Europe

Hey!! Well...it's been awhile. I have been having problems with my Europe pictures too. I finally figured it out and found time to sit down and do this. I went to Europe on July 30th with my cousin Mitch and Aunt Ann. We flew with my Uncle Joel, Aunt Angela, and their kids becasue they live in Switzerland. We got home on August 18th and met my lover in the airport.

In the airport leaving Salt Lake City on July 30th.

Mitch and I on the plane to Atlanta. It was a 4 hour flight.

Mitch and I on the plane to Zurich, Switzerland. We got these sweet things free as well as dinner, snack, and breakfast. It was an 8 hour flight.

My cousin JoJo with his sweet eye cover. He wore it the whole time like that. He came back every now and then to sit by us.

We all took really long naps the day we got there. We left Salt Lake at 10:00 A.M. and landed in Switzerland at 8:00 A.M. on the 31st. So basically we were up all night.

Uncle Joel, Aunt Ann, Emma, Alex, and JoJo went on a bike ride. JoJo fell into an electric fence and shocked his eye. It was about 2 millimeters from his eye. He would have gone blind. He now has a white line under his eye. It looks pretty cool.

View from my family's house.

Restaurant by my family's house. I loved all the shutters and flowers on the buildings there. It's so pretty.

Alex, Angela, me, Mitch, Emma, JoJo, and Ann.

Me by my family's house

This cat followed Mitch and I for a while. It was so sweet.

Mitch and I went to the pool with the neighbors. They have a daughter, a son in college, a son that just graduated, a son in 7th grade, and a younger son. They were kinda mean to us. They were born in Switzerland but they are Australian.

Cookies made with Swiss ingredients

A church on the way up the Alps.

This is in the Alps. It's one of the purest lakes in the world. It's drinkable water.

In the Alps is this outdoor museum called Ballenberg. It has houses from all the "states" in old time switzerland.

Keep your poodle on a lease.

These are what the water fountains in Switzerland look like. They have water streaming out that you drink from and then the basin is filled with water for animals to drink. Animals are not allowed to bath in them.

I loved this house! The porch was gorgeous.

This house has hand painted paintings on the walls. It was really pretty.

This house was from Aggieville. It was where my Barfus ancestors are from. They lived in a house like this.

A donkey!

We made bread. We could make it any shape and we stuck a tag in it with our names on it.

Then they baked it in this old oven.

My bread!

Me and JoJo. He is such a cutie! He followed me everywhere holding my hang and sitting on my lap.

There were a lot of cute cows in Ballenberg. But there are cows ALL over Switzerland. No matter where you go, you can hear cow bells. In this last picture of two cows, the brown one had surgery. He has stitches by his hip.

There are fires set up all over Ballenberg to cook your sausages.

This man is a really great woodcarver. I really liked the one of the old man and the fish.

They have an old style bowling alley there too. It was hard because the ball is solid wood and weighed a ton.

After Ballenberg, Uncle Joel took us to Interlaken. Here is McDonalds. It is so expensive in Switzerland though. A big mac is $11.

Mitch got water in his eye.

Interlaken means between two lakes. This was one side.

We got ice cream. I got coconut and chocolate to make an Almond Joy. There was real coconut shavings in it. It was delicious.

This is a really famious mountain in Switzerland. I dont know it's name, but they call it Virgin because it is always white.

Joel touching the top of it.

On August 3rd, we headed off to Paris. We left right after church. Joel had to work there that weekend, so he drove us in the rental car his work got him. This was on the way to Paris. There are castles all over France right on the hills.

This was the lovely toilet we stopped at on the way. It was an 8 hour drive from Zurich to Paris.

These were really funky looking hotels right by ours.

This was the computer in the hotel lobby that we used all the time. There were always kids on them playing games for hours. Mitch and I got really frustrated because we wanted to check our e-mail.

The view from our hotel. Sweet huh?

Our funky looking hotel living room. The colors were pretty extreme and clashed horribly. Joel and Ann slept in there. There was a bed under the couch that came out.

The room that Mitch and I slept in. Those yellow shades brought in so much light. The second night, Ann pulled the curtain closed. We didn't wake up once until she came in at 12:30 and opened it. It was pitch black in there she said. No wonder we slept like rocks.

Smart car!! They are everywhere in Europe and I think they are hilarious.

In every picture I have seen of the Eiffel tower at night it is lit up gold. So I was shocked to see it blue. They have it sparkle with lights every so often at night too.

I was so anxious to eat a French crepe. So we got some for breakfast. Not gonna lie, it was gross. I don'l like the way the bread of the crepe tasted. I make them much better.

The Louvre-world famous museum

In a lot of pictures you see of Paris, there is a farris wheel. My uncle had never seen it, it wasn't on any maps, so we had no idea where it was. There it was...right by the Louvre.

Inside the Louvre. See how packed it was?

Mona Lisa. A tiny painting on a wall all to herself. The room was packed.

This must be famous. There were pictures and signs for it everywhere like the Mona Lisa. It's called "The Winged Victory of Samothrace". I thought it looked pretty cool.

Hercules

Napoleon's Apartment

Napoleon's bed

Napoleon's apartments

Arc de Triomphe. It is so much bigger than you think. Cars zoom around it. It took us a while and a little asking of some people to find out that there is an underground walkway to it.



Look how expressive it is!

This is the most famious shopping street in the world. It runs from the Arc de Triomphe. It had everything expensive and valuable there.

Sweet looking car.

My dinner for the night. Joel met us at the Arc de Triomphe and we went to eat. We had eaten lunch not too much earlier after going to the Louvre so I wasn't hungry. This was delicious!

Then we walked back to our hotel.

The next morning, I got the second food I was dying to have...a French croissant. It was delicious!!

While we ate, this one legged pigeon came hobbling over.

The Metro station!




Something really cool looking.

Notre Dame


Statue outside of Notre Dame. There was a HUGE line that we stood in to go inside the cathedral. It moved fast and the inside was beautiful.

Notre Dame from the side.

I don't remember what this is called, but it's famous.

View of Paris from Sacre-Coeur

Sacre-Coeur

We walked up this HUGE flight of stairs to Sacre-Coeur. It was hot out too. Ann and I barely made it.

This is right next to Sacre-Coeur. The whole town looked like that.

Live statue by Sacre-Coeur

We met up with Joel at the hotel and ate dinner. Then we walked to the Statue of Liberty (everyone seen National Treasure 2??) It was right outside our hotel.

It's in the middle of the Sienne river.

This is the Eiffel tower from the Statue of Liberty. The clouds were beautiful.

While taking pictures, Mitch had already crossed the road and was angry that we were still on the other side.

We rode the metro to Moulin Rouge in the morning. It is in the worst part of Paris. We quickly took pictures and got right back on the Metro because it was horrible there. Moulin Rouge was smaller than I expected.

This is the modern Arc. It is in the business part of town where Joel works. We got food and met him on the steps there.

Mitch and I with our French hats :D We headed home on the 6th. We were planning on getting there at night sometime, but Ann drove us 3 hours off schedule. So we got home really early in the morning.

Here is Mitch, Sam and I. We went up the mountain called Pilatus. They had this ropes course up there so we did it. The following pictures are from this. There was also a 1/2 mile long slide that is really fun, but right before we went on it, it started to rain. They closed it down and gave us our money back.

Here is a street in Italy. Joel had left the day we got back from France and took JoJo and Alex to Italy that night. He called at 1:00 in the morning saying he didn't have their passports and was scared that the hotel would called the police. So we loaded up the car and headed to Italy. We got there at 5:00 A.M. and slept in the car until 6:00 when Joel left for work. Then we got a room and slept till 10:00. We got up and drove to a beach.

Walking to the beach.


Here it is! It's on the Mediterranean Sea. It was really salty and the shore was rocky.


Me and Angela. Mitch is sitting down on my left and JoJo and Alex are on the right.

Sitting on the beach....well...stone steps to the beach.

We got a hotel for the night. We had three rooms. Joel, Angela, and JoJo were in one, Emma and Ann were in one, and Sam, Alex, Mitch, and I were in another. I stayed up to write in my journal and read while Sam and Alex watched a movie in Italian. Mitch was really frustrated because he wanted to sleep. It was a fun night except that there was no air conditioning. It was hot.

Mitch and I standing on the balcony in Joel and Angela's room.

In the morning, we drove to this cathedral in Milano (where we were staying).

Joel took this for my lover :D

Ok, this is an intersting story. We were walking across this courtyard and these men grabbed our hands, shoved bird seed in them, and then whistled for the birds to come land on us. They then promptly encouraged us to take pictures. Then they demanded payment. So Joel gave 5 euros for the 5 people they did this too. They wanted 5 euros for each person. Joel said they didn't say a price so he was going to give them only 5 euros. It made me mad. It was so dishonest.

On the way home from Italy, we stopped by this beach/pool right outside of Italy in Switzerland. There was the lake beach on one side with a dock in the lake and a pool on the other side with diving boards and stuff. It was so nice and warm out. There were a couple topless women too. Here is Sam and JoJo.

Joel went to the store called Migros (like Walmart) and got lunch.



Joel and Emma walking while I layed there in the sun.

Mitch and I on the dock sunbathing.

Angela took us to Zurich to go shopping.

This is the biggest face clock in the world. It was in Zurich.

We went to a beach in Switzerland. You always have to pay to go to the beach. It was cold out so only the kids swam. This is Emma and Alex. Sam was behind it trying to get on.

Here's me sitting on the beach....notice it's grass. All there is in Switzerland is grass. There is never gravel or dirt. It's grass.

Angela, JoJo and Sam at the beach.

And this is the view. It was beautiful.

Mitch and I played a lot of pool at my family's house. I won most of the time, granted he did always set up the 8 ball for me.

This is at Europa Park. It's like Disney Land....too much like Disney Land actually. It's set up the same way and the character is a mouse. He just looks different and the park is split up into all the Europe countries. The rides are similar to Disney Land but they have to do with the specific country they are in. This is part of the Berlin Wall since Europa park is in Germany.

Me and Angela in Europa park.

This is just one of the rides we went on. It was really fun. As you can see, it was cloudy. It sprinkled the whole time until an hour before the park closed. Then it started pouring. We went to an ice show and a horse jousting show. It was a really fun day.

This is the lion monument in Luzern, Switzerland. It was carved by the same man who did the Christus. It was much bigger than I expected. We spent the 16th in Luzern.

Ann finally found her George Clooney. She had to kiss him.

Eating lunch in Luzern.

We rented a paddle boat for an hour. My shirt really bothers me the way it lays on my chest. If I had known that then....

Everyone in this picture has a funny face.

Luzern has these really old wooden bridges. Inside of them are pictures of the Black Plague. Some of them are burned...I'm not sure why.

We got ice cream before heading home.


This was the last night in Europe. We went for a walk down my family's street with the neighbors.

I had such an amazing time. Europe is so beautiful and full of history. I love my family so much and miss them dearly. It will be a time I never forget. We flew home on August 18th. We left at 10:00 A.M. and landed in Utah at 6:45 P.M. the same day. Again...it was like we were up all night. I never sufferend from jet lag too much. I wasn't tired at all for like 2 days and then I crashed. But I slept great through the night instead of getting up at 4:00 in the morning wide awake like Mitch and Ann.