The Aftermath

Well. I'm glad my last post from Europe was articulate, eloquent and insightful. Really, really nice, if I do say so myself.

The backstory on that is that at around 3 am I came across some little internet stations in the course of my wanderings. I was gleeful until I saw that they cost 21 EURO AN HOUR. Yeah, Germans, go figure. Anyway, I had a few 1 euro coins leftover so I deposited one just to see how much time it would get me. Turns out about a minute and a half. So, in my haste to update, trivial concerns such as punctuation, spelling and coherence had to be sacrificed. Hence, "gpooing."

We're not exactly sure how, but we survived our wild night in the Frankfurt airport (which included, at one point, me falling asleep standing up). Now we're back, both with colds. I've uploaded all pictures and created a few photo albums on Facebook, which non Facebook users can check out by following these links:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2045034&l=b5c6c&id=32402591
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2045035&l=a5937&id=32402591
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2045044&l=05836&id=32402591
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2045070&l=cb515&id=32402591
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2045071&l=7f6cd&id=32402591

The coming weeks might see posts on fighting through the jet lag and plane cough while shilling uniforms during the height of back-to-school season, but for now I am just too sleepy!

we are in the frankfurt airport gpooing crazy!!

Last post from Paris #...3? 4?

It's pouring down rain here in Paris, which we're taking as a sign that summer is ending and it's time to go home. We're going to eat a couple croque madames, drink some coffee and then head over to the train station for our train to Frankfurt. Our flight tomorrow morning is at 9:45, so we've got a long night of card games and taking turns sleeping in the Frankfurt airport ahead of us. I think we're both sad to leave such a beautiful, exciting city, but the golden retriever we saw today reminded us that home will be lovely too.

Stay tuned to NO PANTS for pictures of the trip!

Also, leave it to me to put off mailing postcards until the last day I'm here, which is Sunday, which is when all the post offices are closed. Thus, all postcards will be sent from Portland. Sorry!

Quick post from Firenze

Due to some unfortunate train circumstances, we have to leave Firenze tonight, which we're both quite sad about--if our 36ish hours in this city have shown us anything, it's that there is much, much more to see and do here than we thought. Our hostel is a block away from the Duomo, and we can walk just about everywhere in 10 minutes. We spent last night chatting up our charming Italian waiter, drinking Coronas and strolling on Ponte Vecchio. This morning we went to the Uffizi Gallery where we had to wait in line for about 3 hours. Not worth it you say? Au contraire. We met a lovely couple from Dubai while waiting and got to see some extremely rad art on the inside, including several Giottos, Botticellis, Da Vincis and more. In the last few hours before our train leaves we might try to find a park Mom remembers from her visit here about 30 years ago...

Next stop: PARIS AGAIN!

This post co-written by the one, the only....

...DIANE SEMET!

Greetings from Firenze all you little goobies! Mia mamma is sitting here with me in a very dingy little internet cafe that, gloriously, only charges 1,50 € per hour. We arrived after a wonderful, incredibly relaxing stay with our family in Zurich who pampered us beyond belief--we ate fantastically well, had hot showers and were escorted about the charming Swiss countryside. Annie, Lizzie and I got into Zurich on Friday night after two nights in a fun but not so comfortable hostel, and, needless to say, the hospitality my second cousin Patrick and his wife Ana showed us was very, very welcome. After allowing us to take 30-minute showers they fed us a veritable feast of a breakfast and showed us around Zurich until we met my mom at the train station that afternoon. We all went for a huge dinner up on a hill overlooking the city and lake of Zurich and then I had to part ways with my travel buddies of the last couple weeks, as they were taking an overnight train to Berlin. The next day we toured the little town of Lucerne, ate more rich Swiss food and had several cups of very strong coffee, which made us never want to go back to the Starbucks, ever. The next day my great uncle, Albert and my great aunt, Hanni drove us through the mountains to Lugano, which was a drop-dead GORGEOUS drive, complete with chalets and cows making that cheese we all know and love. We had to say good-bye in Lugano, which was sad after such a lovely visit, but we had the train ride to Firenze to look forward to in the morning, which went smoothly.

We had some trouble at the Firenze train station getting our ticket to Paris--both of us were near psyhcological collapse, but after some deep healing breaths in the shadow of a beautiful cathedral (not quite sure which one, but hey, it was pretty and served its purpose), we reentered the train station and got our shiz taken care of, which, I think, is pretty much the definition of NO PANTS. So now we're going to find some pizza and gelato and a stiff drink and make our plans for tomorrow. Perhaps one more update from Italy tomorrow to let you all know how the David was and then we head out for the last leg of our fantastic voyage!

ACTUAL last post from Paris

We spent the last two nights in a hostel to save ourselves some ca$h money and it was an amazing, amazing decision, despite the fact that there's no curtain on our shower. First of all it's about 30 € a night less. Also it's everything you'd ever expect an international backpacking experience to be and more. Instead of going out to expensive bars with the same American kids from our class every night, we spent the last two nights sitting on the hostel terrace talking to kids from all over the world into the wee hours. Everyone goes to the supermarché around the corner, gets about 5 € worth of food, brings it to the terrace and eats and shoots shit. Last night there were about 10 or 11 of us there and about 8 different countries were represented. It's humbling to talk to people my age who speak 3 or 4 languages fluently, but everyone is ultimately just really curious and friendly.

Our train leaves for Zurich tonight at 6ish. We bought groceries for the whole day this morning, so our plan for our last few hours in Paris is just to lounge around in the sun eating cheese and Nutella (aka Divine Food of the Gods) and finishing off the bottle of wine we bought last night. It's been lovely, uplifting trip and I'd stay here for years and years if I could.

Change of plans

No more Nice. Paris for a few more days. The free apartment we thought we were going to have in Nice fell through so we decided to stay here until Friday when we head over to Zurich. Which actually works out great because I got all of my "Things I Need to Do Before I Leave Paris" stuff out of the way yesterday so now I have a few days to just let things happen to me which strikes me as a better way to enjoy Paris.

I indeed went to the Orsay one last time yesterday and indeed went to the top of the Eiffel Tower and indeed had an amazing dinner of moules Paysanne (mussels with mushrooms, bacon and creme fraiche). The Van Goghs and the Manets were just as stunning as the first time I went to the Orsay and the Eiffel Tower entirely deserves to be as famous and iconinc as it is. I wish I could post pictures from this computer because that's really the only way to show how staggering the view is. I almost didn't go because people were saying that it was going to be ridiculously expensive, but it wasn't--as long as you can walk up the first two levels it only costs about 8 euro which is less than most museums, so don't ever, ever skip a trip to the Eiffel Tower because of what you heard. The lines are worth it. C'est vaut le voyage (it's worth the trip), as a dude on the metro told me last week.