Coming Home!

This will be our last post *sniff sniff*. We are packing up our stuff (again) and about to head out on our long journey home! We are heading to Dusseldorf tonight and back to Vancouver for Wednesday morning :) I doubt that we will have Wifi anywhere between here and home so I thought I would wrap things up today.

Thanks to everyone who was following our blog and I hope you all enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it! Our 4 week European Adventure was just that - an adventure!! It was super fun and we both had an amazing time!

Here are some of our favorites!

Taryn's Fav Hotel: Hotel Alexis in Rome - super big room and super big shared bathroom!
Brad's Fav Hotel: Hotel Mercurio in Venice - not having to share a bathroom!

Taryn's Fav Moment: Going up the Eiffel Tower! It was such a process getting up there and then we got up to the top for the perfect time! Sunset! It was great!

Brad's Fav Moment: Spending time with Uncle Rossano in Pescina but especially the breakfast with him before we left for Scanno

Taryn's Fav City: CAN'T CHOOSE!!! But not Venice... I wasn't a fan.
Brad's Fav City: Italian cities (minus Venice) for the Food, Paris for the sights, London for the English speaking

Taryn's Least Fav Moment: When I realized that I didn't have my passport :( followed closely by walking through Venice at 2am....
Brad's Least Fav Moment: Trying to drive to Marco Polo Airport at midnight on Italian backroads so that we could return the car on time.

Taryn's Funniest Moment: The disorganization of most of Italy - especially the Ciampino Airport bus!
Brad's Funniest Moment: Uncle Rossano trying to explain why we aren't married to the Italian relatives!

Taryn's Fav Attraction: Tower of London because I super enjoyed the Yeoman tour and it was one of the first things that we saw.

Brad's Fav Attraction: "Because I have already done everything, I think it would have to be driving on the Italian highways.  It's something few people get to do and the Italian countryside is very beautiful... in the day light"

Most Overrated attraction: Oxford Street in London. Both of us agree... total waste of time!! Nothing gained culturally or otherwise. Also, the food in Venice was overrated.

Something that we wanted to do but didn't get to:
Taryn: Swim in the Mediterranean
Brad: See the Macario Brother's house in Scanno

Overall we had an AWESOME trip (despite bad-ness in the last couple of days). It was great and I can't wait to come back! Thanks SO MUCH to Iain for letting us stay at his place and thanks to his flat-mates for putting up with us :D

Palaces and Pomp

Because of our "extra" time here in London we were able to check out MORE royal stuff :) We headed to Windsor for the day to look at the castle and check out the town! Lucky for us it was a weekend and the Queen was in residence!!!

That's her standard flying which means that the "queen is in!" If not it would be the Union flag. We toured the state apartments and the castle grounds. All very impressive!!! The queen is back there somewhere!

I wanted to go into St. George's Chapel where all of the recent monarchs are buried like the Queen Mother, George VI, George V, and Henry VIII (not recent... but still!). Unfortunately it is a church and we were there on a Sunday... so no visitors unless they were coming in for services! So I just took a picture outside! Looks pretty nice!

There is so much royal stuff to do in London I just can't get enough! I convinced Brad that we should go to the Royal Mews aka the Carriage Museum!!! Except it's not a museum because these are all working carriages!! Like the one that took Princess Di to her wedding

And more recently... wait for it... wait for it....the carriage that William and Catherine rode in after they got married!! AHHH!!

Unfortunately we weren't able to see the Rolls-Royce Phantom because the Queen was currently using it at Windsor for the Royal Ascot!

 I love all this Royal stuff everywhere!! I'm going to miss it! But I think I've got my fill for a little while. Especially after seeing the Coronation Carriage! It's been used for every coronation since (I can't remember)... but a while!!

A great day in London!

Today we hit up all the biggies in and around Westminster!! Mainly the Abbey and the Churchill War Rooms!!

The Abbey was outstanding!!!

It was so much bigger and nicer than I thought it could be! Unfortunately "NO PHOTOS INSIDE" so there are no photos from inside the Abbey. But we saw where Charles Darwin is buried (inside an Abbey... I know... kinda strange) and Isaac Newton and many many other famous people! We got a an official tour of the Abbey from a Verger and it was great!

Here is me pretending to be Catherine at the Great West Doors:

I don't know why... but I am devoid of any pictures from the Churchill War Rooms. They were actually really amazing! I liked them a lot! I was told by dad and Uncle Dan that I MUST go to these war rooms and I figured it would be very "dad" but it was SUPER cool :) I think we spent at least 2 hours there!

To finish our fun day we went to Wicked!! Brad got me the tickets for my birthday! I've wanted to see it since it started on Broadway ... so like 7 years?? Anyway it was EVERYTHING I had hoped it would be!! SO amazing!! If it is still playing in Vancouver and you are thinking about going... you should go! Now!

And on our way home (because we thought we would be leaving London shortly...) I took the obligatory London phone booth picture. I didn't get all the way in because it really smelled like urine...

We had a great day and a great night!! Yay London!

The British Museum!

The British Museum was AWESOME to say the least!! I liked it way more than the Louvre... you know why!?! Because there was 10X more Assyrian stuff at the British Museum!! It was fantastical!! And there was lots of Mesopotamian stuff too!! I was fully in my glory :) Check out some of the Assyrian wall reliefs! They were known for their gruesome depictions of war and their depictions of lion hunts (also gruesome) so viewer discretion is advised!!

 This is part of the Lion Hunt series and it shows the King (depicted as larger than all the other people) as stabbing a Lion. Because that seems reasonable... right?? Propaganda much??

 They show an injured lion throwing up... ew!

A little boy releases the lion from a cage. Notice that he is sitting in his own cage for protection.

  

All the slaves / servants carrying off the dead lion!

So you might be wondering about why they hunted lions... in what is now Iraq / Syria?? Apparently they were very prevalent and ferocious, so depictions of the king killing them and hunting them (most likely not even in the wild) was seen as the king being strong and protecting his lands.

Now onto the real war stuff!! Check out this old school tank!! It has a battering ram to take down walls!

 The vultures were pecking at all the dead bad guys!

And as a warning to anyone who would go against the kingdom check out what they do to people they fight!! Put them on sticks in front of the city wall!!! Ew.

 But their protective deities always have a smile on:

We also saw the Assyrian kings library! It has some of the oldest and most famous tablets ever!

Like Tablet 11 from the Gilgamesh epic! Yes.... it is a flood story ... yes... it is from approximately 1400 years before biblical times. There are great translations of it at the library if you are interested!

We also saw one of the first "maps of the world" with Babylon at the center! duh!

One of my favorites was the Standard of Ur! One of the oldest and best preserved articles. No one really knows the purpose it had... but doesn't it look awesome!

Brad's favorite was the Rosetta Stone. He's an ancient languages scholar now and can read Egyptian and Sumerian!!

And a fun little artifact that I though all you Simpson's fans would enjoy:

And just so you know where the tasty bits are and where the poison bits are:

The passport disaster

So I haven't posted in a while, and I am finally leaving London in about a day and a half, so I thought I would do a couple of blog updates (instead of working on my capstone.....)

As most of you already know, I lost my passport at some point between my arrival from Paris and my (expected) flight back to Vancouver. It was a stressful day to say the least!! But we made it to the Canadian High Commission and filled out all of the appropriate forms (there were a LOT!). I got my passport photos done by a post office worker who thought that he was a professional photographer... which is great under normal circumstances and not so great when you are pressed for time!!

Brad took a picture of me booking it into the High Commission. I'm the one with the giant backpack...

So it takes 3 days to get your temporary passport (important information to know!!) and I picked up my new passport this morning!!! Yay!! Thank god because our NEW flight home leaves tomorrow night!! We have a 11 hour stop-over in Dusseldorf (yay?) and then we are heading home via Airberlin!

This has been a (rather expensive) learning experience to say the least! Many lessons learned the hard way... but sometimes that's the only way to learn them!! I'm sorry that I missed father's day!! And I'm sorry that I caused Brad to miss father's day. If you asked me where / when / how I lost my passport I couldn't even guess to tell you. Was it stolen? Was I careless? Who knows!!!

Please accept these next posts FULL of pictures as my apology!! :) See you all soon! Wednesday soon!