That's a wrap- the numbers are in!

Our trip is over, it's a little bit sad, we have had such a fantastic time. But it's now time to get back to real life. I am going back to school tomorrow and Nicole starts her new full time contract with the City of Kitchener.

It was so nice to be met at the airport by so many of our important people. I am a big fan of the welcome sign. I made them for  Katie when she came home from her exchange and Nicole when she came home at Christmas.

It was great to see how happy Nicole and Nick were to see each other. They have done a great job with their long distance relationship but are now ready to be together here at home.

I am so happy that people have been reading our blog and are interested in everything we have done and all the details. I am a bit anal and like to keep track of all sorts of unless info so I have some to share with you lol

# of steps we took- 329 699

# of photos we shot- 2468

# of countries we visited - 8  - England, France, Italy, Vatican City,  Switzerland, Germany, Austria &                                                                  .                                               Belgium 

#of hours spent in a train- 33.5

Cost of trip   Eurostar                  $  213

                    Eurail pass.             $  715

                     Accommodations   $ 647

                     Disney pass            $  148

                      Flight to Rome.       $ 130

                      Food, attractions& 

                      Souvenirs                $ 1378

                      Flight to England.     $   980

Total costs $ 4211.00

# of pounds I lost- 3.  I guess we had a good activity to food ratio going on!

Thanks again for joining us on this adventure. We will post again in the future whenever we go galavanting around :)

Day 22

It was our last day in London today. We got everything packed up last night so we could do a bit of touring around today.

We heard about a new park that just opened to the public last week that is on the site where the 2012 Olympics took place.

We saw the pool where Micheal Phelps won all his gold medals. There was a FINA diving competition going on there right now so we got to watch a couple of the divers- very cool

We saw the stadium where all the track events took place and some cool dancing water fountains. 

We had some fun playing on all the new toys in the park.

I just love little British kids with their sweet accents. These two pips were having a great time in the gigantic sandbox.

Nicole got a bit nostalgic when she took her last tube ride to her home station.

We grabbed the roommates and headed down to their local pub for a last meal together. Luckily it was fish Friday! Fish and Chips and a pint for £6 - can't beat that!

It's a really nice pub and they have had some really great times there this past year. 

Nicole is really going to miss parts of her life here and these really great friends- luckily they live close by and they will all be able to get together back in Canada.

 

Day 21

Our hotel in Brugge was pretty cool. It was right around the corner from the train station. 

The room was pretty small, put perfect. Ryan had to sleep in a bunkbed over our heads.

The shower opened right into the room. We took turns leaving the room so each other could shower. The shower head also had lights in it that changed colour. 

Today was the day we headed back to London. It was a pretty short train ride into Brussels then the two hour Eurostar ride to London. 

We stopped off at Kings Cross to grab a quick ride to Hogwarts.

We came home to Nicole's house and ordered Indian take away for dinner.

We want to have a fun day tomorrow, there are some places Nicole would like to see one last time and she has some banking and running around to do so we packed up all her stuff tonight.  

It a bit bittersweet for her. She is excited to get home and get on with her life in Canada but it's going to be hard leaving her roommates and her independence here.  

Day 20

I have found my second favourite destination from our trip- Brugge, Begium!

Brugge in actually called the Venice of the North which makes sense why I love it since Venice is my number one favourite place. 

Belgium is my contribution to our trip. Originally we were going to head back to Paris to catch the Eurostar to England but I discovered that we could get the Eurostar from here. Am I ever glad I figured that out. This place is just beautiful.

There are waterways, and garden and paths all over the city.

They have very interesting flowers here- they look like daisies gone wild

Again it was a case of every time we turned a corner we saw another amazing sight.

There was a huge market in the middle of the city. We grabbed some fresh cooked chicken and potatoes 

and had am impromptu picnic on a wall. It was a bit of a feat for me to get up there lol.

We are getting pretty good at reading maps and finding our way around places when all the signs are not in English but occasionally we still need a bit of help. We have been taking turns asking and the occasional yell of "not it" can be heard. Today we needed to find a bank. It was Nicole's turn to ask. We are pretty good at picking out locals which can be difficult when there are so many tourists around. We thought this guy looked like a banker so he was a good choice.

They have the the coolest roof tops here. All the houses look like cookie cut outs.

I have been excited to come here since I saw the movie Monuments Men. I knew that Michelangelo's Mandonna and Child statute was here and I was amazed to be able to see it.

We did a lot of walking and it was a beautiful day so we ended up in a park- as usual. I spent some time gazing up at the trees and watching the clouds.

These two had a nap.

Belgium is a relatively young country and it was settled by a lot of different countries. There are French, German snd Dutch influences throughout the city. They even have windmills.

They are very famous for their chocolate. It's great because there are so many chocolate stores and they all give you free samples!

Another thing Belgium is famous for is their waffles. You can have them 20 different ways!

Ours were delicious!

We decided to celebrate our last dinner outside of London with a really nice meal. We found a great restaurant that had amazing food. We had endive soup, salad, Flemish stew, French fries and chocolate mousse for desert.

It has been a great day here in Brugge, I can't believe we head back to London tomorrow. 

Day 19

Today was our last really long travel day. We had a bit of a slow start this morning as Nicole and Ryan were a bit under the weather from last night. 

Today was the first day we had in Germany with the stores open so Nicole and I were on the hunt for Birkenstocks! We haven't shopped at all this entire trip -one because we don't have any room to carry things and two that's not really what the trip was about for us. We knew we wanted to get birks and had brought along an extra bag to carry them in since we only have two more days of lugging stuff around. We were both successful in finding sandals and they were about half of what we would pay in Canada.

We hopped on the train. It was a 4 hr ride to Koeln. We had a 3 hr layover there so we walked around for a bit- this is the sight that greeted us right outside the train station. It is almost as awesome as my favourite York Minster.

We had a nice sit down dinner in a restaurant. I did finally have the currywurst, it was ok, not a big fan.

I saw these in a store, they totally reminded me of Katie. She developed a love for Haribo and Happy Cola candies when she did her exchange in Luxembourg. 

We had two more trains to catch and have finally made it to our destination. I really liked staying in the Hostel. It was a really neat experience but I am looking forward to a good nights sleep with no strange men snoring in the bed next to me!

 

Day 18

It's Easter Monday so everything is closed in Munich today. We decided to take a train ride into Fussen to see two Barvarian castles. 

The helpful Canadian girl we meet in the train line in Pisa showed up at our hostel in Munich! How crazy is that? Julia decided to join us on our adventures today, it was nice to have her company. It is just been the three of us for so long it was great to add another voice to the mix.

After the two hour train ride we got our first glimpse of the Neuschwanstein castle. It is the castle that the Disney castle in Florida is modelled after.

We stood in line to get tickets but soon realized that you HAD to take a tour to go inside the castle. The next English tour was more that 3 hours away and we didn't want to spend our entire day waiting around for the tour. 

We headed up the mountain to get a closer look at the castle. We saw some interesting sights on our way up. This is the biggest snail I have ever seen. He was the size of my palm.

The mountain was covered in trees and moss and there were a couple of little waterfalls we walked past. 

The view on the way up was great. 

If you looked out across from this mountain you could see the Hohenschwagau castle up on the side of the another mountain. 

The castle wasn't as big as I had suspected once we reached the top. Don't get me wrong it certainly wasn't small but I just thought it would be much larger.

It was very hard to get good shots when we were up close. 

On the way back down the mountain we stopped at a snack shop and got some delicious warm fresh donuts to share. 

At the bottom we took advantage of another great fresh water fountain to fill up our water bottles.

We had some fun waiting to take the bus back to the train station.

The food in Germany  had been awesome. There are street vendors all around the train station and near our hostel. You have have sausage or curryworst or practically anything else your little heard desires. Tonight I had a donair- German style and Nicole and Ryan had curry. 

After dinner we were off on a beer garden challenge. It's basically a pub crawl of some of the beer gardens in Munich. We had 12 people in our group, 5 Australians, one Brazilian, one American, two Dutch and us 3 Canadians. 

We started off with a beer outside the train station. You can drink anywhere you want in Germany. It has been interesting to see people just walking down the street, all times of the day, with beer in their hands. You can even take open beers on to the subway- you just can't drink it while you are riding. 

We followed our guide around. He was full of a lot of interesting facts. Beer gardens are like big fest halls, like the Concordia Club in kitchener. 

They are all famous for a certain type or brand of beer and they have been around for hundreds of years.

Each one has it's regulars. In order to be considered a regular you have to have been coming to drink at least 3 times a week for more than 15 years. This table is reserved for a group that has been drinking together at the same beer garden since the 60's

We had pretzels, one place had a live polka band playing and we good some German pub food.

I don't drink beer but I did try a little of each one the garden was famous for. 

You really could taste a difference. Nicole is a much better beer drinker than me. 

We had a great night. It was so much fun talking to all the other travellers and hearing the stories of their adventures.