Saying farewell to Europe

After almost three weeks, it's time to head back to Canada. Hopefully the eight hour journey goes well.

I'm not quite done with this blog though; I have more stories and photos to blog about when I'm back!

More London

This post really just serves so I can post some photos.

I know some people have been wanting to see them (hi mom!), but I don't have much to say tonight since I was up at 4:20 a.m. (well, I was supposed to get up then. I actually got up at 4:41. But anyway.) to see Stonehenge.

Yesterday would've been Princess Diana's birthday so her family house, Althorp opened for the season. Well, to say 'for the season' is a little unfair since it's actually only open for two months. She's also buried there. Photos weren't allowed inside, but the grounds were lovely.

On our first day here, we went to Kensington Palace and Buckingham Palace. The day after that we took a trip to Windsor and Eton to see Windsor Castle and Eton College (bonus points to anyone who knows who went to school there!) I kind of like the Royal family, what can I say?

Tomorrow we hope to go to Abbey Road, the London Eye, and Westminster Abbey; we'll see how well that works out.

I thought London was cold and rainy

Actually, it did rain the first day we arrived here. But now it seems that we were actually just in time for the heatwave. (And Wimbledon. These people like their tennis.)

Other than the high temps, I really like London. Because it's the city I planned things are moving at a slower pace and I'm able to enjoy things more than in Paris and Berlin. A slower, flexible pace is good when things go wrong, too. Yesterday Kevin tripped on a curb and twisted his knee (old sports injury) and that's not holding up so well, so we're doing things even more slowly. He has an appointment to see a doctor as soon as we're back in Canada so hopefully everything's ok until then.

J'adore Paris

Paris is a busy, busy city. Much more so than Berlin and even more than London appears to be so far.

Although I expected it to take forever, we were in line for the Eiffel Tower for only an hour. We were at the top a couple of hours, waiting on the sun to set. As we were on it, it lit up. And then after we came down, it sparkled. (Pictures aren't really helpful with that, but I do have video; videos are being saved until I'm back home due to Internet constraints.) A lot of my pictures are of the Eiffel Tower; but that's what everyone goes to see, right?

Kevin and I were lucky that his advisor is in Paris for the summer. We went out to dinner with him one night and he showed us a bit of Paris that tourists don't usually see. (Photos 72-74 in the Paris photo album; I'll post more sometime.)

While in Paris, we visited Versailles. It was very pretty, of course, but so crowded. I think half of Paris' tourists must've been there.

An important thing for me to see in Paris was the Pont de l'Alma tunnel, the tunnel that was made famous by Princess Diana's car crash. (As you'll see in my London posts, I'm very interested in the British Royal family, and it all started with Diana.) But alas, it is just a tunnel, so after taking some (probably illegal) pictures, we went on our way.

Our final stop in Paris was the Louvre. It's open late some nights of the week, so that worked out perfectly. Although we didn't actually get to spend much time there, we did see the famed Mona Lisa.

In case you didn't get that first link, check out Paris photos here. (Some I posted before, but most are new.)

Leaving Paris

Today was our last full day in Paris. Tomorrow we're off on the Eurostar to what I've been waiting the whole trip for - London.

I haven't been able to go through all of my Paris photos yet (the day we went up the Eiffel Tower I took over 600), but I have uploaded a few and you can see them here.

Finishing up Berlin

I've already posted pictures from my first two days in Berlin, and now I finally have photos from the last two days ready.

On one of those days, we went to a concentration camp, Sachsenhausen. It was obviously a somber visit, but an important one. Although it wasn't specifically a death camp, many people did die there. We went with a small tour group and I feel we learned more that way than we would have with an audio tour.

You can view the photos here.

For more information about places I have pictures of, check out these links:

Sanssouci - We didn't actutually get to spend much time here because it was an unplanned detour, but it was pretty.

Checkpoint Charlie - Compared to the rest of Berlin, Checkpoint Charlie was swarming with tourists.

Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche - Wonderful to see. I have more pictures of this that I'll post at another time.

Siegessäule - I wasn't terribly impressed by this but Kevin really liked it.

Reichstag - Great views of Berlin from here.

Overall, Berlin was a great city. Compared to Paris, there was practically no one there and it was also considerably cheaper. I wouldn't mind going back someday.

Paris

I haven't had any time to write or upload any pictures, but I'm in Paris and spent the day in the city. Hopefully I can write a proper post soon! I have more Berlin things to talk about too.