Oui Oui Oui, all the way home!

This little piggy went to Italy, this little piggy went to Belgium, this little piggy went to France, and this little piggy went oui oui oui, all the way to Paris! (Can you tell their dignified manner didn't rub off on me, considering the corny puns and all?) Well, it's also not a surprise that much of Paris wasn't dignified!

Exhibit A: Hemorrhoid cream. Brilliant? Yes. Classy? Not exactly.

So, my first big surprise about Paris was that there was more to do than see the Eiffel Tower or the Louvre. Our first stop in the "City of Love" was this big cathedral. It was beautiful--as most cathedrals are--with a stunning view of the city. (See next picture.) The only strange thing was that men in camouflage with machine guns were walking around... I don't remember reading in the bible that Jesus had armed and dangerous body guards! 

A view of Paris. It cost thirteen euros to go up in the Eiffel tower, but this view was free. (It only cost about a hundred stairs and some sweat!... Plus the crepe I had to eat afterwards to regain my energy!)

Our first and only Parisian crepe. It was good, but there are much better crepes in Prague! (Who would have guessed?) Also, my less dignified side likes the "crepes" my family makes for breakfast. We call them rollie cakes, but really they're just thin pancakes loaded up with butter and powdered sugar. 99% delicious, 1% fattening.

Did you know that Parisian sculptors have a good sense of humor? It's even funnier that this water is "non potable." Which means you can't drink it.

Patches O'Hoolihan: "But it's sterile and I like the taste!"

Moving on...

The Wall of Love. 

Frederic Baron and Claire Kito created this wall by gathering the words "I love you." in over 300 different languages and painting them on the tile. The bits of red are supposed to represent a broken heart that all of the "I love you's" are supposed to be bringing back together. They wanted it to be a meeting place for lovers. So, I guess their wish came true. Two lovers... one with a piece of heart on her head. I'm not sure whether that's poetic or gross...

And finally.... the way to the Eiffel Tower. BUNNIES! And somebunny (haaa rabbit puns!) was very excited to see cute, soft, fuzzy rabbits hopping around. Some guy had tamed them and sat out with them a skip, a hop, and a jump away (I'm at it again!) from the Eiffel Tower to make money. 

And now the moment you've all been waiting for... (Drumroll please!) 

The Eiffel Tower!

It was excruciatingly hot in Paris, so we copied the rest of the tourists and dipped our toes in the water of a fountain while some creepy bald guy photo-bombed us!

Another popular tourist site: the Arch of Construction! Er, I mean, The Arc de Triomphe!  

And, the highlight of Ty's trip: a Ferrari. Men are so easy to impress! It cost eighty euros to drive the car, but Ty thought it was enough to stand by it and take a picture. TTM. 

Story time: Because Ty and I are your stereotypical tourists--watch out! We have fanny packs!--and much of our trip is loaded with embarrassing stereotypical tourist acts we made a name for it: Total Tourist Move, AKA TTM. But sometimes, we modify it to "Total Ty Move." Both work in this situation.

With the TTM behind us, we moved on to the Grand Palace. We had to walk behind it through the gardens to get to the Louvre.

Beside the palace we saw the Seine river.

The bridge that went over the Seine was decorated with stunningly accurate statues. (Pegasus was definitely male!)

On a much prettier and more refined note... Flowers! The garden behind the Grand Palace was full of fountains and beautiful flowers. This is one of my favorites.

Ty came down with a disease in Paris. It made his head grow a strange looking triangle! We went to a doctor and he said Ty had caught the "Blessed." Side effects: strange and beautiful objects pop up behind you in pictures, like the Louvre.

...Or the Eiffel Tower lit up somehow magically shrinks so you can carry it around with you. :)

Overall we had a great time in Paris. It was fun to relax and enjoy our hotel while still seeing some wonderful sights. I went into the city expecting everyone to walk around in high heels while eating baguettes and turning their noses up at us from under berets. What really happened was we saw a bunch of tourists and one French lady was really rude to me in a post office and then a nice French man helped me out. People dawned their tennis shoes proudly, and men selling flowers and mini Eiffel Towers assaulted you at every corner. Sometimes people romanticize things and build them into something that isn't real. I'm lucky enough to be able to experience it first hand and see what the world outside of Kansas is really like! 

I'm also really lucky to be able to share Ty's and my experiences on this blog for others to read. So, thank you for reading!

Why aren't there many bells in Belgium?

So... where did I leave off? Just kidding, I know where I left off, but to summarize: Ty and I are terrible planners--I think it's genetic; sorry Mom and Dad--and we changed our minds from going to Barcelona, Spain to going to Brussels, Belgium. Luckily we had a fifteen day bus pass that let us go to any city, so it didn't cost us any extra to change our minds.

The trip didn't exactly get off to the best start. (What else is new?) Our whole trip has been a series of things almost going horribly wrong and then somehow working out not such a horrible way. The bus was scheduled to leave Montpellier at 11:30 PM. Ty and I dutifully arrived at the bus stop 45 minutes early and waited for the bus to show up. After an hour we were still waiting. Nervous, we walked around wondering if we had somehow missed a huge bus. While we didn't find any signs of a bus gone rogue, we did find a guy sitting on a bench with a wrapped up leg. He told us that he frequently traveled between Montpellier and Brussels, and the bus was late most of the time. Within fifteen minutes the bus came and two surly Spaniards stepped out to take our tickets. Since we've been traveling hotel to hotel it shouldn't come as a surprise we haven't had access to a printer. That means we couldn't print off the ticket. Our whole trip we've been able to substitute by taking a screen shot of our tickets and showing that to the bus drivers.

When I held my phone up to the bus driver he took one look at it and shook his head.
...
....
.....
WHAT?!

So I'll say how this went down. He told me that the ticket needed to be printed. I told him I couldn't have printed it even if I wanted to. He said the ticket needed to be printed. I said that there was no way I could print it at the bus stop. He said the ticket needed to be printed. I said we needed to get on the bus and we couldn't print off the ticket. I'm not sure whether it was how pathetic we looked at 11:30 carrying five different bags, or my wonderful persuading skills, but somehow we got on the bus.

Remember how I said I should be a character on a comic strip? Well, I'm not done with the troubles. The bus when we stepped on was completely full. Only four seats left, and guess what, there weren't two seats together. Go figure. One girl was passed out across two seats. One man was alert and sitting by a window. I told him my husband and I are traveling together and there weren't any seats together left on the bus, would he mind trading me a seat so Ty and I could sit together? He shook his head and told me he had to have a window seat, so he would not be trading us. Alright, one tried, two to go. One lady had her purse in the seat next to her, I tried asking her to move but she ignored me. One man tried to listen to us, but after much sign language and broken English we gave up and Ty and I had to sit separately from each other. Miss Angry Lady wouldn't move her purse until I handed it to her. After a sad eight hour ride -- cue sad dramatic music -- Miss Angry Lady got off the bus and Ty was able to sit next to me.

Finally, Ty and I were in Brussels at 1:30 PM the next day.

The best word I can use to describe Brussels is "different." The whole town had this air of just being odd. This half of a bike sticking out of a solid wall is only one example. Ty and I stayed in a part of town that was heavy with Muslims. That means there was a lot of different food, the men were loud, and I was ignored when Ty was present. If Ty and I walked into a restaurant and I tried talking, the person behind the counter would quite literally ignore me until Ty spoke. Another weird thing: the red light district was right by the Muslim area. One side of the street it's scandalous to show an ankle, and the other side of the street covered ankles hurt business! I just wonder how these two totally conflicting social cultures got put right next to each other.

Even with all the strangeness, our hotel was really nice... and conveniently located by a very pretty church.

For your viewing pleasures: the result of about twenty failed pictures. Why can't I just look like a mix of Jessica Alba, Jennifer Aniston, and Kate Hudson with my hair blowing in the wind while my eyes sparkle like the ocean? I don't think that's too much to ask for.

Even though I couldn't pose to save my life, the flowers were wonderful specimens! Brussels is dotted with parks (like the one below) filled with green grass and budding flowers. This was just one of many beautiful blooms!

And, despite my ineptitude at modeling, I did manage to take a few winning pictures.

Ty is pretending to be a leprechaun... because leprechauns love to terrorize potted plants.

And then he empathized with a sad statue.

After multiple picture taking escapades, we went to "Grand Place." It was quite a grand place.

In my opinion, the grandest of all the grand places was the waffle stand where we bought a piece of heaven for three euros. If I had a million euros... I might by 333,333 waffles and maybe one glass of water to wash it down with.

Because we had just consumed--what I'm sure was--an obscene amount of calories we walked around Grand Place and eventually made it to this lovely cathedral. I'm sad to say that this cathedral is a liar. The front was all pearly white and stunning and the sides were blackened with age... You might consider it two-faces, or putting up a facade. (ha, architecture humor)

To shake off the shock of the lying cathedral, we went to sit by one of Brussels many fountains. The fountains in Brussels aren't your typical pretty-ladies-holding-flowers-naked fountains. They were downright cool. They all had unique designs, and some of them featured contorted scaly animals like this one. While enjoying our lovely sit at the fountain we witnessed a fight. Not just a little scuffle, a huge brawl where people had to jump in to separate the two men. One man--who had been kicked while lying on the ground--had blood covering his entire face. Someone finally called the ambulance.

Because nothing works up an appetite like almost seeing two men fight to the death, we decided to get Brussels famous "Frittes." (I think that's French for French Fries... how sophisticated of me to call them Frittes!)

One of the best part of Brussels, though, was these two guys. They didn't look like anything impressive, but they made amazing music on their steel drums. A huge crowd surrounded them to listen to them play. The music was really happy and beautiful. Ty and I listened to them for about ten minutes before moving on.

The next day, Ty and I went to tour more gardens. One had a really big pond and we had a little too much fun watching the frogs. Guess who wanted to throw dirt clods at them to see them jump off their lily pads. (Hint: his name rhymes with Shmy.)

See that? Proof how strange Brussels is. There's a guy lying in a speedo in front of the botanical gardens... What people will do to get a good tan! 

Another thing we enjoyed was the Japanese embassy.

Mostly because of its cool bamboo swings. :)

Brussels was a really fun, offbeat town we were lucky to enjoy. The town gave us a good send off by allowing us to witness yet another fight. This time between a large African woman and a rude custodian, but don't worry, the custodian wasn't hurt... too bad. ;)

Go home, Brussels. You're drunk.

Anyway, thanks for reading!

Too much sun will make you (Mont)peel(ier)

Eventually, we had to leave Rome. Another city was calling our names. Montpellier, France.

At CULS, we were lucky enough to meet many different exchange students. Some of our greatest friends had been from France. While they all appreciated Paris, they said the South was where it’s at. (If you want a giggle imagine a combination of a pompous French accent and a Southern drawl.) Because we believed our friends and wanted to see a city in France other than Paris, we took their advice.

The bus from Rome to Montpellier left at 5:30 in the evening and arrived at 9:00 the next morning. The college kid in me was thrilled: yay! I don’t have to pay for a hostel for the night! The hoity toity sophisticated woman in me worried what my hair would look like after a night of restless, vertical sleep. The trip really wasn’t bad until we arrived in Firenze (Florence, Italy) and some ill-behaved children got on. The mom was trying to breastfeed her baby while her three kids (two ornery boys and a very sweet and spoiled girls) argued about who sat where. The dad of course was too busy chatting with one of his friends to be of much help. But, around midnight they calmed down and I drifted in and out of sleep until we got to Montpellier.

The bus stop was simply that: a bus stop. There weren’t any offices around, only a metro stop. Feeling unceremoniously dumped off, we bought our tickets and attempted to find our hotel. The sun was shining, and it seemed like it would be a good day. The metro took us as close to our hotel as we could get (about a mile and a half away) and we walked in the hopes of finding a bus stop. Which we did! We waited by the signpost for the bus that was supposed to come at 10:15. The bus came… and then drove away. If I could have seen the bus driver I would have sang “achy breaky heart” to him so he could understand how I felt. Since that wasn’t an option, I shelved my hypothetical Billy Ray mullet, and Ty and I walked the mile and a half.

Ty’s parents and his Venture Scout sponsor, Mark, should be proud; only five minutes into the walk and Ty was suggesting I serenade him with hiking songs. But I think I didn’t have the right idea because he scoffed when I started singing “One step at a time, duh duh duh da duh duh da daaaaaa.”

After proving I should only sing in the shower, we made it to the hotel. The manager spoke very little English, but he was helpful and sent us out to the beach. To get to the beach we had to ride a bus about an hour to a small seaside town named “Sete.” It’s probably named that because all anyone wants to do there is “Sete” by the beach and drink margaritas. 

The first thing we saw when we stepped off the bus in Sete.

If I was going to sit by a beach and drink margaritas, this would definitely be the place to do it. The whole lazy beach town looks like something from a movie.  Small amounts of people strolled through the streets browsing the small shops along the sidewalks. Motor boats drifted along the canal that parted the city, and the sandy beach was littered with families laying out in the sun or playing typical beach games. Our time In Sete was literally and figuratively a breath of fresh air.

There's my breath of fresh air.

That night at the Sun hotel Ty and I got to talking about our trip and what traveling is all about. This may seem like a spoiled thing for me to say, but I’m tired of seeing pretty building after pretty building. Don’t get me wrong, I’m extremely impressed by the skill and effort it must have taken to build such wonderful bits of architecture. However, in the short case of wanderlust I’ve acquired, my least favorite thing about the trips are the man made heaps of stone.

So what are our favorite parts of our travels? Ty’s best times were spent on the beach listening to the water lap against the sand, bent over looking for shells. It’s really unfortunate Ty’s name isn’t Sally because then he could just sell shells down by the sea shore! (Ha!) Most of the memorable bits of the trip to me aren’t man-made, they’re God-made. I can’t help but marvel at the land as we make our long bus rides between locations. How the land can be so beautiful and useful at the same time continually amazes me. I also really like the times where we do strange things… like taking a suggested drink from a server in Hungary that turned out to be 75% alcohol. Or accidentally wandering into a classic rock concert. Things like that really stick out in my memory, and I want more things like that to happen.

This train of thought got us rolling onto how we wanted to spend the rest of our trip. We were scheduled to go to Barcelona next, and I asked Ty, “What do you want to do in Barcelona?” He pursed those cute lips of his and was lost in thought for a second, and then said… wait for it… “I don’t know.” “Me either,” I agreed.

With that, we hopped online—have I mentioned how much I love wifi?—and changed our tickets from Montpellier to Barcelona to Montpellier to Brussels. (Can you say waffles?!) The next day we walked around Montpellier, sat in a park, talked, and really took in our surroundings before we set off for our next adventure in Belgium.

Rome-Ing Europe

"Backpacking Europe." A phrase frequently used by fortunate college kids to describe their spring break or a couple of weeks of their job-free summer. A phrase like this used to feed that little green monster in me. I--like so many others--had romanticized the idea. Those two magic words made me think of beautiful vineyards in Italy, clear blue beaches in Greece, charming English accents, and astounding architecture. Never in my (delirious) daydreams did I imagine being lost for upwards of four hours at a time, without wifi, resembling a  pack mule, sweating like a sumo wrestler, and staring at a five dollar novelty map with absolutely no idea what I was looking at. At this moment, women reading the blog are thinking, "Duh, just ask one of those dreamy Italians for directions." Yup, we've already asked about five including that sketchy homeless man on the street who's asked us for money several times. Then, about to cry or scream, but unable to decide between the two, I choose to get ice cream because at this point, what can really fix anything other than good ol' Italian Gelato? But wait, the Gelato I just ordered thinking it was carmal? It's alcohol flavored. Now after the last couple of hours, I probably could have benefited from a good stiff drink, but this isn't the way I wanted it. To top it all off, I never imagined my husband seeing me in the crazed state the events of the day induced. But no one ever mentions any of that, so obviously none of these (totally hypothetical) scenarios popped up in my imaginings.

Why have I gone off on this rant/tangent? (I believe from now on this should be called "rangent.") Because, I am thinking phrase "When in Rome, do as the Romans do." should be modified to "When in Rome, try not to murder anyone because you've been lost for three hours." The real question is, who should I take this amendment up with?

The true benefit is after you've been walking around for three hours, you've looked almost everywhere and it's virtually impossible not to find what you're looking for. And with that, let me tell you about Rome.

The first thing we noticed when we arrived in Rome was how pushy everyone was. We had to get on a bus to go from the airport into town and if we weren't getting cut in line or shoved around by other people, the bus driver was yelling at people. It wasn't a very pleasant first impression. But, despite all of the shoving and outright rudeness, we got onto the bus and rode into Rome. We walked around for about twenty minutes before we realized what an idiot I am... I left one of my bags on the bus. (Ty will try and tell you it was his fault. He is a liar. I repeat: he is a liar trying to make me feel better. AKA, he is a good husband. :) So, I walked back to the bus office and told them my mistake. After about twenty minutes someone told me they found it and to wait for an hour for the bus to come back so I can get it.

So, alright, I thought. My blonde moment has been rectified. We thought we could use the hour to walk around and find wifi. Wrong again. Rome has absolutely NO free wifi ANYWHERE. They may say that it's free, but you have to wait in line to buy something to even hope to get the wifi password. Instead of wifi, we bought a good, old fashioned, pocket map and tried to rout out the whole way to the hotel. After we got my bag back, we took one of the major metro lines listed on the map to the stop by where our hotel should have been.

We walked a couple of blocks after getting off of the metro and this is what we saw. A picture can't really do it justice, but it's one of the most beautiful parts of a city I've ever seen. So, I thought, maybe Rome isn't all that bad.

After a couple more blocks of walking, we started to realize that maybe our hotel wasn't as close as we thought it was, and just maybe, there wasn't a bus route through the area. So, we found a big sign that said "BAR PIZZA FREE WIFI." And stepped inside. The sign should have read "NO AIR CONDITIONING." It was stifling hot inside, and we waited, loaded down with all of our bags for about ten minutes for someone to even greet us. When we finally were acknowledged by a waitress, we asked for directions and she told us the hotel was about a mile and a half. "Go straight and then take a right to the end of the road. You can't miss it." Ty and I weren't exactly new to walking, so this didn't seem to be too bad.

Wrong again. We walked straight uphill along a very narrow highway with cars zooming by us. Did I mention I was wearing sandals and it was muddy beside the road? (I'm just now beginning to realize that I would make a good character for one of those goofy comic strips.) Finally, FINALLY, we got to our hotel. We stayed there one night and decided to stay somewhere closer the next night. Needless to say, I'm on the lookout for a new pair of sandals. ;)

One good thing did come out of staying at that hotel, though! After our long trek, we got to celebrate our first night in Italy with pizza!

Once we had a good night of rest, we loaded our bags back up and made our way to the next hotel. "American Palace." It wasn't much of a palace, but we did get a room that was supposed to cost $250 per night for fifty dollars. We left our bags in the room and started our vacation out the right way: with a beach day! We took the Rome metro to the last stop, walked about fifty yards, and hello beach!

We were obviously pretty happy to see some water.

Then, it became obvious we don't have water where we come from, when we fully failed at the whole romantic drawing in the sand thing. I was going to write "Stelting" with a heart around it, when Ty jumped in and wrote "and Kelsie." 

We had a chance to redeem ourselves by taking backlit beach pictures, but that went awry as well. In my opinion, this shot would be pretty cool for a murder scene... or maybe a girl after she saw Ryan Gosling walk by. Hashtag, swoon.

Day Three in Rome was much more educational.

First, we went to see the Colleseum. It was really nice apart from when we were getting assaulted by vendors. "Take a tour of Rome, you won't have to walk!" "Scarf? Scarf for the pretty lady?" "Water! Ice cold water." "What you don't wan't this? It's too expensive? How much would you pay?" I think my neck was sore from shaking my head so many times!

The much more enjoyable part of the day was seeing the Sistine Chapel and the Vatican Museum. Both were extremely beautiful. This is a picture of me in St. Peter's Square, or "San Pietro" as the Romans call it.

Another cool thing about Rome is it's impossible to get dehydrated--and not because there's so many people begging you to buy their water. There are water fountains all over the city that constantly pour out clean drinking water. (Warning, drinking the water may cause you to become extremely cool and wear a fanny pack. Drink at your own risk!)

By the fourth day in Rome, both Ty and I were pretty sick with a cold. Must have been those - insert Italian accent here - spicy meatballs! We dedicated the day to Roming (haha get it?) around the city and seeing Fontana de Trevi, also known as the Fountain of Loooooove!

This was a cute fountain on our way to the real thing... Mozzarella sticks to the main course!

And then, the main course... The fillet mignon of fountains. The fountain of love. It really was worth the hype. It was a HUGE fountain and behind it a beautiful building. The water was crystal clear.  I read online that half a million euros are thrown into the fountain every year and that it's all donated to charity. But, since I have already found my love--and we were out of coins--I didn't bother donating to some nameless charity. :) It was enough just to see it. Oh, and in front of the fountain, the fillet mignon of shoes. My sister designed these for me and I love them!

Despite all of the beautiful things I've seen in Rome, my favorite part of the trip had to be Wednesday morning when I fulfilled one of my Catholic dreams of seeing the one and only Pope Francis. We woke up at 4:45 and went to St. Peter's Square so we could wait in line to see him. I think it was well worth the wait.

He rode into the square on his pope-mobile and the thousands of people jammed into the square went wild. Mothers took their babies along the fence and held them up like Simba so they could be kissed on the forehead by the Pope. He reached out and shook hands with as many people as he could as he drove by. The whole time he was smiling.

This is just half of the crowd in San Pietro who came to see the Pope.

He spoke in Italian the whole time, but there were several men who came to the stand and translated what the Pope said in several languages. At the end, we all sang the Lord's Prayer in Latin. It was wonderful to see so many people come together to see one of the world's most important religious leaders, and hopefully to worship!

We spent our last day in Eat-aly (because really, everyone looks forward to Italy most because of the food) was spent seeing some of the must-sees. These are basically huge beautiful buildings that you go to because they're cool. But, in my opinion, there are plenty of beautiful buildings out there. It's really just a pile of stone. While these are very impressive, I'm more impressed by the people who came together to make such grand creations without the help of advanced technology! (Because really, how did they survive without Google?)

 This is some of our luggage (and my husband carrying most of it) in front of the Pantheon. Which, according to my brilliant husband who seems to know more history than I do, an ancient clock. Now it's just a very pretty dome that people flock to to take pictures of.

This was the Venetian Square. The picture doesn't really cover it, but it was blindingly white in the midday sun, and very stunning. It kind of popped out of nowhere!

After that, we saw the colleseum one last time, hip-hopped on a Metro-rome (music puns, look at me all cultured and whatnot!) and said goodbye to the city of getting lost!

Our friend we met at the Vatican says, "Thanks for reading!"