SANTORINI

We took a ferry from Athens to Santorini, which was pretty cool. We were on the top deck and it got kind of windy at times. It was fun to be on a big boat in the ocean water :) Our hotel was about a 30 second walk to the black sand beach which was AWESOME! We loved the beach, but beware of nude women if you go there. They don't care one bit. It was so relaxing to be in Santorini. It was the end of our trip and we loved to just chill, read, go to the beach, and do whatever we wanted!

On the ferry :)

Our second day there we booked a boat tour. It was really sweet! We went to the Burnt Island which is a volcano that we hiked up. There is hot smelly sulfur that still leaks out... We went to a warm spring. We had to jump from our tour boat and swim to it, so it was really cold water until we got to where it was warm! Our last stop was at Oia which was the other side of Santorini. This is where Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants was filmed for all you fans! It almost seemed fake to be there! It was soo much fun! This is a famous sunset viewing place, and it was beautiful! I posted some pictures of the sunset earlier.

The Burnt Island

This is a picture of our tour boat


Oia behind us

I'm sorry, but this is AMAZING!



I was in love with this little house! You can't even see it that good, but it is sooo CUTE!

Watching the sunset...

The next day we rented 4-wheelers for 24 hours and drove all around the island! This was definitely a good move on our part! It was so cool to see the island like this!

The Red Beach


The highest point of the island


Just riding along the beach :)


We love our gyros! These ones were HUGE!


I'm standing at the very tip of the island


Random swing that looked out in to the water- beautiful view


This was so much FUN!

At the end of the day we drove along the Black Beach by our hotel and stopped for a treat. I am eating a white chocolate ice cream bar which is delicious!

Sitting at the poolside at our hotel

This is on our deck of the hotel room- you can see the beach behind me!!

SUNSET


Well this is the end of my trip... It was absolutely incredible and even more than I ever expected. I loved it!!

ATHENS

Athens was such a good time! Our first night we got suckered into eating at the first restaurant we came too. My meal was delicious, but I regretted it the next day... Totally got food poisoning and was so sick. I actually didnt feel so hot the next few days, but I still enjoyed my time in Athens.

This was my meal. It is chicken souvlaki (it's like a kabob). It tasted so good, but it didn't treat me very well...

Our second day we signed up for a walking tour through our hostel. We ended up being the only people, so it was a sweet private tour just for us! We loved our tour guide, Michelle, and she taught us a lot of things about the city. Here are pictures of all the places we visited...

Hadrian's Arch

Temple of Zeus


Agora with the Acropolis in the background


Temple of Hephaistos


We walked by the President's house and watched the changing of the guard. It was VERY interesting... I would like to put up a video of them marching, but I have tried to put up a video before and it won't work for me. If anyone can tell me what to do let me know!



ok here is a video, i have a way better one but it's too long and it won't upload

These next pictures are at the Acropolis

The Parthenon- too bad it was covered in scaffolding, we tried to get the best angle possible


View of the city from on top- look to the right and you can see the Temple of Zeus


Porch of the Carytiatids, part of the Erechtheum


The Propylaea


Theatre of Dionysus


Temple of Athena Nike

Try and read that!

That night we went to a garden rooftop cinema, which was awesome. It was on top of a building right by our hostel and the acropolis is in full view when we look to the side! We saw Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. It was ok, but it was the atmosphere that was so much fun!

Here we are at the movie!



Here is Michelle eating a gyro. We LOVE these!! They are so yummy! This was our lunch and dinner for the remainder of our time in Athens. They were cheap and delicious and didn't make us sick.

Stray dogs are EVERYWHERE!!

Michelle and I went to a market the next morning and did a little shopping which was fun. The men loved us everywhere we went! haha It was most apparent in Paris and Athens. It was funny to hear what people would say to us, especially when they wanted us to buy something from them! We had people call us beautiful, pretty, girlfriend, they would tell us they loved us, they would chase us (kinda creepy), etc.

Here is me in the streets of Athens with some merchandise


This is the view from our hostel room balcony

These are pictures from sunsets in Athens and Santorini


Here are our feet all over Greece!

ROMA

After the wretched suffering of the sleeper train we finally arrived at the Termini train station in Rome. We found our hostel, the Sandy Hostel. It seemed a little sketchy at first. We walked in a big blueish door and up it seemed like a million flights of stairs. But it actually turned out to be pretty good. The first night I was in a room without Candice and Michelle, with 3 strangers. I met the boy first, he was about my age and with him was his mom and sister. So that turned out good! I was grateful it wasn't some crazies!! They were so nice to me and they gave us their tour bus passes to use the next day because they were leaving.

The first site in Rome we saw was the Pantheon. It was pretty darn cool. Before we went in we had our first gelato, and it was AMAZING!! It was actually the best we had in all our time spent in Rome.

Eating delicious gelato outside the Pantheon. I had pistachio and hazlenut... mmm heavenly :)

Michelle and I in front of the Pantheon

We had time and some energy for one more event that night, so we went to the Museo Nazionale Romano....LAME. It really wasn't that cool. The cool stuff it did have was fake, they had copies of all the famous works.

We went around finding funny things to make up for the lameness and wasted money

We had a really good dinner. We ate outside and listened to accordian players (they are EVERYWHERE), and our waiter was awesome.


This was our appetizer, caprese, and it was soo yummy!

DAY 2
We got up bright and early to go to Vatican City. We saw it all... the museum, sistine chapel, St. Peters Basilica, and we picked the day of the big mass so we saw the Pope! We were waiting in line for St. Peters Basilica and we met a girl, Liz, from east LA who was there by herself and she became our friend!

The Pope!

Inside the basilica- it was so huge and beautiful

The dome of the basilica is behind us

We hiked to the top of the basilica, the Vatican city is behind me. It was a pretty cool view.

When we were through at the Vatican, we took our free tour bus passes and rode the bus for 2 1/2 hours. It was a pretty cool way to see a lot of things.

We went to the Spanish Steps, and I kinda think they are overrated... We got there and then left because it wasn't much to see. I know we did miss the month of may when all the beautiful flowers are there, so maybe that's why. Our new roommate, Giovanni from South Africa, wanted us to go with him to check out the night life at the Spanish steps... we didn't take the invite. So maybe that's cooler...haha!

The Spanish Steps are behind us...not much to see hu?

The Trevi Fountains were pretty dang cool to see

DAY 3
We went to the Coloseum which was AWESOME! We took about a billion pictures! We also went to the Roman Forum. We totally spotted a mormon family there! We kinda stalked them to try to find out! haha There were 2 boys that looked about our age and their parents. We found out that they are from Utah and just picked up their twin boys from their missions! They picked up one from France and then came to Rome and picked up the other one.

Part of the Roman Forum

We went to the San Callisto Catacombs which were really cool! We didn't really know exactly where we were going, but we met a family who was going to the same place and also didn't really know the way either! So the blind was leading the blind! But we made it!! Yay! We couldn't take pictures in the catacombs which was a bummer, so we just got outside pics. After the catacombs we waited for quite a while for the bus on the Appian Way- one of the earliest important roads in Rome.

Beautiful scenery outside the catacombs

Just chillin on the Appian Way...


We loved all of the columns everywhere we went!


1...2...3... JUMP

Top left, bottom middle, and right middle: Santorini Sunset
Bottom left: Base of Eiffel Tower
Top middle: Roman Forum
Top right: Colosseum
Bottom right: Highest point in Santorini

Paris- 2nd half

Our last 2 days were just as exciting and full as the first 2! We went to a farmers market that was so cool! It was like all local people there. It's definitely not a tourist trap which was awesome. I bought a purse here and we bought some lunch here- fruit and baguettes! YUMMY! After the market we visited Versailles. The Château de Versailles is pretty incredible! The grounds were so beautiful too.

All sorts of bread at the market...

Our fun purses :)

The golden gate outside the Chateau de Versailles

The Hall of Mirrors

The grounds

More grounds. It was really windy!!

The outside of the Chateau

Our last day in Paris we went to the Louvre, went to a delicious bakery called Laduree, walked a lot all day, and got on our sleeper train to Rome. The sleeper train was MISERABLE!!! I will NEVER do that again!! It was hot and stinky and I started to get clostrophobic in the small space. We shared a 6 man cabin with a nice French couple and a Nigerian woman who, no offence, smelled and took up so much room.

The Louvre

Me and Mona, no biggie


So I thought this only happened in movies, but we went to the laundromat and someone put too much soap in the washer and it kept getting closer, and closer, and closer... haha


It was almost too pretty to eat!


This is a picture of our cabin...there are 2 beds on top that you can't see in the picture


This basically sums up what I felt like for 14 hours of misery!

PARIS

We left London to go to Paris at 5:30 AM. When we arrived we were so dead tired and everything was so foreign and people were speaking French all around us and we had no clue where we were at and needless to say we were pretty frustrated. It took us a while to find our hostel, which was called the 'Perfect Hostel.' Once we got to the hostel we took a 2 hour nap!

After we were rejuvenated we visited the Arc de Triomphe. We hiked to the top and it was an incredible view of Paris. We liked this place so much that we came back another night to see the night view of Paris. It was beautiful!

Most people we asked to take a picture of the 3 of us took a horrible picture. We call this our "money shot" because the nice man from Chicago took a SWEET pic of us in front of theArc.

This is on top of the Arc with the Eiffel Tower behind me!

We also went to the Eiffel Tower a couple of times. Here is a collage of pics.

I don't know if you can tell, but the bottom right picture is us jumping at the base of the Eiffel Tower.

My absolute favorite view of Paris was from the Sacre Coeur (translation: Sacred Heart). It is a Roman Catholic basilica dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. It is kind of up on a hill, so you climb stairs to the basilica and it's a great view from there. The view was so awesome because it's a huge panoramic view with nothing like bars in your way. Then we also hiked to the top of the basilica and that was a great view too.

This is the view standing at the bottom of the Sacre Coeur.

Here is the view once we got to the top of the stairs- at the entrance of the basilica.


This is at the top of the basilica. You can see the Eiffel Tower behind us- it looks so small!!

St. Chapelle is absolutely beautiful. The stained glass inside is just breath taking. Picutres don't do justice! They don't really do justice for antying really!

Outside St. Chapelle


The pretty stained glass

We had to visit Notre Dame!

We were trying to find our way to the Pantheon, and we got a little lost (not unusual) and we found these beautiful gardens. We don't even know what they are or anything, but we browsed around and loved it there! I loved the pretty flowers. We also found a huge golden head...




We visited the Pantheon. It was built after the Pantheon in Rome. It was pretty sweet.






We went to Musee d'orsay and it was awesome! There was Monet, Manet, Degas, Whistler, and much more!! Here are some of the famous works...


These are all things we crammed within the the first 2 days we were in Paris. There is more to come!

LONDON TOWN

We made it to London and it seems like a blur to me! It went by so fast! London was pretty awesome. We stayed in the Mowbray Court Hotel where apparently lots of BYU students stay while staying in London. It was a pretty good location. The tube station was just around the corner and we could get to the main sites pretty quick.

Candice and I in front of our hotel

Day 1... We went to Buckingham Palace to watch the changing of the guard. We were there about an hour early waiting, it was really crowded, so HOT, and not very exciting....kind of a disappointment. I know a lot of people think it's awesome, but I wasn't super impressed.

I don't know how they didn't have heat strokes with those outfits on!

We took a boat city cruise down the Thames River, which was pretty sweet. It took us from Westminster to Greenwich. We saw a lot of the sites along the river.


After the cruise we went home and got ready for...WICKED!! It was sooooo good!! I have been wanting to see this for so long and I finally did. I love the music and the performers were incredible! Loved it :)

This is us so excited to go see Wicked!

Day 2.... First we went to the Globe Theatre and took a tour. It was pretty interesting. It is set up like Shakespear's original theatre.

I found this stone on the ground outside at the Globe Theatre!

We were able to see some of the actors rehearsing

We walked over to St. Paul's Cathedral. I love all the cathedral's we have been to. We went up to the tower and down to the crypt's.

I'm walking across the Tower Bridge and St. Paul's Cathedral is behind me.

This is on top of St. Paul's Cathedral. You can see the London Eye between the bars :)

We of course HAD to visit the Florence Nightingale Museum. She was a wonderful and inspiring woman!



This night we went and saw PHANTOM OF THE OPERA!! It was really good!

Michelle and I after Phantom! AMAZING!

Day 3.... This morning we got up and gave presentations on nurses that we had researched. Carianne and I presented on Mary Breckenridge who was an outstanding nurse in her time. We visited the Tower of London and saw the crown jewels, torture chambers, and much more!

Michelle and I in front of the Tower of London

The guards

We are at the Tower of London with the Tower Bridge behind us, look close...the bridge is opening for a big boat coming through!

We also visited the Tower Bridge. We hiked to the top and then down to the engine room.



We had our last lunch together at Hornimans on the Hays. It was pretty yummy! After lunch we went to King's Cross train station and went to Platform 9 3/4!!

Hogwarts here I come!!!

This is one of my favorite pictures! Big Ben is behind me! Big Ben is actually the bell inside the tower, not the clock...did you know that? I didn't. I think this building is beautiful.

This night some of us went to the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at Royal Albert Hall. It was an absolute amazing performance. Nicola Bandetti was a guest violin soloist and she is UNBELIEVABLE! I am so glad I got to hear her perform live.

In front of Royal Albert Hall before the concert


Inside the concert hall. We had great seats right behind the orchestra!

After we got home I packed my backpacking backpack to get ready for Paris! We left at 4:30AM the next morning...

Edinburgh

Our last day in Scotland (sad) we went to Edinburgh. We made a couple stops on the way there. Bill took us again. First we went to the Stirling Castle and the William Wallace monument. We didn't actually go in, just a stop and look because it wasn't opened. After that we went to Hailes Castle, then to a beach at North Berwick. Our last stop was Edinburgh. We walked part of the Royal Mile, saw the castle and the crown jewels, shopped, saw the Elephant Cafe where J.K. Rowling worked and started her Harry Potter books, and just checked out the town a little. That night we left Blackford and took a sleeper train to LONDON.

The William Wallace Monument is behind me

Sitting in the back of Hailes Castle

The front entrance of Hailes Castle

Hailes Castle

Michelle and I at North Berwich

Edinburgh Castle

I love St George!!


Elephant Cafe. I bet J.K. Rowling has sat in this chair before :)


We had a lot of fun on our sleeper train! Michelle and I shared a room and there was a door between our room and Candice and Carianne's room so we obviously loved that! We laughed, had dance parties, and had so much fun!!

Even more Scotland

Scotland was definitely a favorite. Everything was BEAUTIFUL and I loved the people there. Everyone was so friendly and kind to us. I would for sure go back to Scotland!

We did a little service project on Alistar's (Kenna's husband) farm. We tubed trees. We took old tubes off and put new ones on. This prevents the deer from ruining the young tender trees. After the service project we walked around the farm land and saw the inspirational cave of Robert Louis Stevenson. We went home and got cleaned up to attend the Highland Games, which were just great:) Kinda funny too... no offense. They had races, dancers, shotputs, and other events.

Tubing trees!

Ready to work!

The finished product :)


Candice and I at the games


The big burly men in their kilts. The far left one was my fave:)

On Sunday we went to a ward in Perth. It was about a 20 minute drive. The branch was soo small! Lucky for us, the branch was having a 'bite & blether' after church and we were invited! They had tomato soup, sandwhiches, cookies, and drinks and we met some people and had fun with everyone there! We were planning on checking out the town afterwords and getting around ourselves, but luckily some guys in the ward offered to show us around:) They called a few friends and we all went to a place called Hermitage. They were all so much fun and we had a blast! There were beautiful waterfalls and it was just a very pretty place. Robbie had 2 huskies there that pulled me on his mountain board! It was sooo FUN!

Loved this!!!

Scotland continued...

WOW! I can't believe that I am home and everything is OVER! I still want to blog about where I went and what I did. I think it will take me a while though. So back to Scotland...

Bill, our awesome driver, took us from Inverness down to Blackford. We had a wonderful drive and stopped at some gorgeous places. The thing I loved about having Bill as our driver and tour guide was that he knew about EVERYTHING! He answered every question we had. He also took us to the coolest places that no one really knows about. They are not just the touristy areas, they are the small towns and the little things, and I love that. We of course did the touristy sites as well, but we got the best of both worlds!
We stayed in Blackford for a few days at Kenna's (Erin's sister). It was soo nice of her and her husband to let us come and stay. Their home used be the the bank and it's a pretty SWEET house. It is very big and such a fun place!

Our drive to Blackford...

We made a stop at a beautiful lookout point over Loch Carron

This is us with our coolest driver ever, Bill. We love him!

We stopped at a cute fisherman's town called Plockton. It was a very small town with one main street with little shops. It had many fishing boats, you can see some in this picture

Michelle and I looking out into the water :)

The main street is behind us...ya it was small!

We walked over the bridge to Isle of Skye

The bridge is behind me. It was a bit of a walk :)

ME at the top of the bridge!

We made it!!

We stopped at the Ilean Donan castle (one of the most photographed castles). There was a bagpiper out in front and it was so cool! Oh, and they had fabulous carrot cake!

Bagpiper (he is playing as we take the pic) and the Ilean Donan castle in the background

Another stop along the way was a beautiful mountainas area (that's basically all of Scotland!) called Glencoe. We didn't stop for long, just enough time to eat some dry frosted flakes and stretch from being in the car so long.


At the end of this day we arrived at Kennas to a delicious BBQ :)

On to Scotland

Inverness is such a gorgeous place and part of me really would love to live there! We stayed here for 2 nights in a bed and breakfast. We had the opportunity to tour 2 hospitals and spend a day with district nurses. A district nurse is someone who makes visits to people in the community. I was with a CPN (community psychiatric nurse). I only went on one visit with her, but it was really interesting and somehting that maybe the U.S. could adopt and could be beneficial. I loved the nurse I was with and it was a very good day. I spent the morning at the office listening to reports on patients, learned about behavioral family therapy, and listened to a drug rep and ate free lunch from him :) Tom and Anne are a couple who have helped us out so much here in Scotland. They are friends of Erin's sister who set up the clinical experiences for us in Inverness and they took us to see Loch Ness and the Urquhart Castle. They have been so nice to us and made this experience such a great one!

Scottish Lingo
Inver = mouth of
Loch = Lake
Ben = Mountain
Glen = Valley

We visited a castle in Inverness, Loch Ness, and Urquart castle.

Inverness

Walkin the streets of Inverness

A wobbly bridge in Inverness

Our bed & breakfast- Pine Guest House


Inverness Castle
Inverness Castle

View from Inverness Castle


Another view of Inverness from the castle (behind me is the white wobbly bridge)

Urquhart Castle and Loch Ness

Urquhart Castle- on the banks of Loch Ness

Michelle and I with Loch Ness and Urquhart Castle behind us

Urquhart Castle again

Loch Ness

Skipping rocks on Loch Ness and trying to rustle Nessie :)

Searching for Nessie (the LOCH NESS MONSTER) I may or may not have seen her...