two drifters off to see the world, there's such a lot of world to see

Friday, 10/18/19, 3:40pm; Sunday, 01/05/20, 12:22pm; Monday, 01/06/20, 11:33am, 3:38pm, 5:15pm

hey what's up. I started this post in October, as seen above, and am just getting back to it again now, 2.5 months later. oi. that's kinda sad. this is going to be a really long post though, mostly pictures.

I've been meaning to get on here and do a nice big post about our Europe trip (mine and Nasser's) back in June/July. I feel old, but, where has the time gone????

first thing quickly, I took part in a video recording earlier this year, talking about my illness. that video was posted at the beginning of October, on the NAMI Boulder County website, and on YouTube. it's here, if you want to check it out. I've shared it a fair bit at this point, so you'd think I'd feel comfortable with myself on it, but uh, not really. I wish I appeared stronger, or something. oh well.

moving on though, we started our Europe trip out of Chicago (after leaving the boys there with Grandma). we had a crummy hiccup in the beginning with our flight Chicago to London being cancelled (after we sat at the airport for a long, long time with delay after delay). it did unfortunately mean that we couldn't catch our train from London to Amsterdam. Nasser is amazing however and spent several hours on the phone with American Airlines, and after a couple re-bookings, we flew on the same flight the following day from Chicago and they flew us from London to Amsterdam after that. we missed almost a full day in Amsterdam sadly, but did end up with a few hours that evening to enjoy dinner and walking around.

the next day started our tour week in the Netherlands with my choir. we met everyone at the airport, most of them had flown in that morning and were exhausted, like we were the night before. the week was really nice despite the heat, but we did realize by the end of it that we're not made out for a big tour kind of trip. we were in a large group, so a lot of the activities were pretty touristy and all of us together. plus it was a river cruise but we had to spend quite a bit of time on the bus to get to smaller towns. over the week we toured many small towns in the Netherlands, had a day and a half in Amsterdam most of which was free time, performed 3 concerts, got to see cheese and wooden shoes being made, and toured a windmill. here are some highlights.

Delft hand painted pottery:

free cycling in a little national park:



pub in Doesburg built in 1478:

 some of the cool towns we saw:

 

 the deck of our boat by day and by night:

two of the concerts:

 

cheese:   :)

wooden clogs:

Garfield in Dutch:

bikes and bike rush hour in Amsterdam:

the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam:





the canals of Amsterdam:

windmills:

    

last dinner with the choir:

at the end of the week and after saying goodbye to all the choir folks, we took the Thalys train to Paris, which was really nice and we ended up with 1st class which was actually cheaper than regular. unfortunately both the Netherlands and Paris were rather miserably hot (like upper 90s), and I don't tolerate crazy heat too well. so that was hard. and then Nasser got sick; he ended up with a fever in Paris so that limited us more, especially one of the days. I still dragged him around a lot. we saw many of the iconic spots like the Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe, visited the Musee d'Orsay, walked a lot, ate amazing food. we saw, only from the outside of course, Notre Dame in the aftermath of the major fire last year. no more spire and lots of scaffolding. one of the things that struck me was seeing all the smoke damage on the outsides of nearby buildings. one of my favorite things in Paris was Le Mur des Je t'aime (aka the wall of I love yous). it's made of blue tiles with I love you written on them in 250 languages. I found the Lithuanian one of course.

after Paris we flew to Dublin where we rented a car. I got to do the driving, on the left side of the road of course, but we splurged for an automatic car since trying to shift with my left hand sounded terrifying. driving on the left wasn't the hard part though; many of those roads are very narrow with some appearing like they should be one way... but aren't. and then there are often bushes on the sides of the roads, which often hide stone walls. so yeah. kinda hard. I have a video below which portrays the craziness of those roads. enjoy. :)

in Ireland, we drove to Limerick, via Rock of Cashel and Hore Abbey which were pretty cool to check out. we stayed the night in Limerick (enjoying one of the women's soccer world cup games at a local pub. I should have mentioned this earlier- being in Europe during the world cup was really fun). the next morning we went and saw King John's Castle in Limerick which was just down the street from the hotel. this is King John as in Robin Hood. in England he was Prince John; in Ireland he was King John. the castle was really fun and not crowded so we really got to check everything out. we even got to try out some archery there. from Limerick we drove to the Cliffs of Moher which was so incredible. (I think that particular day was one of my absolute favorite of the trip. we spent several hours at the Cliffs of Moher, walking all the way from the visitors center south to a little tower they call Hag's Head and back which was 10km. so lots of walking. it was wonderful). from the Cliffs, we headed to Galway where we spent 2 nights. our second night in Galway we befriended some drunk guys in a pub who kept buying us drinks. Nasser was treated to 2 whiskies at €25 EACH! and we had at least 3 rounds of shots with these people! I guess we got the true Irish drinking experience. after Galway we drove to Dublin, spent a couple hours in the city, visited Trinity College briefly, and then flew to London. check out some of Ireland below.

Nasser happened to capture this perfect representation of the small country roads:

Nasser's favorite beverage in Ireland:

Rock of Cashel:

 

getting to Hore Abbey we had to go through this fence designed to keep the sheep and cows in:

Hore Abbey:

dinner and drinks in Limerick while watching the world cup game

King John's Castle and museum:

Cliffs of Moher (sorry not sorry for the flood of photos):

Galway, including our night out:

Dublin:

we really enjoyed London. it's huge and crowded, like Paris was, but having better weather and a really good hotel location made a big difference. oh yeah, and Nasser was feeling much better by this point. our hotel in London was nice and central next to Leicester Square. it was walking distance to most of what we did. we walked to some of the major sites like Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben, Buckingham Palace. sadly the construction around Big Ben made it so we could barely tell what it was. we did the fancy tea thing, which was so incredibly fun and I had not realized scones could taste that good. we saw Les Miserables in one of the final weeks of the traditional staging. on our way to the airport on our final day, we took a couple pit stops to see Platform 9¾ and the Tardis. from London we flew back to Chicago, spent a day with family there, and then flew home to catch up on sleep! check out our London photos below.

some of the famous London sites:

high tea, with a million and one options for the tea:

seeing the world cup final at an Irish pub in London (so so cool!):

 cool little square/alley called Neal's Yard:

nighttime walking, including Buckingham Palace:

Les Mis:

shop at Platform 9¾:

 the Tardis:

since the summer, we've done even more travel actually. I did a girls' trip to Banff National Park in Canada, we took a big family cruise (with my parents, my siblings and their families- all 17 of us!!) to the Caribbean, and we went to Chicago for a quick trip at New Years for Nasser's grandmother's birthday.

since it's been super super long since writing I suppose I should address that I'm not sure what the blog is going to be in my future. although tonight is not the night to decide that. haha. going to simply get this uploaded so it's not weighing on my shoulders. anyway, enjoy.