New Blog!

Hey everyone! We can't believe it's been a year since we've been in Europe! In two days we are going to be taking a holiday on the East coast for two weeks, so we're going to be writing a blog about our adventures! Not as exciting as Europe, but if you'd like to check it out the web address is www.eastcoastheyde.blogspot.com.

Aurevoir!

So, I think this is our last post. I know, so sad... I didn't think this day would come! Even though the beginning of this trip seems like years ago.

All right, Barcelona! I think we all really liked it. In the morning we went to the beach and it was sooo beautiful! Loved it!

Then we walked up La Rambla, and just did some sight-seeing of old buildings and churches. We had lunch and then went to see Sagrada Familia, a church they have been building for over a 100 years, and it's still not done! But it was SO beautiful inside!!

I just wanted to take pictures of EVERYTHING. The stained glass windows made it look so beautiful. We walked around a bit more and did some shopping, then headed to bed, since we had to get up early the next day for our flight to PARIS!

Friday: Left our place at 7:15 so we could take the bus to the airport. Got to Paris at 11:45! Our place is really nice, and this is the view right outside the door:

Yep, pretty neat :). We walked a little ways and stopped at a cafe for crepes! Mmm mmm., they were good. Then we took a bus to Pere La Chaise, a cemetery  that has over 70,00 people buried there!! There are also a lot of famous people there. We only had 45 min. so the only person we found was Georges Melies, but it was really nice just walking around there.

In the evening we went to a spot that has a beautiful view of the Eiffel Tower... it was so cool to see it all lit up like that!

Saturday we went to Notre Dame! It was cool inside, although the bell tower was closed so we could't go up it! We also wen to another church, St. Chapple, which has a lot of the Bible in stained glass!

We had lunch from the market and then we went to a couple museums, which had paintings by Renoir, Monet, and Van Gogh. That was so cool to actually see those paintings in real life!

After that we went up the Eiffel Tower!! That was so scary, but so cool! I can't believe how high it is!

What a neat experience.

Sunday we pretty much spent all day at Versailles. Wow, what place! So so big.

I was really cool to see the inside, but I think everyone's favourite part was the gardens!

They are so vast, it would take you days to walk around it all! And we also were there at the right time to see the fountains go off!

We stayed there until about 5:00 and then we went back into Paris and went out for supper, where I finally got escargot!

And now, it's 7:50 in the morning and we're just about to take a taxi to the airport to fly back home! I seriously can't believe we did this, and that it's over already! There were ups and downs, but I think we all had a fantastic time, and we definitely have not seen the last of Europe! Thanks everyone for praying for us, and just knowing that you read this means the world to us! See you soon :).

Love, Sarah and Madeline

When in Rome...

Well, I have to say, I think Venice was my favourite place so far. Actually they're all  my favourite, but still, it was AWESOME!

So yeah, picked up Jessica Saturday night, then on Sunday morning we took a vaporetto to San Michele, and Island off of Venice that's pretty much just a graveyard. That was cool, and there were so many skinks everywhere!! Then we took another vaporetto to Morano, and Island famous for it's glass. SO many glass shops everywhere... and in some shops the artists were making their glass jewelry/figures right in front of you! And of course we had to get more gelato!

Then we took a vaporetto to our house and got pizza :). Love love love the pizza! I think I had it every day here. Then we took a vaporetto down the grand canal to see all the buildings and stuff, and just see Venice. We walked around a bit too, after the sun went down. It was all so pretty! Then we had dinner at a restaurant, but we sat outside, right over the grand canal! That was really cool.

Monday we got up and went to Piazza San Marco, the main square in Venice. We went there to see San Marco Basilica, the church where apparently Mark's (from the Bible) bones are! So we go in and the entire ceiling is mosaic, and most of it is gold!! And the ceiling was huge too.... it was so crazy!! So so pretty. We went up to the balcony outside, and we were overlooking the Piazza!

Then we went into the Doge's Palace. That was pretty cool- it was so so huge, and inside was the world's largest canvas painting! We had lunch and then climbed up a bell tower, which gave us a great view of Venice!

 We then shopped for breakfast and took a little rest, then got more gelato and went for a gondola ride!! That was so much fun- we went down only the small quiet canals, so it was so pretty. Our gondolier even sang a bit!

If you've watch The Italian Job, do you remember that part where they escape in the boat, near the beginning, and the boat speeds out of the garage? Well, we floated by that exact spot!! So so cool.

Tuesday morning we took a train to Rome, and then the scary metro to the Colosseum. This is what we saw when we came out of the station.

I KNOW SO COOL RIGHT!! We saw sooooo many cool things- the Forum, Caesar Augustus's house, the Arch of Constantine... it was awesome! And this was the original stone road!

That was super fun, and it was so so hot, like 24 degrees, and we were all wearing pants! So then we went back to the station and took a train at 7:12 to Civitavecchia where we boarded our ferry to Barcelona!! The ferry was pretty nice-Jess was in an all-girls dorm room, but turned out she was the only one in the room! So Madeline and I slept with her. So then we left about 10:15 Tuesday night and got to Barcelona at about 7:30 today! Since we're 5 people we had to take two taxis to our place, but our taxi driver didn't speak any english so he was driving my mom and I to the wrong place at first... but we got to the right place after a bit of confusion, so it's all good. Our place is right on the La Rambla, the main street in Barcelona, and we're on the 3d floor so it's super fun to watch everything that's going on!

Since I know a LITTLE bit of spanish it's really nice being hear, compared to Italy, because I can actually understand a few things. Super excited to explore tomorrow!

Down to the Boot

Hey people! Sorry it's been a while since we've posted anything. Internet has been rare and it's harder then we thought to find time. So I'll do a quick update of Thursday -Saturday.

Thursday- Another wonderful day in Salzburg...besides all the rain, which poured the whole afternoon and night. So today we did some more shopping and went to Mirabell Gardens where some of The Sound of Music was filmed! Does anybody remember when the kids line up on the stairs after singing in the garden? That's where we were!

We also we Augustiner Brau stube which was  Benedictine Monestary that has been serving it's own brew for hundreds of years! Of course my dad loved it. It was really nice and we got to sit outside under a patio and no one was outside so it was nice and quiet. After that we went home and dried out our clothes for our Mozart evening concert! It was absolutley amazing! They played three twenty minute pieces, accompanied by two great opera singers, in between courses. It was awesome!

Friday- We had to get up early this morning and walk down to the museum five minute walk away to get picked up from our taxi by seven. But of course when we walked down it wasn't raining but snowing! We also had to wait for 20 minutes for our taxi, good thing we bought some umbrellas. Our taxi driver drove us to the train station and we went on our train bound for Vienna! We had a little bit of a mix up with trains but we eventually got there just an hour later then scheduled. In Vienna we were able to put our suitcases in a locker so all we had was our purses which was wonderful! In Vienna we walked around quite a bit and we were finally able to take a horse and buggy tour after not doing one in Brugge or Salzburg.

While we were there we visited St. Stephan's Cathedral in which you were able to walk up the 343 step spiral staircase into the south tower! At the top it had a wonderful view of the city! It was really fun except going down because I got really dizzy.

After that we went to the Sacher Hotel and ate their famous Sacher Torte in their cafe. 

.After that we picked up some supper and went on our overnight night train to Venice! Our room was quite small but it was better then sleeping in chairs.

Saturday-After a restless night we arrived in Venice! It was weird being in a country where you didn't know any of their language. In all the other countries they spoke English or German so it was easy to get by since my mom and dad know German but here it was kinda scary at first. But almost everyone we talked to spoke really good English since it is a tourist city. We saw three different churches that day and got to take our first vaporetto! A vaperetto is just like a water bus. The place we were staying was beautiful!It had a kitchen, living room, two bathrooms and two bedrooms! It was so nice to have your own bed that's not three feet away from the ceiling. 

Also today we met up with Jessica! She'll be traveling with us for the rest of our journey, if she can stand us for that long. Of course we had some pizza and gelato which was delicious! The streets there are so confusing. If you look around yourself amost everyone is looking at a map. Though the map doesn't always help. We did run into a few dead ends that lead into a wall or a canal!

That's all for now and Sarah will tell the rest of what happened tomorrow or the next day, so ciao for now!

Castles, castles everywhere.

Hey guys! Sorry we haven't been posting all that much- it actually takes more effort than we thought, with all the pictures and stuff, and lack of internet! But I'll catch you up on what happened these past couple days.

So... Monday. We got up, ate, and walked down to the Rhein (about 10 min. walk from our hotel) to do a cruise down the river! By the way our place is SO nice... it only has 10 rooms, so it's nice and small, and our room is the biggest one we have had yet, and we have a deck! So we cruised down the Rhein which was SO SO beautiful. The fall colours are gorgeous!

By the way, those are vineyards on the hill. I know, crazy steep! We cruised to a town called St. Goar and  walked up a hill to Borg Rheinfels, a castle/fortress from the 12th century!

It was sooo so cool! You could climb around pretty much anywhere, and there were passageways and stairwells everywhere which you needed a flashlight to get through. There were even these long tunnels only 3 ft. high that had thin slate roofs with which they used to put mines in to blow up enemies above ground. There are about 600 ft. of these tunnels left intact... we crawled partway through one, it was so scary! This picture is us going down one dark stairwell.

We had lunch in a restaurant near the fortress and then we drove our rental car to another castle, Borg Eltz.

This castle is actually still owned (and lived in) by the 33rd generation of the Eltz family! We were able to tour part of it, it was really interesting, but I have to say I liked the first castle better!

Tuesday was pretty much a train day. We had a leisurely morning of shopping and then we drove to the train station in Frankfurt and dropped the car off. Our first train to Munich was from 1:54-5:12, and the second one from Munich to Salzburg was from 5:23-6:57. Guess which train had a ten minute delay?? You got it. So we had one minute to get from our first train to our second train. We asked the conductor about changing our ticket, but he actually said they'd hold the train for us! Our first train actually came in about 5:17, but we didn't want to take any chances, so we speed walked it over to our platform. And we made it :) Here's Mads and I enjoying the beautiful German scenery out our train window.

So. Got to Salzburg. Took a taxi to our hostel which is WAY on top a mountain. The driver couldn't take us right to the door so we walked part of they way. Get to the hostel and no ones there. We buzz the buzzer and there's no answer. Nobody's inside (there's only 6 rooms). We phone them and there's no answer. So my dad decides to check the doors to see if any are open... there was one open so we assumed it's our room. So we texted our Pastor back home and asked him to check my dads email to see if we have a code from the owner for the lock box at the front where all the keys are. There was no email. It's about 8:30 by this time so we're all getting really hungry so we weren't really sure what to do cuz we didn't want to just leave our stuff there. Then we see there's a number on the front door that's different than the one we called. So we called and left a message and a minute later they texted us with a code! Woohoo!! So that wasn't so fun, but hey we got our room eventually! So we ate and went to bed.

In the morning we had breakfast and then walked around the old part of Salzburg. It's so pretty!!

This is the view from Hohansalzburg, a castle on a mountian in the city of Salzburg. It's the biggest preserved castle in Europe! The yellow building to the very left in the trees is our hostel! You can even take an elevator to get to it.

When we were walking around in the morning we came across some pretty cool things, like this statue of Mary. Behind her is a church. They're actually about 250 feet apart, but if you stand in the right place it looks as though the angels on the church are crowning her! So cool!

We then got some lunch from a market. They're so big on Fanta here, you can get it in every restaurant!

Afrer lunch was when we went  up to Hohansalzburg. It was really cool, although we were all tired and Madeline's still sick so it wasn't as enjoyable as Germany. After that we had dessert in a cafe, then went back down and did a bit of shopping. We came across the birthplace of Mozart! Pretty cool.

We went back up to our hostel (in the elevator!) and had supper that we picked up from the market and just chilled, then went to bed. The days are kinda starting to blur together... we've been to so many places in such a short time sometimes I forget which country I'm in! But I'm really loving seeing new places. It can sometimes get tiring, and anxious, but we've made it this far! So sad we're more than half over. Alright, talk to you all again soon!

Planes, Trains and Automobiles.....and a Ferry

We are in Germany! Sorry it's been so long since we posted anything but we've been on the move and my other excuse is I have a cold. But that will not hold me back from having a wonderful time!

On Friday we left the Murphy's house at about 9:00 and got a lift to the Belfast airport. We then took a plane to Leeds which took about an hour.

 When we landed we took a bus to the train station and took a train to Hull which took a bit less then an hour.

Once we got to Hull we took a taxi to the boat docks and took a P&O ferry into Belgium! We got onto the ferry about 5:00 and it docked at 9:30 the next morning. Our cabin was small but very comfy. It was a really nice ferry with a cafe, restaurant and movie theatre!

When we arrived Saturday morning we took a bus from Zeebrugge to Brugge. We dropped off our stuff at this small cute B&B and then went sightseeing.

There are so many beautiful churches in Brugge. We went in three but the one we were planning on going in, The Church of our Lady, was closed due to renovations.

There are so many beautiful canals here with little bridges going over with ducks and swans swimming down!

We took a boat tour down the canals and it was so beautiful!

We also got so see one of their windmills! It might not look very high up but it was and those stairs were really steep and narrow. It also didn't help that I'm scared of heights.

It is even more beautiful here since it's fall and all the leaves are falling and the weather is perfect! We got to eat at Brugge's oldest pub which was established in 1515! After supper we walked back to our hotel which took about 45 minutes and it was so nice now that most of the tourists went to bed and all the canals had calmed down.

So on Sunday we took a train from Brugge to Brussels. We were then going to take a train from Brussels to Frankfurt but our first train was late so we missed our second train. We were supposed to leave Brussels at 10:30 but the next train we could trade in our tickets for was at 2:30. But then there was another problem, if we took the 2:30 train to Frankfurt the car rental agency where we had a car waiting would be closed.

So thankfully we were finally able to switch our car reservations to one at the airport were our train stopped at! For our second train we had reserved seats all together with a table in between since it was a 3 1/2 hour trip but since we traded our tickets and it was already completely full we had to just sit wherever. Most of the time we had seats together but for the rest of it we were standing in aisles because we gave our seats to an elderly couple. All of the aisles were packed! But after a stressful time we arrived in Frankfurt! We got our car and drove to Bacharach were we would be staying in a B&B!

So this all happened on Sunday and it's already Tuesday but Sarah will do a post soonish to let all you guys know what happened on Monday and Tuesday. Until then aufwiedersehn!

Irish Countryside

K, so I'll start with yesterday. We got up, left the hostel, and took a cab to the parcel depot. We had so much extra luggage from the cruise so we were planning on shipping it back home once we get to Southampton. As you can see we ended up doing it the morning we leave for Liverpool. Anyways, we got our luggage shipped at got on the train with a few minutes to spare! Thanks be to God :) Took a 2 hour train ride to Liverpool and arrived at 1:15!

The train was reeeeally nice. We stowed away our luggage at the station and walked to the docks where we got on board for the Magical Mystery Tour!! It's a bus tour that takes you around Liverpool and shows you a bunch of stuff relating to The Beatles. We saw Strawberry fields, Penny Lane (and all the things they talk about in the song, i.e. the barber shop), the birth place of Ringo, and Paul's and John's houses! It was really interesting actually, of course Madeline loved it :) At the end we went to the Cavern Club!!! That was soooo cool! If you don't know much about the Beatles, that's where they performed when they were first starting out (I think they played there 200+ times).

After that we went out to find a place for food and had dinner. Liverpool's actually quite large! I really like the accents here though, they're different than London... we couldn't always understand our tour guide!

We then grabbed our luggage and headed for the John Lennon airport. There were so few people there... our plain left 10 minutes early! And the ride was supposed to be 50 min. but it was only 35, so we arrived a half hour ahead of time!! So.... we are in IRELAND!!

It's so so beautiful here. We're staying with friends that we met in Saskatchewan (with two cute kids who have adorable Irish accents!). In the morning we went for a ride to Slemish Mountain where supposedly St. Patrick tended the herds when he was young! (the picture above is the view form the base of the mountain). And here's the mountain! It's hard to see because of the fog, but really neat!

After lunch we went to some ruins of and old Celtic church from the Middle Ages. It was SO beautiful!!

Then we went to the Irish Sea!!! So cool. I've never been to the north coast before!

Man, it's so gorgeous here. It rained and/or drizzled all day, but I think that made it even prettier.  It was a really nice day because we didn't really "do" anything... just kinda whatever we felt like. A little different than tomorrow... we'll be on a plain, bus, train, and ferry. But yes, Ireland is so beautiful and I hope we come back! Oh and are you surprised we did a post two days in a row?? I know crazy!! Ok talk you guys soon!