alright a lot has happened in the last 2 weeks and i am way behind cuz i didn’t take my computer with me :) so this is going to be just a brief overview!
Thursday, April 1:
I pick up my parents from the airport and they have their first experience with London’s underground. We walk through Green park where the london weather gives the van’t hof clan a warm welcome – with a nice downpouring of rain :)
We went to see the musical Wicked (and yes it’s just as good the 2nd time!!)
Friday:
changing of the guards and ALOT of walking around (in the rain mostly) but they still saw the main sites including Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, houses of parliament, london eye, trafalger’s square, pall mall, leicester square and even up regent street a ways. We put on some serious miles!
Saturday:
Did the The Original Bus Tour through London where we saw more of the sites including the cathedral, tower of london, tower bridge, and london bridge. We hopped off at the tower of london for a tour of the. It was used for a palace, fortress, prison and one other thing i can’t remember. There were alot of prisoners who died in this place! We then hopped on a river boat that took us up the Thames, we switched buses and walked a bit to get to Harrods – a massive designer department store like place that had $2000 hand bags and the like! A great place to have a wedding registry :) We then did more walking and found a lovely mexican resturant and finished the evening walking to the london eye for a picturesque light veiwing of the city.
Sunday:
Up way to early to catch our flight. To make matters worse i didn’t realize picadilly line was closed so we got the opportunity to experience the infamous london taxis to the airport! Very fun! Check that off the to do list! We arrived in Rome, got talked into taking some shaddy hotel shuttle service but were glad when the guy actually dropped us off at our hotel and not some random other place! We were supposed to have a city tour that evening and we went to meet the elephant statue as we were told to and waited 1/2 hour in the pouring rain in our bus ponchos for our guide to show up. we got sick of it and left to find a place to eat and went back to our hotel.
Monday:
Our tour guide from the night before contacted us asking where we were – apparantly being on time means nothing in Rome :) but we rescheduled the tour for that night. The rest of the day we mastered the bus service and walked around to the coloseum, the republica, the trevie fountain, and a bunch of other historic places that i can’t pronounce. Everywhere you looked there was something beautiful to see! This is something we don’t get in the US because we are such a young country! But Rome has tons of it and it’s so beautiful! We also had a beautiful day and i thing i even got a little pink! We had our walking tour that evening where our London born guide explained the history and other interesting facts about the places we had seen earlier. We had our first gelato when we were finished and it was phenominal!!
Tuesday:
We checked out of our hotel and headed to the vatican today! This time our guide was a minnesota born girl – burnsville to be exact – who came to rome on a one way ticket and never went back home! She was a lot of fun and definetly knew her stuff! We saw a lot of artwork, the sistine chapel, St. John’s basilica. We even took the 365 (i think) steps to the top of the basilica for a beautiful viewing of the city! We then went back to get our suitcases to board our overnight train to paris. This was an experience in itself. Our train attended didn’t speak english, only italian, spanish german and french. He even came in at 8:30 to tell us it was time for bed but saying “Bed.” We had 2 private room reserved for this extravaganza – little did we know, these two room combined were smaller than our bathroom! There was a lot of family bonding going on :) But it was a great experience and i had a lot of fun!
Wednesday:
Arrive in paris at 9:30 and caught a cab to our hotel. We had to wait a little bit to check in so we went wandering around to find a few very cute shops and boutiques and an excellent pizza place for lunch. We then checked in to our hotel and cleaned up and ventured out again for more exploring – the louvre, concord, eiffel tower – yep saw it all! We also stopped at angelina for their famous hot chocolate! When we were at the eiffel tower to took the lift to the top for an amazing view of paris. We then had a few troubles finding a bus to take us back to our hotel, but a very nice american student helped us figure out what metro to take. Let’s just say London’s underground is way better than paris’!
Thursday:
We walked down to Notre Dame to walk through it and after waiting in line for 45 mins to walk to the towers to see the gargoyles we decided to check out the shopping instead before we boarded our on and off tour of paris. The tour was cold, but because we saw alot of it when we were walking the day before, we didn’t have to get off a lot and we could listen to the history and such too! We also went deeper into the city with this and saw the arch and where a lot of the really good shopping is! We saw the part of paris that i thought we were going to see - like in movies like Passport to Paris and such, ya know!? we also went through the part of town where moulin rouge is and even were involved in an accident. Some guy in a mini van was trying to go around the bus and clipped the corner of the bus at a standstill. Very interesting! Don’t worry though, no one was hurt! We had an amazing american meal at Hard Rock Cafe (tadd was having a craving for a burger :)) and i was super excited to actually have ranch dressing with my chips!! It was a great day in Paris!
Friday:
Another early morning taxi ride to the train station to board the train to amsterdam. This time, it was only 3 hours and there was a beautiful sunrise to make the morning worth it! We checked into our hotel and did a little research on what there is to do in amsterdam. We took the hotel shuttle back to schipol and took the train into the city. We decided to walk along the canal and see where it took us. We ended up checking out the Ice Bar – a bar made completely of ice. It reminded me of a MN winter – way too cold! But there were some sweet ice sculptures!
Saturday:
We did a city bus tour that took us around the whole city and even got us into the Gassan Diamond factory where i learned alot of the different diamonds and tricks to test the clarity and color! Saw a 2 carot diamond – talk about large! we didn’t get to spend as much time as we would liked because our bus was leaving. But we then boarded another bus for our countryside tour! The best part of holland! We went to a dutch shoe making place, cheese factory, the windmills, the village called Marken and a fishing town that i could definetly go back and spend more time in! So cute!!
Sunday:
Traci and Tadd had to fly out today so we brought them to the airport and then the parents and I went back into amsterdam to walk around somemore. We ended up shopping a bit and then watching the tottenham and portsmouth football match. We then headed back to our hotel for a nice dinner and a full night’s sleep!
Monday:
We flew back to London today and our driver, Barry, picked us up from Gatwich airport and brought us 2 hours to an area called the Cotswolds in England. We stayed at a B&B in a small village. The cotswolds are known because most every house has to be built in the limestone brick but each place is built with its own unique style. Very cute!! Today we just walked the streets and visited the church and had dinner at a local pub.
Tuesday:
Barry picked us up this morning for our 4 hour driving tour of the cotswolds. This is one of the most beautiful places in england!! There’s a lot of sheep and a lot of green grass! It was a great tour and we saw alot of things. If you want more detail of what we saw just email me or talk to my parents :) We headed back to London with another guy Paul who dropped us off at mom and dad’s hotel. We did some last minute shopping on oxford street and finished up with dinner at nandos (the closed thing to b-dubbs i’ve found thus far) We then headed back to vandon and then i walked them back to their hotel, had a pint at a pub and then i took the bus back to vandon. As much fun as travelling europe has been, it was defintely a relief to be back home in london where most people speak our language :) i now can empathise with people who don’t know english – it’s really hard!!
Wednesday:
I met my parents at their hotel and then we went to victoria station to take them back to heathrow airport. After a little confusion we finally to our parting point – hammersmith, where i go one way to class and then go the other to the airport. You’'ll have to ask them how the trip to the airport was – sorry mom and dad :)
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