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more later.

• Rome seems to be cheaper to do stuff in, although the first two weeks of September in Rome are the busiest travel season
• Indians (those from India) seem to be the “Mexicans” of London
• You have to pay extra for Ketchup at your favorite fast food restaurant
• “Fry-sauce” in Amsterdam is really just Mayo
• NO free refills. Oh and soft drink sizes are smaller than in the US
• Make sure when asking for bottled water to get “no-gas” version if you like your water without carbonation
• Oyster cards in London are awesome.
• Make sure and get to the Catacombs in Paris early during high season if you want to avoid 30-45 minute line
• Eat as much Gelato as you can while in Italy. So many good flavors, so little time.

I noticed that there are a lot of 7s.

Think it means anything?

Last couple of days we spent in London. I must say that the Metro in London is quite easy to use and navigate. We ended up getting some Oyster cards loaded with 10 pounds each. So easy to use. It has a RFID chip in it and you just scan as you go in and out and it dings your balance. We were able to ride the tube in London two and a half days throughout the day for 10 pounds each. Coming home this morning I had to put 1 pound 30p on each of our cards (to get it up to 2 pounds) to get the balance so we’d be able to get in.

Last night we went and saw Wicked. Wow. I can say that Wicked was awesome. Really awesome. I was worried because of the girl they had playing Elphaba. She was rather new, but she delivered. Boy, did she deliver. There were a few rows of English and German students in front of us. We continually had to “shush” three german kids in front of us, chatting up some British girls in front of them. Sammi, finally had to go get an usher, who shushed them once, but it didnt last. At intermission we found their teacher, after which they turned tail and ran to the other side of the theater with the girls so we had a peaceful second half of the show.

The night before we saw Billy Elliott. It was awesome. It’s coming to Broadway this October and I think it’ll be quite the show to see. They have a bunch of child actors and they are quite talented. I highly recommend that everybody should see it. Wicked, however, was our favorite. I’m still in utter amazement. The accents really didnt get in the way for us in Wicked, and the singing was a tad different than the soundtrack which I’m quite familiar with. I couldn’t help but sing along to myself on certain songs.. I also found myself tapping the beat on “The Wizard and I”.

We also saw the Houses of Parliament, and climbed to the tip top of St. Pauls Cathedral. We tried watching the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace, but it was cancelled due to rain. We also went to the Tower of London where I got to participate in a reenactment that happened in the 12th century and we also saw the Crown Jewels. We toured around Buckingham Palace Tuesday as well as walked around Trafalgar Square and Oxford Circus.

London was fun but EXPENSIVE.

Overall the trip was rather enjoyable. My feet are sore and blistered. I should’ve brought my running shoes for walking around in instead of what I brought. Silly me. I saved a bit of the different coinage for my collections.. Euros, Swiss Francs, Great Britain Pounds.

So there you have it. I’ll upload some of the best pictures to http://cbl.us over the next few days.

Our night train left Saturday at 6:36pm and arrived in Paris around 9:15am. We spent the day in Paris looking at the sights. The Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame (we even went in for part of Mass), and the Champs-Elysées. Paris was our least favorite part of the trip so far.

We woke up this morning (Monday) and took the 10:15am Eurostar train to London via the Chunnel. We had to wait 30 minutes outside of the entrance of the Chunnel for it to clear for us to go in, thanks to the recent fire.

We’re in London, and going to see Wicked and Billy Elliott shows over the next two days. We’re also going to Buckingham Palace and Houses of Parliament on scheduled trips. Hopefully, we’ll see the Changing of the Guard tomorrow morning.

Cheers from London.

Depending on how Paris goes, we’ll probably take off for the train station around 1pm or 2pm in the afternoon. Ideally getting into London by 4pm. Hope it goes well.

We woke up around 8:15 or so and went and got breakfast. All the clouds were gone. Yeah! So we packed up our bags after breakfast and showering and caught a train from Interlaken West to Interlaken Ost to get the train tickets for the Jungfraujoch trip (see previous post).

We first had to get a locker..but they only accept Swiss Franks, and the money I had was two 5.00 pieces and a single 1.00 piece. The machine didnt take 5.00 pieces even though it costs 5.00. So Sammi tries to go get change, but the lady doesnt give change. So I go back and buy a 1.00 post card and give her a 5.00 and she gives me 4.00 back. We use that and hte 1.00 I had and try and lock our luggage up. Unfortunately, the locker malfunctioned and it didnt lock. so we lost that 5.00. I found other lockers that accepted a 5.00 piece so we moved to those and locked it up.

Then we stood in line for our tickets. It costs like $110/ea for the round trip. We leave on a train and climb up the mountain. We get off the train and try to get on the next train, but it’s full. As we walk around I notice I dont have our passes anymore. Efffff.. we walk around where were to find them, but they are nowhere to be found, probably on the original train. so we go into the lady at the train station and explain the situation. Luckily I had the receipt from the transaction, but she said usually I’d have to buy a new ticket. Anyway, she writes me one up after talking to someone down the hill and reading the information off to them.

We go to the top of europe after changing trains again.. so by now we’ve been on three sets of trains to get to the top. fun. We visited the ice palace, the cool observatory and walked out onto a little plateau and froze our butts off. Lots of video and pictures were had. I even almost biffed it on the ice. At least I didn’t fall down like some lady did. Yeah, we caught her fall on camera. After freezing outside we then ate there and it cost like $50 for the two of us. Sammi didnt eat her brawtworst so I ate some of it.

Came back down the mountain and stopped in Grindenwald for a few.. then back to Interlaken Ost and we stopped at a supermarket and loaded up on chocolate and other goodies. Then sammi and I walked the mile back to Interlaken West station looking for souvenirs..and a bag for our goods. Then we took a train from Interlaken West back to Ost and got our luggage out of the lockers and then caught the Inter-City train back to Bern. It’s an hour from Bern to Interlaken. Now we are here waiting in the Bern Train station “waiting room” for our 11:04pm train. Currently it is 8:45pm.

So long Switzerland. It’s been fun with your Swiss Franks and everybody speaking french and german and english.

We eventually found our way onto the KD boat. It only cost us 3 Euros (for tax) for the whole ride because we had our Eurail passes. Not a bad deal. So we took the Rhine river tour. We sailed downstream until Koblenz, passing a number of quaint villages and towns on either side. The boat made stops all along picking up people and dropping people off. We stayed on the boat until Koblenz, where the ride came to a stop. We had the video camera out and my camera, of course, taking pictures of the beautiful and majestic castles as they adorned the slopes of the Rhine valleys. Lots of Japanese tourists were on our boat ride. Most of them piled up on top in the rear with us.. until the wind started blowing then most went down below deck. We stuck it out for about 3/4 of the way, until the sun was going down, and finally went down into the cabin. The tour on the Rhine was about 4 hours long or so. Eventually in Koblenz we caught the bus to the train station and finally a train back to Frankfurt.

Day 5 was mostly a travel day and exploring Interlaken. We woke up and left our hotel in Frankfurt and caught the 10am ICE train to Basel SBB. That’s the swiss side of Basel for the trains. We caught the connecting train off to Interlaken. Total travel time was about 5 hours in train. Arrived in Interlaken and found our Hotel rather close to Interlaken West train station. Fairly nice room, but no free wireless internet in the rooms, I had to go down and pay 5 swiss francs to use wireless for 24 hours. I think that you can use it longer since they just give you the WPA password. I doubt they change it everyday. Plus, how do they know when my 24 hours are up?

So anyway, we walked around Interlaken this afternoon and checked out the shops. Things here sure are expensive. It’s a tourist trap, that’s for sure. 1 USD = 1.12 Swiss Franc. We found some sweet marble sets made out of wood. They’re about $125 USD here, I sent a message to Leslie and she checked online and in the states they’re about $199. Sheesh. Not sure if I’d like them that much, but they sure are fun.
Check them out here. There are a bunch of sets you can add on to the original. Awesome, I know.

It was a bit cloudy this afternoon so there isnt much we can see of the mountains behind us. Hopefully, tomorrow the sun will drive the clouds away and we’ll take the train up to the top of Jungfraujoch and if not we’ll go hit up Mt. Pilatus at Lucerne (Luzern). I want to hit Jungrfraujoch one day and Pilatus the other day. We’ll probably spend Wednesday evening in Bern waiting for our midnight train to Rome. We have a night train so we can (hopefully) sleep and not waste a day traveling by train. I plan on stocking up on Swiss Chocolate and other things in Bern since things are soo expensive here in Interlaken.

More later..

Once in Amsterdam and past customs, we got our Eurail passes validated and off we went to catch a train to Amsterdam Centraal. Once there, we stored our luggage and started poking around town. We took an hour-long canal boat tour and saw some of the sights from the canal. It was kind of fun to see the history of the locks and canals. After the canal boat tour we started walking through town, checking different things out and eventually made our way through the pouring rain to the museum square. We went inside of the Van Gogh museum and took a gander at three floors of paintings. Van Gogh was only on the first and second floors. Some of his earlier stuff was really quite dark. I think I’ve had my fill for art for the whole trip now. After the museum we started back to the Centraal Station to catch a train to Haarlem. We had to cross a bunch of canals on the way, went through China town and eventually caught a train to Haarlem.

Haarlem is a little town about 15 minutes outside of Amsterdam. It’s less touristy. We finally checked in around 5pm or so..once we got to the room we crashed, having been up since 8am the previous day. I would have liked to have gotten dinner around 8 or 9, but Sammi was too tired, so back to bed until 7am. Go jet-lag.

Day 2 in Haarlem was a rainy one. We went up to the tourism office and got some maps of Haarlem and surrounding villages. We started walking around Haarlem courtesy of our new map, and went into the big church in the middle of town. Did that for an hour, then, walked along the canal to the rebuilt windmill.. saw a wedding group getting their pictures in front of that, and after getting some pictures of the windmill we continued north to the station. We took an Intercity train out to Zandvoort out by the ocean. Once we got there it was windy and rainy. We pushed our way to the seashore and saw the North Sea. Once we saw it and documented the fact, we turned around and made our way to the center.. Sammi stopped at a bunch of stores looking for boots and other things. Eventually after wandering around the center of town and freezing our behinds off, we made it back to the station to catch the next train to Haarlem. Once in Haarlem we went back to the room for relaxing time, and eventually went out to dinner.

Day 3 in The Netherlands was still rainy. We had breakfast, walked around the market in the middle of Haarlem as well as walked around the center of Haarlem checking out the shops and people. We eventually checked-out and went to Amsterdam waiting for our 12:34pm train to Frankfurt. We dropped off the luggage and walked the streets doing some souvenir shopping. I called home and asked Leslie what her kids shoe sizes were. It was 3am in Utah when I called. Heh. We found a place that was selling candy, quite like that which they had back in Spain so we loaded up. We eventually caught the train and traveled through some amazing countryside into Germany and Frankfurt. Sammi had the video camera recording at times. Cologne was a fun area too.

Today (day 4) we’re going to catch the train to Rüdesheim and get on a boat and tour the Rhine. It’s not cloudy today from what we can tell, so hopefully it’ll be a good day for some touring and castle watching.

Cheers from Germany!

Fun things I have noticed so far:

• There are two Italian guys across from us chatting it up. I can pick up a bit of their lingo, but not enough to figure out what exactly they’re saying.
• There are not enough power outlets in this terminal for all the laptops that I see. People are walking around looking for them all (just like I was 30 minutes ago. Suckers!), and making comments as they pass my outlet area and see both full.
• There are a lot of Apple laptops here. I’ve seen at least 6 from my view point (including my own).
• Traffic wasn’t too bad coming down considering the construction. Much better than my last few trips to Vegas.
• Ted is an airline that I’ve never heard of. And it seems they have “economy plus” that’s $54.00 more and gives you an extra 5 inches of leg room plus you’re seated in the first 11 rows.
• Business Elite rocks. I dont have to stand in the winding line to check-in. We get our own check-in line. There were only two people in front of us. Security also rocks, because there’s a separate line for Business/First class.
• Security guy asked me if I have a wide-angle lens in my camera bag. I answered, “of course”. He said “I’ll have to ask you to refrain from taking my picture with it then, it makes me look fat”.
• I hate taking my shoes off for security
• Turns out my cell phone sets off the metal detector.

More later..