A quick update- Hungary!

Since I last posted we have been to nine cities in Italy, two cities in Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, and now we are in Budapest Hungary. Getting to Hungary was quite the ordeal. Between late trains and bad directions, our 30 hour journey to Budapest turned into a 48 hour journey; that included two nights of "sleeping" on trains. Not the brightest two days of our trip. Frustration ran high at some points, and exhaustion began to set in but as only God can do, our extended trip was redeemed by some pretty cool things. One of which was meeting a guy named Thor, who was bunking with us on our sleeper train. Thor is on his trip of hitting every country in the world (201 countries)! His rules are: he must spend at least 24 hours in every country, he can't go home before he finishes, and he cannot fly at any point. He estimates the trip will take around 4 years. Thor is so smart he got his trip sponsored. As you can imagine Thor was a pretty interesting guy, we really enjoyed our time talking to him. If your interested in reading more about his adventure you can find information at http://www.onceuponasaga.dk.

We've spent a couple days in Budapest (heading out tomorrow). It's a really cool city. Food and lodging are cheap so we are enjoying our first, and probably only, four star hotel, as well as a lot of eating out! We visited a bath house which is apparently a very Hungarian thing to do. The one we went to was from the 1920s with Art Deco deccore- totally our style! Many thermal baths and steam rooms. It was quite the luxurious experience. 

Shower caps were a must in the pools.

Some castle thing...

We found a Christmas tree tonight!Can you tell I'm excited? 

We head out to Austria tomorrow to see our friend, Juliana for a couple days! I'll try to post Italy and Greece pictures soon. 

England

Jumping back in time. We went to England weeks ago but pictures never made it online.
I loved being in England, it was refreshing to be back in the English speaking world, even if it was for just a few days. It was weird being able to read again, and understand what everyone around us was saying, We only spent a few days there, which we were glad about in the end because London is SO expensive.
During our time in England we enjoyed walking around London and seeing the sites. One night we went to a play, Rock Of Ages; seriously one of the funnest things we have ever done! Neither Andrew or I are very into theater, but it was a great experience to see a production of that caliber.
We spent one of our days on a tour. The tour took us to Windsor Castle, Roman Bath Houses in the city of Bath, and Stonehenge. The whole tour was cool but we were both in awe at Stonehenge- it was surreal being there.

Big Ben 

 

Vinegar anyone?

 

Pretty bridge. Reminded me of Disney Land :)

 

We got to see the changing of the guard!

 

Series continued: Natalie worthy of Sculpture

 

Start of a new series for the kids:

Where is Andrew?

(Click the picture to make it bigger)

 

Windsor Castle

 

Chapel at the Castle

 

Roman Bathes

 

 

Finish with our favorite: Stonehenge

 

 

 

Italy pt. 1

Okay, so I am officially three countries behind on our blog! Yikes. As it turns out, its more fun being out exploring Europe and hanging out with my husband than it is posting pictures online, go figure. Andrew is doing our dinner dishes right now, so being on the computer sounds alright now. 

We have seen some pretty incredible things the last few days that I really don't want to miss out on sharing with our friends and family! We are currently in Como, Italy. Como is a beautiful lake city in northern Italy. Here's what we've been up to:

Night out in Como: Ice cream and views of the lake. Best ice cream I've ever had.... YUM.

We went hiking in the mountains just next to the town we were staying: check out the view.

 

We took a bus boat to a couple other cities on the lake. This lake is huge, it took us two hours to get to the other city and that's only half way across the lake. One of our stops along the lake was where they filmed Naboo lake country  in Star Wars Episode II. As you can imagine the nerd in our family was pretty excited! As it turns out, “Naboo” just might have been the most gorgeous place I have ever been, so I was happy too! It’s a lakeside villa. It was one of those places that its almost disappointing to try to take pictures of because they just don’t do it justice, but we did our best.

There's Naboo!

This is Andrew's I'm-so-excited face, mixed with stop-making-me-look-at-the-camera-I-want-to-see-Naboo face.

Nerds will get this.. I guess.

 

 

Andrew planks Naboo

 

Today we hopped on a train and went to Switserland. There we found a huge old castle in the town. Not much to say about here other than we had so much fun.

Andrew's impersonation of the classic tourist.

Belgium

I love fall so much. We just spent a lovely afternoon walking around Berlin, Germany. All the leaves are changing here and the air is crisp. It makes me so incredibly happy; there was a point today when I literally jumped for joy. We went to a park where they have kareoke. It’s really quite bizarre because hundreds of people show up to laugh and cheer and sing karaoke together. Unfortunately their list of “singers” was full for the day so we didn’t get the chance to perform.
Since I last posted we’ve been to Belgium, the England, and now Germany. But since I have fallen behind on posting I’ll focus this post on Belgium now and hopefully find time to post about London soon!

We had wonderful time in Belgium. We spent most of our time in Bruges. We were there for a week. It was a relaxing week which is just what we needed after being so busy in Paris! I think of our week in Bruges as the “week of the bikes”; our host provided us with bicycles which we were able to use to get everywhere. It was so refreshing to feel independent again after traveling solely public transportation for weeks! One day we took an 11 mile bike right to the beach. The bike ride was beautiful. We rode along the river, past tall trees, green pastures and old cottages. Then when we arrived it was a totally different landscape- very beachy (if you can believe it)! That bike ride was one of our favorite things we have done during our time in Europe. For all our friends who have seen the movie In Bruges, we had a fun time quoting it this week and finding sights from the movie.

After Bruges, we went to Belgium for a few days to meet up with a family friend of Andrew’s, Jeff. Jeff is a missionary in Europe. We were able to attend one of the worship leading conferences he puts on. It was very encouraging to gather with Christians from across the world. We went to Jeff’s church the next day. The church has an international congregation made up of over 70 nationalities! Pretty amazing. We also hung out with the worship band that was in town leading music for the conference. It was great to hang out with them and Jeff; we felt like we had friends again. Even though our time with these people was brief, we were very encouraged by them. God knew just who we needed to meet. 

 

Fall in Berlin

Today in Berlin!

Ok,  Now Belgium:

 

This is what much of the path looked like on our bike ride to the beach

Now at the beach!

 

 The Bell Tower

 

 Up in the bell tower

We took a boat tour

And of course a windmill!