought that it would be because they put bars for you to hold onto and somone holds you while you lean over. Also there is a couple of metal bars that go underneath so that you canot fall out of the castle. I was a little disapointed but I guess that I can understand why, if you actually fell for some reason I dont think that you would have much of a chance because you would probebly land on your head. I am not sure how much research they put into blarney, there was one room that they called the kitchen, but we all thought that it was probebly the tolilet because there would have been to much venelation for it to be a giant fireplace. Also it was most of the way up the castle and one would think that the kitchen would have been on the bottom floor.
In the back garden part of the castle there are a couple of things that they name without discriptions. There is the circle(???) it is a circle of green(just like every other rock in ireland) rocks. There is a stone(named I guess because it looks like a whitch) A sacrifice alter(I didnt see any resemblance) some wishing stairs, and a es hut. Most of the things dont look near as old as the castle we figured that they were probebly only a couple of hundred years at best. In conclusion most of the things that you find at blarney castle are just that.... blarney.

From there we went to cork, we had lunch at a fru fru place called lulu's Underneith the sign it says A gastronomic experence. I guess I wouldnt know because the last few days for me has been one. ;)
We went back to kalarney and had dinner at a nice restraunt, we walked into the bar and the tv was on loud so we went upstairs. Unfortunatly the menu was different but the watress was nice enough to offer the items on the downstairs menu. I had an irish burger, that is a burger that is basicly a giant ball with onions and spices in it.

3/15/05

2005-03-19T08:20:00.000-08:00

(caleb)
Today we really packed it in. We started our day by going to ross castle. Then Muckross House, from there we walked to Muchross abby and back. Then it was onto Tork waterfall and then the gap of dunloe. We paused for lunch at kate kearney's cottage, it was a cute little place and they had quite a nice fire going. I think that they had one of the only wood fires that I have seen since we have been here.
After lunch we procedded to the dingle peninsula. It is similar in some ways to the ring of kerry, but it is also quite unique in its own right. There are plunty of artifacts to see and plunty of touristy things to see. We didnt go see the dolphin. In fact, by the time we got out to the end of the peninsula it was getting dark so we started heading back. We decided to take the longer, but faster(or so we thought) route north to tralee. The road on the small map that we had looked like a main road, but once we got into it it turned out to be worse then the one that we came in on. By worse I mean nice and lumpy. We decided to cut over to the inch beach but we turned to soon and ended up on a logging road. It was a little spookey but fun, in the intrest of saftey we decided to go back to the main road and continue the way home. For dinner we had a nice curry rice noodle dish with chicken and leek.

3/14/05

2005-03-18T08:28:00.000-08:00

(caleb) Today we got in the car early and began seeing the Kerry Co. sites. We decided to do the ring of kerry. We saw some amazing castle ruins and an old fort close to cahersiveen and some great ocean views. It was nice having a car to ride in so that we could actually cover some ground. It rained all day except for when we stopped for lunch in portmagee, but that didnt bother us to much. It seemed like quite a bit was closed for the season, but we did manage to get our strength back at a pub in sneem. It was dark by the time we got into town, we decided to eat at the grainery for dinner. It was quite nice and a good value too. :) We were expecting somthing a little more traditional but I think besides the modern music it had a fine atmosphere.

3/12-13/2005

2005-03-18T08:18:00.000-08:00

We worked both days. We were preparing for Caleb's parents, Deb and Brad, to come for a 5 day long visit. The assistant manager at the hostel, Dave, was nice enough to offer free accomodation to them during their visit as part of our payment for working at the hostel. So we prepared their room ahead of time to make them feel welcome. They arrived around 5:30pm on the 13th from London. They flew into Kerry airport (about 20 minutes from Killarney hostel) and rented a car from there. When they got to the hostel we were soo happy to see them! It was great to see someone from home:) They were pretty hungry from their day of travel so we went into killarney to get a bite to eat. We went to Danny Mann's pub and restaurant. Good eats! Caleb and I hadn't eaten out in a restaurant since the first two weeks here in Europe so it was quite a luxury for us!!! Then we went to Courtneys pub for a couple of pints of proper Irish beer for Caleb and his dad. Deb and Brad were quite weary from their day of travel so we didn't stay for the music at the pub.

3/11/05

2005-03-11T07:58:00.000-08:00

Low key day. Worked again and then went into town for internet at the Public Library. We had french chocolates that Lucrece had brought for us from France. MMmmmmmm so very good. We are supposed to have some french wine and goodies tonight with Lucrece and maybe Gaelle and Cedric, the other frenchies working at the hostel:) We may try to have a small bonfire behind the hostel tonight. We shall see. Caleb's parents called again today to firm up their travel plans. Can't wait to see them on Sunday! We will get like 3 days off in a row!!! Much to see.

3/10/05

2005-03-11T07:46:00.000-08:00

(Ang) Back to work today. First we cleaned then we weeded the small garden in the front of the hostel. A bigger task than we imagined. We didn't even get to finish the whole thing. Irish gardens have lots of stones in them so it is hard to dig around. Our french friend, Lucrece, came back from her holiday in France so we were happy about that. Caleb's parents called to update us on their itinerary for their upcoming trip to Ireland to hang with us. They will have a rental car so we will be able to see many areas previously not accessible to us because of money and distance. We are very excited for them to get here! We went for a short walk on the forest trail behind the hostel because it was a warm and sunny day. You don't get those two factors in Irish weather very often so we thought we better get outside for awhile. I brought and fed a carrot to the horse we have made friends with just off the forest trail. At first she wouldn't come near us because the hostel dog, Kerry, came with us on the walk, and she is frightened of Kerry. I had to climb into the pasture to give her the carrot she was so scared. We watched "The Village" again today. Caleb and I really liked the film unlike most other people who have seen it. There were two American college s staying at the hostel for a couple of days. They are from Arkansas but studying in London right now. We had a long conversation about American politics and society. Happily they are well informed and quite open minded. Liberals you might say:) Apparently their school is like a small bubble of open mindedness in Arkansas. It gives me hope for the future of America if you can find such views even in Arkansas.

3/9/05

2005-03-11T07:43:00.000-08:00

We had pancakes for breakfast. We were out of butter so we used olive oil instead and the pancakes were much lighter and yummier. I'll try to keep the excitement to a minimum here hehe. We got a ride into town to do internet at the library. Luckily the computers were back up. yay We walked back home through the National Park. We watched some movies.

3/8/05

2005-03-09T05:45:00.000-08:00

(caleb)Today we worked outside, it was a nice change. We started weeding the garden and then I started picking up garbage. In the end I ended up with close to 100 pounds. This is a real problem in ireland. Somtimes you cant see it right away because I think that they clean up the real touristy areas and thank goodness that most people have enough respect for the national park. But along roadsides especally and in some remote places along the road for some reason people just dump their rubbish. Some people say that it is the new laws for garbage. I think that they are starting to charge by weight so instead of paying to get rid of their garbage, people just take it out and dump it. This is wrong on so many levels because the stuff that they are dumping not only looks bad but it is non-biodegradeable. stuff like plastic bottles and baby diapers among other things. I know that this isnt a problem that is local to ireland but it seems like it is a new problem here. I know that I was ranting about rome being really dirty but that dosent really matter because it is a city and it is already polluted. Here people are spoiling the natural beauty by dumping tons of garbage wherever. Maby it is just growing pains for a new consumer socity, but people are going to have to start taking some personal responsibility otherwise there will be some serous consequences. It makes me sad and I dont enjoy picking it up, but I do enjoy making the property look better. I wish I could pick it all up out of the woods, but I would need a dump truck and a team of people. I just do what I can and hope that people will follow my example. Ok, thats enough rant for now :)

Then we walked to the library and it turned out that the computers where down, bummer. We then went shopping and walked back home. We enjoyed tuna and corn sandwiches with pea salad for dinner.

3/7/04

2005-03-09T05:30:00.000-08:00

We had the day off and the sun was shining so we knew that it would be blasphemous not to get out and do some hiking. The temp outside was much warmer today. We chose o'sulivans cascade and the nearby mountians and forest as our destination. We began our trekk there on the main road that goes to Killarney and Kilorglin. Just at we got started out we ran into the old drunk irish man, Matthew that gave us a ride to our hostel on Jan 22. What a carracter! We wasnt drunk today though. He was full of stories and odd facts about ireland and St. Patricks day though. That somes to be a common trait in old Irishmen. He gabbed our ear off for a good 20 minutes and then excused himself for the 100th time to run off to the post office to send a st. pats day card(green of course) to his family living in the US HAHA. We carried on with our walk to O'Sullivans's cascade within the Killarney National park. It is really wonderful that they protect all of this virgin forest land. It would probebly be leveled for timber and developed into a strip mall and apartments by now if it were in the US. God Bless Ireland. O'Sullivand cascade was very pretty and calming. We took a break and Caleb had lunch. We walked the whole path up into the mountians and then back the way we had come in on. There was a small sheep farm(sheep are everywhere around these parts) The people who live there have this tiny little, unbelievable cute dog that was uper snuggly. The farmer came out and spoke with caleb while I petted this sweet dog. The guy was quite nice and actually had been to Wisconsin before. We walked all the way back to the hostel. We stopped to give some treats to a hosres we have made friends with down the road from the hostel. As soon as she sees us she gallops right over to say hi. It is so sweet.

3/6/05

2005-03-09T05:15:00.000-08:00

Happy Irish Mother's Day! After working we decided that we wanted to see the Ogham Stones near the Gap of Dunloe. We left the hostel around 4pm So we set out through the woods once off the main road to Kilorglin. It was a beautiful day. We ended up walking along the beach of Lough Leane. The sun at that time is a golden hue and makes everything on the lake and surrounding it look like it is glowing. So gorgeous. I don't actually know if it qualifites as a beach since the rocks are big and there is thick mud in places. But there is some sand. The beach soon turned into a classic Irish forest with green moss covered trees and rocks. We followed the lake until it cmae to a river. At this point we weren't sure whether we wanted to turn around and head back the same way we came, or continue onto the Ogham stones. It had taken us much longer than we thought it would to get to that point and we only had about an hour or so of daylight left. We didn't want to be trekking through unfamiliar woods at night. We decided to push on to the stones. Just then we saw a mamma deer and her fawn run from us on the lake edge water. very cool. Once walking by the river we saw two swans swimming serenly by. This part of the woods and river reminded us of the Eel River and surrounding woods in Indiana. We arrived in front of the stones after a long walk. The Ogham stones are large rocks that have survived from the 5th century. They display the earliest form of Celtic writing. They have lines or notches of varying quantity and size and position to represent letters. We took some pics and started to head home cuz it was getting dark very quickly. On the main road in Beaufort village we caught a ride back to the hostel from 4 drunk polish guys who had trekked through the Gap of Dunloe with some Irish coffee to "keep themselves warm". The driver said "No drink...no drive" and then the whole car laughed. Luckily we made it home with no incident. We have gotten a few rides with people that were loaded here in Ireland...I see a trend. It's not funny really I guess, but at the time..

3/5/05

2005-03-09T05:01:00.000-08:00

Today was a sad day. My (ang) mom called me today and told me that my close friend and the woman that I worked with for 3 1/2 years before moving to Indiana died suddenly in a car crash on the Beltline in Madison. It is crazy because she had survived a car once before. I wrote this for her funeral:
I was so blessed to be a part of Debra's daily life for 3 1/2 years as her friend and personal life assistant. I remember sharing many fun activities and great experiences with Deb that enriched both our lives. Deb loved to be active and to try new things so we took several classes including belly dancing, a couple ceramics and photography courses, 2 Madison Arboretum nature trekks and one of Deb's favorite things, a sewing class. In fact, it was Deb tht taught me how to sew on a sewing machine. She was the most patient teacher I have ever had:) Debra welcomed the opportunity to help others. She always put others needs before her own. Deb and I volunteered together at the East Madison Monona Coalition for the Aging where her talents in this area were put to good use. She often said that this volunteer experience was something she really valued and enjoyed. Debra was a fantastic artist and quite crafty. Just about everytime I came over to her house she was would have a new craft project for us to work on together. Deb and I shared a love for laughing and being entirely too silly. My favorite memories with Deb are the times we would sit around and each other up. Her beautiful smile and bright eyes always cheered me up on cloudy days:) I learned many things from my friendship with Deb. The most important of these things were true patience, compassion and generosity. She displayed these qualities on a daily basis. I will be forever grateful for the time I was blessed to share with Deb. She was an Angel to me. I loved her deeply and will miss her presence in my life more than I can say. I was lucky to call her my friend.

Don't ever take those you care about in your life for granted. You never know if they will be around tomorrow.

3/4/05

2005-03-04T08:17:00.000-08:00

(caleb)
The big group is leaving today, its a good thing because some of the people like to leave the kitchen a mess. I suppose its unavoidable when you have so many people. Dont get me wrong, I like some of the people in the group, but there are a couple that are really annoying.
We did our usual morning thing and then caught a ride into town from a irish guy. He told us that he was going to drop us off by the bus station but he ended up dropping us off way past the tesco. It took us 20 minutes to backtrack back to the library. On the way it started to rain...

3/3/05

2005-03-04T08:10:00.000-08:00

(caleb)
Today was the Ireland lottery drawing...
No we didnt win :(
Today the hostel got rid of those crappy computers that charge 1€ for 10 minutes. Good riddence, anytime that I was in the living room I told people not to waste their money on those things. We spent the day carrying on about our normal duties. I carried bog turf and we got off work a little early. We got a ride into town with a lady that had two kids in the back. She gave us a ride because the kids were laughing and pointing at us hitchhikeing. It was nice because she gave us a ride directly to the library because thats where she was going.
We decided to do some shopping at the big tesco because we thought that it might be cheaper and I thought that there would be a wider beer selection. Well we were wrong about both of those things. The only thing that we gained by shopping there is a longer walk with a heavy backpack. There was a kid packing groceries as a fundraiser, because Angie is so kind she let him do it. It doesnt take rocket science to pack a bag, but he mananged to stack the heavy cans on the bread and the pepper. grrr... needless to say we didnt tip him.
When we got to the golf course, we discovered that the path was closed because of construction so we ended up having to walk by the road.
We had homade ham and pinapple pizza for supper it was mmmm good.

3/2/05

2005-03-04T08:09:00.000-08:00

(caleb)
After work we took a nice nap. Ohh so nice. It feels to take a nap in the middle of the day but I suppose it is less of a waste of time then watching tv.
We played cards in the evening and ended up keeping the kids busy.

3/1/05

2005-03-04T08:05:00.000-08:00

(caleb)
My parents are coming in the middle of the month. We are very excited to see them. I am having them bring macroni and cheese with them because thats somthing that you just cannot find in europe.
We bought a lotto ticket today, maby we can fund the rest of our trip(hahaha)

2/28/05

2005-02-28T06:48:00.000-08:00

We are starting to slip a bit with our blog entries here. Sorry folks. But really you don't want to hear about how we cleaned toilets EVERYDAY. hehe Actually we have had the last 3 days off together. Yesterday we took a short hike through the paths in our "backyard" at the hostel. We didn't want to go too far cuz it was cold. wimps hehe Today is much nicer. As we were walking into town our friend, Katrina, called from Wisconsin on our new mobile phone. It was sooo great to hear from her and be talking with her while we walked through the Killarney countryside. We did some interneting and posted some new photos today. Keep checking for photos on that yahoo link we sent most of you some time back. If you don't have the link anymore just email us and we can send it to you again. The Academy Awards were on in the States last night, but we couldn't watch them here until tonight so I (Ang) am realllllly excited to see who will win.. DOnt tell me yet!

2/26/05

2005-02-28T06:27:00.000-08:00

We had our first day off together today! so we made full use of it. We were intending on taking a trip to Cork, but in the end we decided to Climb Tork mountian. We made pancakes for breakfast. Caleb decided to "help" me with the pancake batter. I nstead of adding 4 Tablespoons of sugar, caleb thought that he read 1 cup of sugar and put that in instead. haha the pancakes really tasted like cake. They were yummy and packed full of energy and we needed it. We chose to climb tork mountian. We hitched into town and got a ride right away. The guy dropped us off downtown. We walked about 8 minutes and then decided to catch another ride. We got a ride right away(good sign) from these extreamly nice people. The guy driving was from the Cataluyna area of spain(Didoc) and a couple origonally from France,(sebastian and Sophie). All 3 of them are living in cork right now. But as luck would have it they were also planning on climbing Torc mountian! Sweet! The ascent to the top or Tork mountian wasnt nerly as difficult or as wet on the feet as Carentool. When we arrived at the summit it was very cold. No snow, but some ice. There was an amazing view from up there. On our way back down we paused for a stream side lunch. A stray dow cam along and begged us for food and shook himself all over us(and our freshly washed backpack) After the mountian trek we hiked over to the muckross house with our new friends. We had some great conversations about organic farming and American politics. Fortunatly they are sane and think much the way we do :) If only we were making the would political decisions and not the power hungry currently ruling. Seb and sophie lived in canada for 7-8 years. We told them how we would love to live there along with 50% of the other American who are fed up woth our government. We drove to a pub in Killarney to have a pint. We talked a lot about My favorite subject, MOVIES. So it was grand. We also had discussions about other topics as well. They were kind enough to give us a ride back to the hostel. We had great fun with those 3 and hopefully we weill meet with them again. Our friends from the hostel invited us to go out with them to a pub in Killarney but we were to tired. Katrina called but I missed her call :( I was sad.

2/22/05

2005-02-23T08:14:00.000-08:00

(caleb) today is angies birthday today woo hoo!
Angie wanted to celebrate her birthday by sleeping in today so that was quite nice. Then we started to walk into town only to realize that we woulnt have enough time to do everything that we wanted to do so we went for a nice walk to some ruins and Angie was taking pictures(her favorite past time) the whole time. We walked back with just a few minutes to spare before having to cook dinner for a boy scout troop from new jersey. It was nice having a little change in jobs and a change in shift. Another nice thing is that we had a free nice dinner for Angies birthday. We had fish, chips, chicken, carrot soup, boiled veggies, and apple pie for dessert. We had to wait for cake because we were so full. We had a devils food cake with vanilla frosting with chocolate shavings on top. We used tea light candles and made them in the shape of 2 threes. Angie got her birthday wish of her mom calling her for her birthday. :) Her friend Heather also called at midnight to wish her happy birthday which was grand!

2/21/05

2005-02-21T08:22:00.000-08:00

(The day before an important day hint hint!)We worked today too. Besides doing our normal cleaning we also got the pleasure of changing lightbulbs, washing light covers, taking devet covers off duvets that are not being used and putting them into the lodge attic. Ahhh! the excitement of vacation.
...
we took so long on the internet and uploading the pictures that we had to walk home in the dark. But it was not bad because we had pancakes for breakfast so we needed the walk. And the walk back is beautiful even in the dark. :)

2/19-20/05

2005-02-21T08:16:00.000-08:00

We worked both days cleaning. We played cards and watched Master and commander with russelle crowe sunday afternoon. The new french couple Cedric and Gaelle watched the movie with us. They are very nice. We will start a new work schedule tomorrow that will allow for Caleb and I to have both of our days off together which is great! Cleaning sucks(sorry mom) It is a bummer cleaning the bathrooms and making them perfect only to see them all messy the next day.
I am getting really tired of wearing the same pair of shoes, 2 undershirts, 4 t-shirts, and 4 pairs of pants.(caleb only has 2 pairs of pants) I dont think that I will ever want to wear them again by the end of this trip. Arghh! Bonfire!

2/18/05

2005-02-21T08:12:00.000-08:00

Today Caleb cleaned but I had the day off. We hitched into town with bugsy and dave. Did internet, went shopping, put the photos on a CD. Then we walked back to the hostel though the national park. We made soup and grilled ham and cheese for dinner. We got a text about dancing tonight. We relaxed and played playstation 1 road rash. Angie kept crashing her motorcycle. We took a taxi into town and went to the club. We danced danced danced at the Grand. There was a better dj this time. We took a taxi home at 1:30AM because it was to cold to walk.

2/17/05

2005-02-18T06:33:00.000-08:00

We had a day off of work so we decided to actually get back into the sightseeing mode again today. We hiked to the Gap of Dunloe with a french hosteler named, Carole. It is a series of moutain peaks all in the same general area where a great valley lies between and there is a mostly paved passageway big enough for one car to drive on. Mostly hikers and pedal bikers came through when we were there. Mountain sheep were out in numbers. That is a regular site in Killarney and the surrounding areas. Sheep in the middle of the road or on the green, green hills keeping the lawn mowed. If you ever want a cheap way to keep your lawn manicured, get a couple sheep cuz they really go to town. We ended up walking the whole Gap of Dunloe trail and then went into the Killarney National Park. All in all we walked for 7 hours. good exercise I should say! We ended up hitchhiking back into town with 2 german s who were staying at our hostel. What luck? We did stop at the Torc Waterfall before going into town. We picked up some groceries and then hitched back to the hostel. We made dinner, met the 2 new french people who will now be working and living at the hostel also. Then we hung out in Lucrece's room. We were supposed to go dancing but we were both too tired to go after our long day.

2/16/05

2005-02-18T06:25:00.000-08:00

We both worked today. it isn't hard work of course, and we only work for like 3-3 1/2 hrs per day, but it pays the vacation bills:) We didn't leave the hostel today, we should probably be ashamed of ourselves for saying that while in a beautiful foreign town. C'est la vie. Speaking of french, or speaking in french...I don't know you if have heard Gaelic spoken, but if you have ever played the SIMS video game and heard the sim people talking, it sounds a little like that. We hung out with Lucrece in her room. That is becoming the usual.

2/15/05

2005-02-15T09:16:00.000-08:00

First of all, Katrina, your comments for the 12th and yesterday...hilarious! And thank you to both you and Rick for keepin the comment love alive. hehe We both worked today. fun fun fun Then we watched the end of "Van Helsing", well most of it really cuz Caleb went to bed earlier than Ang last night and also ate some left over chili that Ang made last night for dindin. We also watched Troy last night. Mostly yawwwwn, but some nice revealing scenes heheh (angie). We hiked into town to return the videos and find the Public Library. FREE INTERNET!! Goddess bless the Public Library system for they bring you internet ala gratis! Then we walked back to the hostel (it's 3 1/2 miles one way out of town to the hostel-nice walk) to watch more movies. Ahhhh vacation...

2/14/04 Happy valentines day!

2005-02-14T08:44:00.000-08:00

2/13/04

2005-02-14T08:41:00.000-08:00

(caleb)Today we both cleaned again. Our friend gave us a phone and told us where to buy a card for it so that we can get calls yay!

I dropped off my CV and we picked up some milk.

Our walks into town seem to get more complecated as we get more brave. Its nice to get to know an area better then just overnight.

2/12/05

2005-02-14T08:35:00.000-08:00

We both had to work today. Cleaning Mach frei! just kidding hehe
(caleb)Tonight we went out dancing. We took a taxi into town(ladeda) and went into the club. In the front of the club it was packed and there was a live irish band singing traditional irish tunes. They were pretty good, but there was little room in that part. So we went into the back of the place where there were lazers and multicolored lights and they were playing house music. Angie danced until she couldnt dance anymore. I had a murphies. Tasty! Its nice that smoking isnt allowed for a couple of reasons. 1 you dont smell like smoke when you come home and 2 you dont have to worry about the place catching on fire as much. Now you may think that fire would be the last thing on a persons mind, but by the time we went to leave thats all that we were thinking about because it was sooo packed in there.

We took a taxi home and I tipped the driver .10 hehe oops

2/11/05

2005-02-14T08:31:00.000-08:00

Caleb cleaned from 11-2. Angie walked to town with a french girl. Angie did internet and scoped out the job scene. We relaxed for a while in our new room. It is really nice to have our own private room for more then a couple of days. I will never take privacy for granted again :) We made dinner and then played cards with one of the young daughters that the manager has. We also played connect 4. Her older sister who is 12, would pop in now and again.

2/10/04

2005-02-14T08:29:00.000-08:00

We didnt have to work today :) We movied to a bigger, better room within the main house. IT is a bit louder in the new room because guests stay in the adjoining rooms. We walked into town to do internet. We havent found Free internet here yet. We made linner when we returned to the hostel and hung out with our new friend.

2/9/05

2005-02-14T08:23:00.000-08:00

We worked in the late morning(11-2) cleaning and whatnot. Then we decided to go into town to get groceries at TESCO. Everyone kept saying how expencive ireland was going to be but compaired to most other countries we have been to, Ireland is pretty cheap. The only thing that is more expencive is the beer and cigs. The cigs I think is a good thing however, I wish that the beer was a little cheaper. The locals dont seem to mind that alchol is so expencive. The gorcery stores here are the most like American grocery stores, In fact, Ireland in general feels the most like home. It is kind of nice to feel at home for a little while. We met these 3 collage girls from Ohio that are going to school in Luxembourg for a semester. The watched "out of time" a denzel washington movie with us.

2/8/05

2005-02-10T07:17:00.000-08:00

Today only Angie worked in the hostel, it was calebs day off. Caleb worked on his CV and read his book. After lunch we went for a walk in our backyard. There are many well manicured paths right behind the hostel. It is beautiful back there. Or own robin hoody forrest. We hung out with this cool french girl that also worked in the hostel. She had a cd player setup in her room so we hung out there.

2/7/05

2005-02-10T07:09:00.000-08:00

The fires in the fireplaces here in ireland use sod. It is really hard to get lit, but once its hot it burns suprisingly well. It has a strange musky nice smell. The flora is very different too. Around the bottom of all of the trees is a fuzzy layer of wet moss. It rains quite a lot here but it usually isnt to wet to be out in. It stopps from time to time and once in a while you actually see the sun, but it seems kind of weird when you do. There are a lot of vines and its pretty green almost everywhere.

2/6/04

2005-02-10T07:05:00.000-08:00

Caleb and I worked our first day at the hostel today. Cleaning rooms and toilets and showers. I never knew just how hairy people can be. But its a good days work. After lunch we went on a hike to town a back. We watched the Bourne supremacy and the eternal sunshine of the spotless mind. We watched a rugby match between ireland in italy. Ireland kicked some booty. We like watching rugby, the action never stops they dont even take time outs when people get hurt sometimes. We are so glad that we came back to Killarney.

2/5/05

2005-02-10T06:57:00.000-08:00

(caleb)
We don't start working until tomorrow. So today we went to the store and picked up some ingredence for some REAL pancakes. This time we got smart and brought an extra bag to the store. (the stores here charge 15 cents for each bag so we try to use as little as possible.) I think that we bought to much stuff but it was actually much cheaper to do it that way. For some reason buying more is actually cheaper then buying less. eg. for a small shaker of salt it would cost 1.20€ whereas a kelo of salt costs .40€ So with both of us weighted down with kelos of groceries we decided to walk the back way. At first it was wonderful the woods smelled great. But the path soon became unmaintained. We were climbing over downed trees and though fences. It wouldnt have been to bad normally but we were carrying so much stuff. Some spots were harder the others because the path turned into deep puddles that we had to waid through. We finally made it back(at 1:30) and had our great homade pancakes. It was a beautiful day so we decided to spend the afternoon hiking. It was cold but the sun was shining so it wasnt so bad.

2/4/05

2005-02-10T06:53:00.000-08:00

We caught up on internet busness and then caught the 12:30p bus for Dublin to Killarney. We wernt expecting the trip to be so long. But it was 6 1/2 hours. Angie got sick the last half hour or so. So it wasnt very fun. We had to switch busses in Limeric again. The bus driver was nice enough to drop us off very close to the hostel we will be working for. We met one of the guys that works at the hostel, the one we were communicating with. He is a super nice guy.

2/3/05

2005-02-10T06:48:00.000-08:00

We got up and had breakfast and while eating breakfast we started watching scary movie 3. But it was such a funny movie that we ended up watching the whole thing. We decided to check out the Guiness Brewery tour, which as it turns out isnt the brewery tour at all its just a holding facility for Guiness and its just a bar at the top. For a 15€ cover charge PP we didnt think that it would be worth it. You get a free beer at the end so it is a little misleading. We decided to take the position at the Killarney hostel so we got our bustickets. We will leave tomorrow and are very happy to be going back. It is the only place that we had been to in ireland that really felt like a home. And the nature there is very relaxing. We started watching Akira before we went to bed but the disk messed up half way through. Oh well.

2/2/05

2005-02-10T06:46:00.000-08:00

We found short term free internet at the Dublin city public library. You can only use it for like 1 hour a day, but it is better than paying for internet. We were both offered jobs at a hostel in Killarney. We have decided to take it! At night we watched the movie, Human Traffic. Ang had seen the movie before at its world premiere at the Sundance Film Fest in 2000. Good film about the rave/club scene in general.

2/1/05

2005-02-02T06:11:00.000-08:00

We started looking for jobs today. We will need resumes and neither of us have ours with us. We didn't know we would have to look for jobs while we were travelling here. However, it is so expensive to get computer time and to print things out here. We will try to find a cheap or free option tomorrow. the only other guy in our hostel room is this super nice guy from the Czech Republic (from Prague). He offered to make photocopies of our resumes at his workplace once we have created them. So generous. We watched "Black Hawk Down" in the common room. It was a rediculously one sided, propaganda filled film about the military action taken by the USA in Mogadishu (sorry for spelling) in the early 90s (caleb says 1996). But it filled some free time.

1/31/05 CAKE DAY!

2005-02-01T05:41:00.000-08:00

We slept in a bit and boy did it feel good. We ate breakfast and showered. I had lost my flipflops in Segovia, Spain so taking showers without them felt less than sanitary in the hostels. So we went on a search for a new, cheap pair. We found a grand pair in Pennys for only 2,50 €! I'm looking forward to my next shower already. we found Internet for 1€/hour and caught up with all that. We went back to the hostel to chill around 3pm. 2 guys were watching Fahrenheit 911 so we sat down for about 1 hour to watch it with them. Caleb and I were SO DISTURBED again even though we had seen the whole film before at least once. It is truly upsetting what is happening to our country and the people of Iraq because of the Bush administration. People in the US need to wake up from their comfortable slumber and start taking action. Ourselves included. If you have been living under a large boulder for the last couple of years, do yourself a favor and watch this documentary. It's an education you should not miss. After that stomach unsettler we made dinner. After we rested up to get ready to go see CAKE live and in concert!!! It was the best concert either of us has ever seen. They are a great band! All such outstanding musicians. We had so much fun. It is the most decadent thing we have done since being here in Europe, but worth every single euro cent and second! The venue was Vicar Street. The performance hall was very small so we were very close to the band the whole time. Even with Angie's short legs she could see the whole time. So we liked it hehe. We were going to go see Cake in Indianapolis before we left for Europe. But we are glad we waited because the venue was smaller/better and even with the exchange rate it was cheaper to see them here in Dublin. Very cool.

1/30/05

2005-01-31T06:32:00.000-08:00

We walked around Dublin today. We saw the temple bar area and christs chruch cathedral and O'connell street where there are statues of Irish leaders such as Daniel O'Connel, charles Parnell and James Larkin. Also there on O'Connell street is an unbelievebaly tall spire that marks the center of the city.
By pure chance we literally ran into 2 people who had stayed in our rom in the Galway hostel. They stayed in our room on seprate occasions. We ran into them within a 5 minute span of time. We didnt know that either of them had planned to be there. Small world. We got some groceries and trekked back to our new hostel. We like this hostel better because 1 it is cleaner 2 it is smaller 3 is has a better kitchen 4 it is not located directly next to a disco/bar that has music pumping right next to our hostel until 4 am. 5 it is half the price of the hostel from last night. Many good things! They have cable too mmm... MTV. We are in a 12 bed dorm but only one other guy is in the room so it is almost like we have privacy. Or as close to privacy as we can get these days. We cant wait for spring so that we can camp again! :)

1/29/05

2005-01-30T03:52:00.000-08:00

We awoke late and had pancakes again to use up our syrup. yummy Mark, one of the cool guys that works and lives at the hostel, thought Ang's towel was someone else's and put it in the washer and dryer. So we had to wait for the towel to be laundered before we left. We walked with Chris, Jemma and Bev to the small Galway outdoor market. Nice stuff but like I said it was very small. Once the towel was done we gathered our gear and made our way to the bus station. Yesterday we had tried to get our bus tickets online but the website wasn't operating correctly. We went up to the ticket office and the girl working there told us that the tickets would be about 3.50€ more than the internet price. So we walked to an internet place and got our ticket online for much less. Definitely worth our time and effort. So we got on the 2:30p bus to Dublin. We got into Dublin around 6pm. We found our hostel, Litton Lane Hostel, which used to be a recording studio for the likes of U2 and Elvis Costello and Sinead Oconnor. Too bad they forgot to clean the place before they turned it into a hostel. The place was sort of gross. A place to sleep nonetheless. We walked around the city and found another cheaper and cleaner hostel for the next couple of days. Then we went back to the hostel and made some phone calls, watched some tv and went to bed. Bigger beds was a plus I must say. I will value a full sized bed soo very much when we get back home.

1-28-05

2005-01-28T07:08:00.000-08:00

We decided to stay in Galway another day. I'm still not sure I like this city, but I do like the people who run and are staying at our hostel. They have been very welcoming now. Everyone here is going through the same things we are, ie looking for/working jobs so they can continue to travel in Europe. We tried to go back to the University to use their free internet but we needed a log in today so the jig is up with that. So we walked across the river, over a bridge actually hehe, and found the cheapest internet we could. 2€/hour I wish we had the capital to start our own internet business. We could be making all sorts of scratch. We went to the grocery store and ran into Chris, Jemma and Chris's friend, Bev while there. So we walked back to the hostel with them. They are very nice people and we enjoy hanging out with them. They have been travelling even longer than us. We watched Whale Rider. Ang had seen it before but it was terrific for a third time.

1-27-05

2005-01-28T07:02:00.000-08:00

We had pancakes and maple flavored syrup for breakfast and watched the movie The Golden Child with Eddie Murphy cuz Caleb had never seen it before. We went to the University in Galway to use Free Internet so a bunch of you probably heard from us finally. After we walked around the city to get a feel for it. WE went to a couple of second-hand stores looking for a towel for Caleb cuz he lost his somewhere between Cork and here. First I found a cool pair of brown cords for 4euro! woo hoo On the way to the last secondhand store these two super drunk Irish guys (it is early afternoon for god's sake) stopped us an asked if we were Americans. We lied and said we were Canadian cuz we just didn't feel like getting into a political debate midday with drunkards. No good could come of it. We found a new towel for Caleb downtown. Then we went back to the hostel to make lunch/dinner. Later we watched the movie, The Transporter. It was an ok movie. We just relaxed and hung out with the other hostelers during the night.

1-26-05 Happy Australian Day!

2005-01-28T06:50:00.000-08:00

Marie-Josee left early this morning to go back to Germany. I was sad to say good bye because she is such a sweetheart and when you are travelling like this and meet new people that are really cool, you become close so quickly and then must say goodbye again. We will go visit her when we go back to Germany tho. We had gotten several recommendation to check out Galway for a place to find jobs and hole up for awhile. So we hopped on a bus around 11:25a and did just that. When we got to Limerick the guy that had been sitting alone in the back of the bus had to get off at the Limerick stop. So as we were nearing the bus station the guy gets up from his seat, comes over to us where we are seated and says straightfaced, "This town is called HELL!...No, I am serious." And then justs walks away to the front of the bus. Very spooky. Caleb said he could see why when he got off the bus in Limerick to go to the bathroom. He said the station was really dirty and scary. He didn't want to touch the ground with his feet even. He said it look lik a carpet of cigarette butts. He was glad he didn't have to touch anything in thebus station bathroom. They had some "technical difficulties" with our bus so we had to move ourselves and all our gear from under the bus to a new bus. They got back on the road about 45-50 minutes later than expected so we got to Galway later than expected. We found our new Hostel without too much trouble. This hostel is a bit different because 95% of the people staying there and 100% of the staff live there long term. So it is more like communal living. Rachel, a girl from Australia, was having her birthday. Everyone who lived there was making a dish for dinner to share. However we didn't discover this until after we had gone shopping for food and began preparing our pizza. We did get to try all the desserts, including birthday cake. Mmmmm I sort of felt like an outsider since most everyone lives here full time and have established relationships and are very tight knit. We are also the only Americans staying here. We have to explain/defend our political point of view at least once or twice a day. Good thing we are not Bush supporters or we would get even more flack than we already do. Everyone hung out until late partying for Rachel's birthday and Australian day.

1-25-05

2005-01-28T06:41:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was sort of a superficial sightseeing day of Cork so today we took more photos of the major sites. Such as St Finbarr's Cathedral, Parliament Bridge, National Monument, Grande Parade and St Patrick's Street. Marie-Josee came with us until about 3:45pm then she went shopping for Irish stuff and Caleb and I met our new friend, Ann. Ann is absolutely hilarious and so very nice. She is just grand:) We had met Ann in Madrid at Barbieri Hostel. She has just moved to Cork and is staying in her friend, Francis', house. So we went to the house to prepare and eat dinner and hang out Irish style. hehe Ann made this amazing meal from scratch! Falafels, a mint yoghurt sauce, millet with garlic and onions and fresh bakery bread with fresh cut tomatoes to top it all off. It was grand. We rolled the falafels and helped Ann fry them. We got to meet Francis and her 17 month old baby girl, Earan, and the Earan's father, Allan that lives around the corner from Ann and Francis. Earan is a gorgeous child. Ang has been exhausted all week so we walked back to the hostel with Ann and said goodbye and went to bed.

1\24\05

2005-01-27T04:47:00.000-08:00

Today we explored the city a little bit, then we went to see a movie(million dollar baby) We explored the city a bit more before going to the hostel. We sat and talked a long while with mary jose(a girl we met from kelarny) We cooked a fantastic dinner of curry chicken on a bed of rice. We went to an irish pub(the thirsty scholar) to listen to traditional irish music for a few hours.

1\23\05

2005-01-27T04:37:00.000-08:00

(caleb)
Last night we were invited to go mountian climbing with a group of people. We decided to go with them. We started climbing at about 10:45. We started out and gained a couple hundred meters in just a few minutes. We walked up to a lake and took a small break. From there we crossed a bog. Everyones shoes got wet, and those without waterproof ones got wet feet as well. We climbed, taking breaks every 20-30 minutes witil the first peak. It was an amazing view and there we took a break for lunch. It was a strange feeling because the rocks and grass were covered with a crust of ice, but the sun was shining so it was warm at the same time. By this time we were so high that the clouds were forming right in front of us. It is hard to discribe this next part but we could see the clounds flowing in two different directions at the same time, the clounds that were flowing over top of one of the mountian peaks in front of us were flowing south while the clouds that were just being formed flowed north.
After lunch we started hiking towards the summit, luckily we had a guide because we could only see a few meters ahead of us. We finally made our way to the summit and had a small celebration. At first we were disappointed because we could only see the inside of a cloud, but the cloud soon blew over and it seemed like we could see the entire country. We started back down and just then we saw 2 guys running up the mountian in just t-shirts and running shorts. We were baffled because we were freezing with our coats, hats, and, gloves on. Halfway down the mountian we witnessed a clear mountian sunset. We crossed the bog again and everyones feet got wet once again. We finished the trek at 6:30 and the leader of the group was nice enough to give us a 2 hour ride to cork. He dropped us off right in front of our next hostel.

1\22\05

2005-01-27T04:27:00.000-08:00

(caleb) hike, hike, hike, that is the theme for today. First, we hiked though the golf course and we saw at least 30 deer. They were not even scared. We walked all the way from the hostel to ross castle. On the way to the castle the footpath was flooded with about 5 inches of water so angies feet got wet. When we arrived at the castle we discovered that it was closed, but it was still very cool on the outside. Once there we met a nice lady from new jersey. She was there with her daughter and her daughter's boyfriend. They were nice enough to give us a ride to torc falls. The falls were amazing and we hiked all the way up to the top of them and from there had an amazing view. Kelly, christine, and permot gave us another ride to the muckross house and grounds. From there we walked to Muckross abby. It is a wonderful place. It feels nice just to be there. It was indiscribebly beautiful and very sureal. In the middle of these abby runis was a dree. It must be a very old tree because the abby is from the 15th century and the tree is still there. It looks like a tree that faries would live in. I appreciated that you can completely woalk through the entire runes, unlike a lot of other places in europe. It was almost hard to imagine that it was once a place where people came to love and worship out in the middle of the forrest.
We walked back into town and on the way we walked past a deer farm. We made it almost all the way to the hostel, but it was raining and we had walked all day so we stopped at a gas station and I met an irishman. He gave us a ride the rest of the way to the hostel. He was really nice but I think that he had a little to much to drink.