Paris, France - Aug 6 - 8, 2009

We spent 3 nights in Paris and both fell in love with the city. It is so beautiful! Everywhere you look there is amazing architecture and lush parks. We were pretty jet lagged from the flight. We arrived at 7:30am local time. Back in Calgary it was 11:30pm. We didn't get a lot of sleep on the plane so that really screwed with our internal clocks. We spent the first morning wandering around the Republique area with our heavy backpacks. This is the first city where we actually had to carry our packs around. We quickly realized we need to reduce the weight of our packs by at least 20% each.

We ended up staying at the Absolute Hostel. It's in a convenient location and everyone there is very friendly. We didn't spend a lot of time at the hostel, it was pretty much just a place to sleep. We were very busy every day. We visited the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame Cathedral, Moulon Rouge, Cafe d'Amelie, the Pantheon, Arc de Triumphe, Nepoleon's Tomb, the Louvre Museum and a ton of other landmarks. We got to see the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo.

We saw most of the landmarks during a 6 hour walking tour. It was great! Our guide was actually from Vancouver, haha. She came here to study and decided to stay permanently.

One of Carolina's favorite landmarks was the Louvre Museum. It is massive! They have over 350,000 pieces of art!! The inverted pyramid was incredible. These ridiculous Parisians actually considered moving the entire museum further down the street so it would be in a perfect alignment with the Arc de Triumphe and the Eiffel Tower. I can't imagine how much that would cost.

The Mona Lisa was a bit disappointing. You have to fight your way through massive crowds, then it is behind bullet proof glass and you have to stand 10 feet back from it.


The Arc de Triumphe is in the centre of the largest traffic circle in Paris (possibly Europe??). Our guide told us that there is an car accident every 30 minutes!!


We enjoyed a coffee at cafe where the movie Amelie took place, specially for Neto :) This was followed by the best gelato we have ever tasted!

On our last night we went back to the Eiffel Tower. The city spends 6000 euros in electricity each night lighting up the tower and park. We brought some wine and had a romantic picnic in the park. It seemed almost unreal.


One of the highlights for me was when we checked out the grocery store. Ryan and Duke, you'll appreciate this more than anyone (or likely you will be the only ones). They sell 1 Litre YOPs in Paris!! I ALMOST convinced Carolina that it would be wise to buy 3 litres of YOP instead of bread and lunch meat, but she won that round... haha


The subway system was a little intimidating at first. Paris has 3 different train operators that offer a combined 24 lines/routes that spider-web throughout the city. Tickets purchased for 1 operator don't work for another operator... We opted to buy the more expensive day passes that worked on all 3. Once we started doing some traveling we quickly realised how organized and dependable their system is. There is a train every 3 - 4 minutes and everything is laid out in a very easy to follow way. What a huge contrast from Calgary that only has 2 train lines and can't even keep them on schedule.

We rate Paris - 4 out of 5 La Libertie Belles... or something like that...

The next stop is Brussels, Belgium!

P.S. Daddy you never wanted to tell me the story of Jacques de Molay but guess what?! My uncle Chacho mentioned it haha and the tour guide told me everything wohohohaha

Mexico - July 26 - Aug 3, 2009

We spent last week in Cancun with Carolina's family. It was VERY hot and humid all week. It's rainy season right now, but fortunately we didn't see a drop of rain until the very last day. It was gorgeous and sunny out every day. Temperatures were in the mid to high 30s all week, but it felt a LOT hotter with the humidity.

Here's some of the stuff we did and checked out throughout the week:

Tulum Beach - Amazing white sand and unbelievably blue water. We spent the afternoon at the beach enjoying the weather.


Xcaret - This is an excellent excursion that I recommend to anyone that goes to Cancun. I can't remember exactly, but it was about an hour south of cancun. It's like a big mayan theme park. We started off the morning snorkeling through underground caves and rivers. We spent the entire afternoon exploring the area. We had a buffet dinner and watched an incredible show in the evening. The show walked through the rich history and culture of Mexico. I REALLY enjoyed the show. It was definitely one of the best parts of the trip.


Chichen Itza - We spent an afternoon exploring the old Mayan ruins. We had a great tour guide that was very knowledgable and charismatic so it really made it enjoyable. The guide only spoke spanish so I relied on Carolina and Ernesto to translate the parts I didn't understand. I would really recommend this day trip to any who vacations in the area as well. The architecture is amazing; it's hard to believe how advanced it is for being so old. There was so much detail. In the ... arena? the corridor was designed so when you clap it echoes exactly 7 times, once for each player on the team. If you clap near the main pyramid it actually transforms the echo to sound like one of the native birds in the area.


Xel-Ha - We spent a full day here. It is basically an all inclusive resort full of fun activities. You pay the admission and everything inside is included (even drinks and food). We started by cruising along a bike trail to where an underground river comes to surface. This area is very unique because it is where the fresh water (underground) meets the salty sea water. We grabbed some snorkel gear and rafts and floated down the river all the way to the beach. There was a ton of stuff to do here, cliff diving, tarzan ropes, jaguars, bike trails, several restaurants and a nice beach.



Coco Bongo - This is a nightclub in Cancun. You have to see it to believe it. It was a great time! We picked up cheaper tickets in the afternoon. These tickets got us in with no line and we got free tshirts too. You only need to pay the admission, once you are inside all the drinks are included. We got there around 11. They have a big stage above the bar and they put on shows throughout the entire evening. They did something like 20 different shows. We finally dragged ourselves out around 4:30, haha. I'm not sure if it was something we drank but both me and Ernesto ended up pretty sick the next day. Not the usual hang over, we both had really bad stomach aches and cold sweats. I was freezing cold but couldn't stop sweating. Luckily Perla knew just what to get us from the pharmacy and we were ready for more action by the afternoon, haha.

Backpacking Through Europe

We decided to start a travel blog to post pictures and keep our friends and family in the loop. We officially started our adventure last week, but we are a bit behind getting the blog started. We are planning to update this blog at least once or twice per week throughout our trip.

For those of you that may not know, we are backpacking through Europe for just over 2 months. We start in Germany and wind our way through Austria, Switzerland, Italy, France and Spain.

We will end the backpacking portion mid-October and the next steps are still up in the air.

Ok enough with the background stuff, we know what you want to see.

The Route.

We have a fair bit of time for this trip so we are keeping our route flexible. We have major stops and tentative dates plotted out, but we both agree that none of that is set in stone. If we hear about a town or city that we really need to see, then we'll go see it. If we get bored of a city we will move on and if we really like one we might stay an extra day or two. We know that it's easy to get carried away and we don't want to have 2 months fly by and still be in the first country so we have set a few tollgates or deadlines that we want to hit. For example we need to be in Italy by Sept 1st and Spain by Sept 30th.

Without further ado, here is our tentative route:

Jul 26	-	Cancun, Mexico
Aug 03	-	New York, USA
Aug 06	-	Paris, France
Aug 09	-	Brussels, Germany
Aug 10	-	Luxembourg, Luxembourg
Aug 11	-	Dusseldorf, Germany
Aug 12	-	Essen, Germany
Aug 13	-	Cologne, Germany
Aug 14	-	Frankfurt, Germany
Aug 16	-	Munich, Germany
Aug 19	-	Fussen, Germany
Aug 20	-	Vienna (Wien), Austria
Aug 2	-	Salzburg, Austria
Aug 25	-	Innsbruck, Austria
Aug 28	-	Zurich, Switzerland
Aug 31	-	Luzern, Switzerland
Sep 02	-	Bern, Switzerland
Sep 05	-	Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland
Sep 07	-	Milan (Milano), Italy
Sep 10	-	Venice (Venezia), Italy
Sep 13	-	Florence (Firenze), Italy
Sep 16	-	Naples (Napoli), Italy
Sep 19	-	Rome (Roma), Italy
Sep 22	-	Pisa, Italy
Sep 23	-	Monte Carlo, Monaco
Sep 25	-	Monaco, Monaco
Sep 27	-	Nice, France
Sep 30	-	Montpellier, France
Oct 01	-	Barcelona, Spain
Oct 06	-	Valencia, Spain
Oct 09	-	Seville, Spain
Oct 12	-	Madrid, Spain