France first round

Roll'n into France

Chateau Monlot St. Emillion

There are chateaus on every corner and vineyards every possible place.

The is a white wine from Bourg region it was amazing. Probably one of the best white wine to date.

We are standing in the sqaure.

While we were in France we decided go see the Tour de France and oh man was it an adventure. We took a train all day starting in Bordeaux to Avigon to find out that there were no hotel room available. So we rented bike and Kelly walked around town for a hour and a half trying to find a hotel that would hold our big bags and like always the last one said yes. So at 11:00pm we left and rode our bikes until 2 am in the morning. We got to a little town named Monteux and asked two hotels about availability but everything was full. So we ended up sleeping in a campground on the grass and we froze, boy does it get cold at night. In the morning at 5:30 we woke up on the rock hard ground freezing. Luckily they had showers but the luke warm water just did enough to get the chill off. We left at 7:30 picked up some supplies and headed out to the race. We passed through the town of Carpentras and found a slight up hill after a corner and we waited and BAKED!! But we had a great end to the adventure and saw the Tour de France and collected some shwag.

As we were riding through france with our head lamps on Kelly found her look alike in france

Baking not tanning and yes we forgot our sun screen!!

Here they come!!!

Man their fast!!

After that we got to hang out at the beaches in France like the locals!!

Ireland

Ireland was the last of the UK countries we visited. I got to go to the Guinness Brewery which was awesome and it is true Guinness is way better in Ireland. From Dublin we traveled west to Galway which is a beautiful town on the western coast of Ireland. They were having an art festival while we were there so there were street performers all over the place. The last night we were there they had a parade which was pretty cool.

One of the five elements to a great Guinness is the water.

I don't know about you but I thought boats are suppose to be in the water!
One of the many street performers.

The parade was themed after an old play. I just thought the guy on the stilts was cool.

The harbor at Galway as the tide went out

The slow lane walking path

The End

Northern Irland

On the cliffs of Northern Ireland

Giants Causeway

Kelly acting like the Giant

The Castle in the upcoming movie Your Highness

Scotland Pictures

The 18th hole at St. Andrew the old course!
what an amazing day!!!!

Kelly's favorite part of any country are the animals that look like her!!

Oban Distelery

Town of Oban

Sunset from the castle at Oban

Sterling Castle home of the best Apple Pie to date on our trip!!

One of the many loch in Scotland, but we didn't see Nessy

Castle in the highlands

View from the William Wallace memorial

William Wallace MemorialKelly try to climb to Memorial

It's all wrong driving over there!!

Inside a random castle

Scotland

Scotland was amazing! We rented a car and that was a crazy adventure. Not only were we driving on the wrong side of the car and wrong side of the road, we also had a stick shift and Chad had to shift with the wrong hand. He did great, we only drove on the wrong side two times. After an overnight bus ride from England we arrived in Edinburgh. We stayed there for a night before we went up North. We loved the countryside of Scotland. The Northwestern part was full of castles, lochs, and really cute small towns. We saw the William Wallace memorial, stopped in Stirling for some of the best apple pie ever, and then continued to Oban. We spent the night there and loved it. We hiked up to their little castle and explored the town a bit. It was definatly one of our favorite places that we want to go back to when we have more time. It had mountains, lakes, rivers, ocean, really hairy cows, and everything that we liked. I almost forgot to tell a huge part of our trip in Scotland, Chad got to play The Old Course at St. Andrews Golf Course. It was amazing, he had to get the CEO of Pebble Beach to fax St. Andrews a permission slip because he didn't belong to a golf club and didn't have a handicap card. So they got the fax and Chad was at the course by 4:45am standing in the singles line hoping to get to play. It was a dream of his since he started to golf as a kid, it was pretty cool. I came out there later on waiting for him to come in on the 18th and I saw a familiar face! I saw George Lopez, he came in to Pebble Beach pretty often. So I went up and said hi, he actually remembered my name, so he introduced me to his friends and we got to talk a bit. It was so crazy to see someone you know half way across the world. So all in all WE LOVED SCOTLAND, we thought it was really nice that they spoke english there too, kinda, their accent was really hard to understand. We ran into some really nice people and have some good stories from there, but as you all know we are really behind on our blog, so I'm going to try to catch up. Scotland was country #2 and we are now in country #13...ha We will post pictures tomorrow, we just got locked out of our account for 24 hours...more to come.

The europe leg of our trip started off with a bang. We arrived in Frankfurt Germany with out a hitch. The next day we were flying out to Ireland. We arrived at the Frankfurt airport 2 hours early to find out that it was the wrong airport. The airport that we wanted was 2 hrs. away by bus. Come to find out that Ryan air sells the tickets as Frankfurt (hann) airport  but Hann is  a little town about 60 miles away. The people at the airport told us it happens every day. So we figured we would take the train and ferry to england and start there. We figured out the train and ferry and were off again. Everything was going great we got off the train and caught the ferry. It had been a great day and we were watching the sunset over the white cliffs of dover. We got off at about 10pm and caught a cab to the center of town and we started asking about a room. Well after walking around asking about rooms for 2 1/2 hour we found out that there were no rooms in the entire town of dover, and it was the middle of the week... So we ended up sleeping  on a park bench, but it got too cold so we slept with the homeless in the ferry terminal. We had  been there for a couple of hours when I saw a tour bus I ran outside (3 o'clock in the morning) and asked if he was going to London and we were in luck. Finally we were going to get a little sleep and be at are final destination. We arrived in London a little early 4:30 am.. We couldn't call our friends Josh and Lina yet, so we walked to Buckingham Palace. We got to see it with NOBODY around. Kelly layed on the ground by the big statue out front and fell asleep. I walked around a bit and took pictures of the sunrise and the Palace. We waited until a decent time and called Josh and Lina. We got to stay with them for a couple of night in their super cute flat. We had a blast with them! They were the best hosts and tour guide in all of Europe. Definitely a highlight of our trip! Kelly tried Indian food for the first time with them, and now she is hooked! We went to their church with them, we saw all the popular London sights. Thanks Josh and Lina, you guys are the best!

England in the distance!! :-( with no rooms

Getting into London at 4:30 am and wondering to streets

Kelly was awake until we found cover

and then ... she was out!

Big Ben and Parliament!!

Finally

Well its been awhile since our last post but $10 per hour internet is a little much over our budget, but our parents are visiting and they brought a computer. It's been an awesome first 50 days. We have been to England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Ireland, France, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Croatia, Czech Republic, and Germany. Stay tuned for pictures and great stories over the next couple of days.