We made it. We are now in Boston waiting to get off our plane. We are in one piece and were able to make it the five weeks with out loosing any passports, credit cards, ect. Just a whole lot of money was left over in he European economy. But all is well and we look forward to seeing everyone. Thanks again to everyone who helped make the trip possible, and thanks to everyone who read andfollowed the blog it meant a lot to us. Love you all and this concludes Saustins Euro Trip 2011.
The sagrada familia in barcelona
So this trip has been ureal as we have mentioned a million times before, it is also full of life lessons. The one I would like to share today is the concept of everything coming full circle. Now we started our trip in Barcelona nearly five weeks ago, healthy, happy, and ready for what ever came our way. Four and a half weeks later, we returned and it itsnt exactly the same feeling thus far. What I mean is, first time through, it was sunny everyday, money was under control, and we felt uneasy at first but quickly turned that into ambition to do what ever we wanted to do. Now that we have come full circle in our trip it only makes sense that we experience the other side of traveling. This means, it has been rainy since we got here, our money issues have grown from worries to reality, and we are both worn down and a bit under the weather/ home sick.
I would define this full circle situation in our trip as peaking too early. See we came here not really sure what to expect, and when we got here it set such a high expectation for the rest of the trip that some points that might have been more impressive kind of fell to the side. For example, We saw the Eiffel Tower a couple of days ago, which was an amzing site and truly a marvel of the world. But as far as excitment goes, it doesnt compare to celebrating with all of Barcelona over their teams victory.
Needless to say we have gained so much from this trip, confidence, a better view of the world and the people in it, lessons that we will not soon forget, and much more. We wouldnt trade the experience for anything, but we werent prepared for the amount of stress that would fall on us towards the end. To be honest money is and always will be an issue, I think thats something else weve learned. This lesson also implies another one, we are ridiculously lucky to have the loved ones that we do to support us through everything weve endured. Were both so fortunate to have family who are constantly worrying (even if its unnecessary) about our well being and would sell a limb to make sure we were alright.
We owe all of our loved ones a lot, thanks to all of them we have been able to make this trip everything we hoped it could be and much more. So to all of you reading this, THANK YOU…TRUELY AND HONESTLY THANK YOU AND WE LOVE EACH AND EVERYONE OF YOU.
Banking errors have restricted our wiggle room for the last few days of the trip, but either way we will be home in three days time and we look forward to seeing/speaking/ and catching up with all of you.
**side note… we stayed away from all fresh fruits and veggies so NO ECOLI!
It has finally come, we are in out last four days in Europe. I have to say that I wasn’t sure if it would ever come. Our time in Paris was brief but we got to see Notre Dame, Napoleon’s (sp) house…thats not the offical name…, finally ending up at the Eiffel Tower. We meet some random people hung out and had a picnic while watching the tower light up and the sparkel on the hour. It was a beautiful sight, but if we ever go back to paris I can say that with more time and not being sick, I’m sure the experiance would be better. Now we leave at 3pm and will get in to Barcelona at 10pm. From there we will spend the last few days relaxing, seeing some sights that we missed the first time around, and building a nice tan for when we come back.
Our Flight leaves on Monday the 13th at 4 pm this time. We get back to Boston at 9:30ish where we will be picked up by Rob Lunn and Alex Mack…we think. There will be a few more posts to follow, but all in all this trip has been a life changing experiance. We will be saving up for our next venture out almost right when we get back. We are thinking maybe a Mediterranean tour but who knows.
So just want to start by saying sorry to everyone for taking so long to post again. Sam and I are fine and just got in to Paris late last night. To recap since the last time we posted, we made a big group of friends at our hostel in Prague. It was nice because we all became close and it helped ward off the feeling of home sickness. We spent our last day on a small beach on the river with what we call our “Prague Family” and relaxed. When it started to get late our friends decided to buy beer for Sam and I cause it was out last night. So we drank and told stories, played card games, and had a lot of fun. The one down fall to this was that Sam and I had to be out of the hostel by 8ish to catch a bus that would start our 17hr travel day. Having it be our last day was bitter sweet because we would miss our friends, and would have to travel all day, but we were ready to take the next leg of our trip on, and take another step to coming home. As you would imagine, waking up at 7:30 am after going to bed at 3 am was not fun, but we did it semi hungover and all. We made it to our bus that took us from Prague to Nurenburg (sp), from there we went to Franfurt, and then to Paris. We started at 8 and ended at 12:30 in the morning. Poor Sam was utterly exhausted from a lack of sleep and an abundance of travel, and I had an issue of my own. It seems that a lack of sleep+ Drinking+traveling all day= getting a cold. It started to hit me around 6pm yesterday and just got worse. I think it was a sinus infection that just got worse and worse. I ended up having a fever from 7 till I woke up this morning. I still have the some cold symptons and some left over fever but no where near as bad as when it first hit me. Our accomadations for Paris is a girl who we meet in Barcelona and goes to school just out side the city, she was nice enough to offer to give us a place to sleep. So to save money we agreed and planned to meet her at a train stop right near her school. We agreed to meet at Midnight but our train was late and we got there 20 mins past midnight. We waited for five mins or so and looked around for the girl but she was no where to be found…. She had given us her number and address so that we could find her if for whatever reason we couldnt meet up. Us being pretty hasty to get to a room/bed led us to only wait a few mins and then start trying to connect her/ find her dorm. We found a pay phone but it seems that all the pay phones in France need a calling card type of deal, which we didnt have. So, we set out to find her dorm and after a bit of walking we did. Once we found her dorm, we knocked on the door and a security guard came out, he explained that he did speak english and unless we knew our friends room number he couldnt let us in. Being as tired and worn down as we were, we pleaded with him to let us use his phone…well his phone wasnt working. So we asked if we could use the computer to message her on facebook, or maybe he could look her up to verify that she was there. Facebook didnt work because she wasnt online, and the security guard tried to look up the girls name only to tell us that she didnt live there…at all. At that point we almost broke down. Finding out that this girl might have lied to us, as well as trying to find a place to sleep at 1 in the morning was hard to swallow. So we walked back to the train stop and by the grace of God we found her waiting there, and trust me it was a huge relief. So she walked us back to the dorm where we inflated an air mattress, chatted for a little and then hit the hay. Lucky for me the fever broke while I was sleeping, and Sam…who is still sleeping….got the rest she deserved. Now we are going to regroup and possibly head out to see Paris, but it might be raining out so I’m not 100% sure what we are going to do. At the moment our only source of internet is this girls computer so post might be in low numbers until we get to Barcelona.
