God... Theres so much sand on the beach....

So taking a bit of a break from the bus trip, I though I would update you on what I've been up to in real life. (ok more like exchange student life)

This last weekend, was a long one. One of my canadian friends named Kristy, from Ontario, invited me to go alone with her and her host parents to the south for a first and last beach holiday.

We were super lucky with the weather and didn't really see any clouds at all. Well maybe like the two wispy ones in the photo there. But really it was wonderful weather. Thank you weather god, as my mom would say.

So after the bus trip we were feeling so VERY worn out from seeing guided tours and momuments, that we told her host parents that we didn't want to see any towns, or statues or buildings or know any history. We just wanted to see the beach.

And thats what we did.....

Well sort of. We went to a super cool town called St. Tropez for one evening, because the people there are just so rich and excentric. All the yachts that are featured on like yacht shows and magazines, live here. And victoria BC apparently, but there were lots there. I've never seen such big expensive boats before.
One night, when the sun was no longer good for tanning, we went to the nearest town for ice cream, found a bar playing jazz and we totally danced a bit. It was good fun.

This picture is me and kristy playing in the sand. We made some pretty small drip castles and we even made moats and stuff to go around them, so the water wouldn't get it. We had so much fun. We laughed till we had abs as hard as a counter, then had at least two ice creams a day to make up for the mucscle gain.

The islandy thing in the back ground, has a HUGE castle / house on it, and its the summer residence of Jacques Chirac, (the president of France- its ok I didn't know before I came here either!!)

It was kinda funny because on the first day, we were totally out there in our 15 spf, all day trying to get tan, then the second day it was like, "ok a little bit of 25 on the burns" and by the last day I had 60 spf on, a tee shirt, and a hat, sitting under the umbrella.
It was so fun. I did get pretty tan. I've never put so much lotion on my body in a four day period in my entire life. Its was nuts.

Thank you kristy.

'Twas the first day of the bus trip...

The bus trip started in paris. We got up all at 4 30 am to catch the early train. When we got to the station at about 9 am we had to wait till about noon for the others to get there. Nothing more fun than waiting in the Gare de Lyon for 3 and a bit hours!! Then we did a guided tour of Paris, to which no one listened because we were all so excited to meet and talk to each other.
It was only on the bus, we got off at the garden of Luxembourg and at the eiffel tower and thats it. It wasn't top, as the french would say,but it was paris. These are all the Canadains on the bus trip in front of the tower. Including Paloma, a girl from Kelowna, that I knew back home.

This picture is for ben. There really are gaps ALL over the world. You were right. Note the Champs Elyees sign right beside it.
We stayed in a hostel in Reims, and I put this picture up because it shows that we were tired, even on the first night, from getting up so early.

After that we slept, and that was the end of the first day, in Paris.

And today, Germany

Germany was the first country we visited outside of France.

It was pretty nifty. The buildings looked very german, meaning a little more stark and the brick was darker I found.

It was pouring rain and really not very pleasant weather wise, unless your a fan of cold biting weather.

We stayed in Munich in a hostel, called the "Easy Palace" I'm going to let you all make up your minds about this one.

We had a guided tour with a guy who was really funny and cool. He took us to the beer hall in munich, across from the hard rock café and a few other cool sights.

The beer hall was definatly the coolest I've ever seen in my limited, (not being legal age in my home country) experience. For starters it was HUGE, and there were all sorts of people and a band playing good beer drinking songs and they served beers to go along with the size of the room. A normal beer was 1 litre. In a mug. Definatly a meal sized beer. Not too shabby. The ambience was fantastic.
*rotary side note, I did not drink this beer, this is picture was taken simply to show everyone the immense size. *

Later on in the evening when we had a chance to go back, I just sat there with my bustrip buddy Dina Marie and laughed and laughed. It was a good time. We all had to come home at 11, unfortunatly, but it was fun trying to figure out the metro in a non english or french speaking country. I've never felt more like a tourist in my entire life. It was bitter sweet.

We got back to our room, had indepth political dicussions until at least 2 or 3 am then went to sleep. the next day we left for Austria.

And that was Germany.

Venice to start.

Because it has been ages and ages since I've written I will start off with a general greeting,

Hello everybody I hope you are all well and prospering.

I have been home from my european bus trip for about three days now and have come to my first families home again to recount the stories to you via their FUNCTIONING computer.

So gereralities: The euro tour was great. We were 54 in the bus and we drove from Paris, to germany, Austria, Italie, the south of France, Switzerland and before finishing, once again in paris.

I made some AMAZING friends, that I will never forget and had lots of laughs and dreams come true with them during the past 12 days.

I have so many pictures and memories, I think I'm going to do this Kelly style and let the trip last me for the next few weeks as well. Today I will do Venice, because I happen to have the pictures here. In the following posts I will do a city each time.

Venice was cool, really touristic and completely void of any locals, but beautiful all the same.


This is where we started. This is the gondola parking lot and the yellow building is a best western hotel. There really is no escaping them.

The things I remember about Venice are the following:
- I was sick. After 4 days of not getting to sleep before 2 or 3 am I was totally sick. I coughed so much during my illness on the bus trip, that when I came back I had abs like steel. (Ha!) Everytime I coughed it was like a little situp. I actually fell asleep on the boat going to Venice. Who does that?

-The pigeons. Stacks and stacks of them in the main square. People would buy bags of corn and put it on their hats or arms and have pigeons covering them.
Yumm what an excellent way to catch dinner and the bird flu in one clean act.
One could say, hittong two birds with one stone.....? ok enough with the puns.

-We took a gondala ride, which was an absolute must do, and it was so romantic. It really was like in the movies, with the exception of the chunks of garbage floating in the water and occasional funky odour.

- the prada bags. In the bag in this picture lies ONE THOUSAND AND FIFTY euros. In other words 2 bags and one wallet.
The legs on the right belong to Dina Marie, my new best bustrip bubby (just had to add in the alliteration) an american who knows how to shop.
The good 45 minutes to an hour we spent in that Prada store making the sales man run all around looking for the perfect purse is my new personal all time high shopping memory. Wow, such class. Bravo Dina Marie.


So thats all I'm going to say today about the bus trip, but next time I write (I promise it won't be soo long) I will take you somewhere else far away and european.