Dec 23 - 2006
MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL!!!!!
I want to start off by wishing everyone out there reading this a very Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!! As you all may know, Lynsey and I choose to spend this holidays away from home to allow ourselves a longer travel period and the chance to experience Christmas in PARIS!!!! So here we are, spending Christmas in a very beautiful city, full of incredibly way to many people and way to expensive everything. Yes, we are very sad that our families are at home celebrating Christmas without us, but hopefully they all know how much we miss them and how much we love them and that we will be right there beside them all in spirit! Being away from your family during both Thanksgiving and Christmas really makes you appreciate how much you truly do love and care for them. I know both of us have and I can safely say that for anyone else who has spent the holidays away from there loved ones. Alright, enough of the sappy stuff, I'll give you a little update on our past few days of traveling!
Alright, so after getting back in to the Czech on Saturday the 16th from Croatia, we spent the next 2.5 days packing, cleaning, cooking and saying goodbye to all of our new found friends. It was tough saying goodbye because we never know when our paths will cross again. I hope I can say they will cross again soon but who knows what will happen between now and then! So, Tuesday morning I checked out of the room
and we grabbed our couple bags and set out with the Belgiums (Filip, Caroline and Kristof) for the start of our journey to Belgium!! After roughly 16 hours of traveling across the continent of Europe we arrived in Brussels, Belgium. We said goodbye to the three of them, only temporary (we will be spending 3 days or so with them over New Years), jumped on a train and head to the Belgium town of Gent. We found our hotel, checked in and immediately took a nice morning nap to refuel our bodies. We walked around the beautiful city for awhile before trying to figure out our next leg of the journey...getting to Caen, France and the beaches of Normandy. We were soon notified by the train ticket lady that all trains between Belgium, Caen and Paris were completely FULL for the next week or so. So this put us in a tough spot. We quickly adapted, found the LAST 2 bus tickets for the week to Paris leaving the following morning at 0800 and quickly snatched them up.
So this is where you find us now...in Paris. We arrived in to Paris on Thursday with no idea what we were going to do for the next 2 days before our reservation at our hotel was ready. So we checked for buses to Caen, France and none were avaiable so we found a nice, little cheap hotel right next to the bus stop and a main metro line that would allow us easy access in to the city. It actually turned out to be a nice litlte place and it was painless getting to and from the city. So we are very glad we came to Paris 2 days early because we got a lot of sight seeing in that I'm not sure we would have been able to do in just 4 days. A few of the sights visited so far: Eiffel Tower, The Louvre, Notre Dame, Pantheon, Arc De Triomphe, National Military Museum (Napoleon's Tomb), Mini Statue of Liberty and a bunch more! We have done a lot of walking, dodge a lot of non-stopping cars, scooters, bikes and motorcyles and pushed our way through countless herds of cigeratte smoking, wee wee speaking, crepe eating, American hating French people! But it has been an awesome time so far and we can only imagine what else we are going to see in the next 3 days! Oh and for all of you who are wondering what we will be doing tomorrow night on Christmas Eve, we are going to the Cathedral of Notre Dame for the "Lighting of Lights" and Christmas Mass! We looked at a few places to eat Christmas dinner but the prices were ungodly expensive! 45-60 Euros (60-80 US Dollars) for one person to eat an appetizer, main course and dessert but no drinks!!! So, we are still looking. It truly will be a Christmas to remember for the two of us and we are very excited to be here in Paris to celebrate it together.
Again, we want to wish everyone back home a very Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. We are SOOOOO thankful for all the wonderful family and friends we both have for we would not be the people we are today if it wasn't for all of you. You all mean the world to us and we do not know what we would do without you all. Enjoy the Holidays and the time you will be spending with your family and loved ones because those are the people who truly care about you!!
We miss you all and you will all be in our hearts and minds during the upcoming days. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!!!
Love Jon and Lynsey
Alright, so after getting back in to the Czech on Saturday the 16th from Croatia, we spent the next 2.5 days packing, cleaning, cooking and saying goodbye to all of our new found friends. It was tough saying goodbye because we never know when our paths will cross again. I hope I can say they will cross again soon but who knows what will happen between now and then! So, Tuesday morning I checked out of the room
and we grabbed our couple bags and set out with the Belgiums (Filip, Caroline and Kristof) for the start of our journey to Belgium!! After roughly 16 hours of traveling across the continent of Europe we arrived in Brussels, Belgium. We said goodbye to the three of them, only temporary (we will be spending 3 days or so with them over New Years), jumped on a train and head to the Belgium town of Gent. We found our hotel, checked in and immediately took a nice morning nap to refuel our bodies. We walked around the beautiful city for awhile before trying to figure out our next leg of the journey...getting to Caen, France and the beaches of Normandy. We were soon notified by the train ticket lady that all trains between Belgium, Caen and Paris were completely FULL for the next week or so. So this put us in a tough spot. We quickly adapted, found the LAST 2 bus tickets for the week to Paris leaving the following morning at 0800 and quickly snatched them up.So this is where you find us now...in Paris. We arrived in to Paris on Thursday with no idea what we were going to do for the next 2 days before our reservation at our hotel was ready. So we checked for buses to Caen, France and none were avaiable so we found a nice, little cheap hotel right next to the bus stop and a main metro line that would allow us easy access in to the city. It actually turned out to be a nice litlte place and it was painless getting to and from the city. So we are very glad we came to Paris 2 days early because we got a lot of sight seeing in that I'm not sure we would have been able to do in just 4 days. A few of the sights visited so far: Eiffel Tower, The Louvre, Notre Dame, Pantheon, Arc De Triomphe, National Military Museum (Napoleon's Tomb), Mini Statue of Liberty and a bunch more! We have done a lot of walking, dodge a lot of non-stopping cars, scooters, bikes and motorcyles and pushed our way through countless herds of cigeratte smoking, wee wee speaking, crepe eating, American hating French people! But it has been an awesome time so far and we can only imagine what else we are going to see in the next 3 days! Oh and for all of you who are wondering what we will be doing tomorrow night on Christmas Eve, we are going to the Cathedral of Notre Dame for the "Lighting of Lights" and Christmas Mass! We looked at a few places to eat Christmas dinner but the prices were ungodly expensive! 45-60 Euros (60-80 US Dollars) for one person to eat an appetizer, main course and dessert but no drinks!!! So, we are still looking. It truly will be a Christmas to remember for the two of us and we are very excited to be here in Paris to celebrate it together.
Again, we want to wish everyone back home a very Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. We are SOOOOO thankful for all the wonderful family and friends we both have for we would not be the people we are today if it wasn't for all of you. You all mean the world to us and we do not know what we would do without you all. Enjoy the Holidays and the time you will be spending with your family and loved ones because those are the people who truly care about you!!
We miss you all and you will all be in our hearts and minds during the upcoming days. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!!!
Love Jon and Lynsey
Dec 17 - 2006
Our pre travel travels :)
It's sad, we only have a few nights left here in Brno before we set-off to explore the rest of Europe Since we were so limited on time before we set out to travel, we did a little more traveling to fill up that time. So sit back, crack open a cold one, turn down the TV and relax as you read about our last week's adventures. See, I knew you'd enjoy listening to the Christmas music that should be starting to play as you read this 
So last Monday, the 11th, at 1300 we had our final presentation for our internship at Moravia. We spent the morning packing our bags and going over our presentation one last time. We arrived at Moravia early enough to print off our notes and papers and to drop our bags off outside the room where we were to present. The presentation went well. I'd say it was pretty casual as the two vice deans both messed with their cell phones while we were presenting, one even managed to answer his phone and leave the room! So we finished up the presentation, turned in our ID cards, grabbed our bags and headed out for the adventures we had in store!
From Brno we took a bus to Vienna where we would spend two nights exploring the city before heading to our next destination. Vienna is a very beautiful city from what we saw. It was also very cold so walking around at night and all day was very challenging. We survived and managed to see a very good portion of the city, both planned visits and even some when we didn't know exactly where we were (yah, it might have been my fault). We spent Tuesday night having a few beers in the hostels basement and chatting with a couple of Kiwi's who were living in London and traveling for a few weeks before heading to South America for 3 months and then back to New Zealand to live. Rough life I tell ya! While chatting with them, the fire alarm even managed to go off and we even had to get up and start to leave the building. At first, no one really moved until they came running down the stairs telling us we had to leave. It was only a false alarm and we our returned to our drinks. We called it an early night as we had to be up bright and early to catch our train.
So Wednesday morning saw us heading south to the capitol city of Slovenia, Ljubljana! We arrived a little after 1400, found a map and headed out to our hostel. It wasn't exactly in the city center but it was still pretty nice. We ended up having a large 8 bed room all to ourselves which was very nice. They even had WiFi so we could jump on the internet and plan the remainder of our trip since we really had nothing planned! We spent the remainder of the day and evening walking around the city seeing the sights and enjoying the beautiful Christmas lights and decorations throughout the city. The city was very nice and the people very friendly. We found it very interesting that the country was switching from their current currency to the Euro on the 1st of the year. The country must be doing pretty good to be going on the Euro! We grabbed a few groceries from a local store and headed back to the hostel to make some dinner but once we arrived back, we soon found out their were really no pans at all to make dinner with! So, we improvised and ended up making soup in a frying pan. Yah, I know what college students traveling on a tight budget will do to save a few bucks! We spent the evening planning the next few days and a few of our days on our next big travels that will be here soon then we know it! We crashed, only to get up early again!
Thursday morning we were up bright and early to finish a few things, pack and take our time getting to the train station to head to our next destination! We boared the train around 1000 and set off to Zagreb, the capitol of Croatia. We really didn't want to visit this city but it was the only big city in that area of Croatia we knew we could find a room and get to where we really wanted to go in Croatia. Once we arrived, we asked where the bus station was and set out to buy our bus tickets to the Plitvice Lakes National Park. This is why we came to Croatia, but more on that in a minute. After we got our tickets, we headed to the city center and then to our hostel. It was a little difficult to find but we managed and were soon checked in and had our bags dropped. A few things on our hostel. We had a 4 bed room with a bathroom in the room. Little did we know the bathroom was open for everyone in the hostel to use so we had people walking in and out of our room all day and evening, especially when they got home from the bars at 0200-0300. Oh yah, I was extremely happy about that one! It was ridicolous. Ok, enough of that. The city was nothing special so we walked around for a bit, saw the few sights and then headed back to our room that was just above the temperature outside to warm up and get ready for the next day. We tried to get a good night sleep but were awake from 0200-0300 so we were a bit slow in the morning. But regardless we were up bright and early and on a 0730 bus to take us to the lakes. Every city we had been in the previous few days had all been extremely cold, foggy and wet, but once we got outside the city, the fog lifted and the sun came out and the temperature warmed up. We had planned on it being very cold all day and each had on a fair number of layers but we ended up removing a majority of them once we got off the bus. It was a 2.5 hour bus ride and once we were off, we found a map and set out to explore the park and beautiful lakes. We picked up a few "tour guides" at the beginging of our walk. Two local dogs were tagging along with us for the first hour or so. They were muts, but cute. Lynsey named the one Sparky and I named the other one Cleveland, we called him Steamer for short. The lakes were by far the best part of the trip. They were so unbelievably beautiful and the water was so clear you could see so far down. We were 80 m's above the lake and were able to see large schools of trout swimming around in the lakes. Very cool. We walked pretty much non-stop for 5 hours around the lakes and did so in a t-shirt and long sleeve shirt. It was really nice outside. Check out the website for the park here: Plitvice Lakes National Park. We hoped on a bus passing by around 1700 and were back in to Zagreb by 1900. We pooked around the city for a bit and then headed back to the hostel to clean up, pack up, relax and get ready to leave in the morning. We were going to be up bright and early to start heading back to Brno.
We boarded the train at 0725 headed to Vienna and then to Bratislava, Slovakia. We had to make a quick stop there to get a few things and were able to get the few things we needed and get back on a train to Brno, all in under an hour of arrival. It couldn't have worked out any better. So we got back in to Brno, got a few groceries for the last few days and then headed back to the room. We were glad to get back last night and get one more good nights sleep. We even managed to listen to the Badger kick Pitt's butt in B-Ball and WW play a heck of a game against the tough Mt. Union team. Good job and great season Warhawks!! We spent today, Sunday, doing laundry, cleaning, organizing and packing up a few things. So much stuff to do, so little time and no idea just where to start! We'll get everything done though!
I'll post another entry before we leave on Tuesday the 19th for 2+ weeks of traveling I promise. It was a great 5 or so days of traveling, especially since it was with a great travel companion
We miss you all back home and our looking forward to seeing each and everyone of you upon our return home. Until next time, drive fast, take chances!! Take care and be sure to keep checking in. You just never know when we'll post something new for ya to read or pics to check out! Until next time, ciao!!
Jon and Lynsey
Since we were so limited on time before we set out to travel, we did a little more traveling to fill up that time. So sit back, crack open a cold one, turn down the TV and relax as you read about our last week's adventures. See, I knew you'd enjoy listening to the Christmas music that should be starting to play as you read this So last Monday, the 11th, at 1300 we had our final presentation for our internship at Moravia. We spent the morning packing our bags and going over our presentation one last time. We arrived at Moravia early enough to print off our notes and papers and to drop our bags off outside the room where we were to present. The presentation went well. I'd say it was pretty casual as the two vice deans both messed with their cell phones while we were presenting, one even managed to answer his phone and leave the room! So we finished up the presentation, turned in our ID cards, grabbed our bags and headed out for the adventures we had in store!
From Brno we took a bus to Vienna where we would spend two nights exploring the city before heading to our next destination. Vienna is a very beautiful city from what we saw. It was also very cold so walking around at night and all day was very challenging. We survived and managed to see a very good portion of the city, both planned visits and even some when we didn't know exactly where we were (yah, it might have been my fault). We spent Tuesday night having a few beers in the hostels basement and chatting with a couple of Kiwi's who were living in London and traveling for a few weeks before heading to South America for 3 months and then back to New Zealand to live. Rough life I tell ya! While chatting with them, the fire alarm even managed to go off and we even had to get up and start to leave the building. At first, no one really moved until they came running down the stairs telling us we had to leave. It was only a false alarm and we our returned to our drinks. We called it an early night as we had to be up bright and early to catch our train.
So Wednesday morning saw us heading south to the capitol city of Slovenia, Ljubljana! We arrived a little after 1400, found a map and headed out to our hostel. It wasn't exactly in the city center but it was still pretty nice. We ended up having a large 8 bed room all to ourselves which was very nice. They even had WiFi so we could jump on the internet and plan the remainder of our trip since we really had nothing planned! We spent the remainder of the day and evening walking around the city seeing the sights and enjoying the beautiful Christmas lights and decorations throughout the city. The city was very nice and the people very friendly. We found it very interesting that the country was switching from their current currency to the Euro on the 1st of the year. The country must be doing pretty good to be going on the Euro! We grabbed a few groceries from a local store and headed back to the hostel to make some dinner but once we arrived back, we soon found out their were really no pans at all to make dinner with! So, we improvised and ended up making soup in a frying pan. Yah, I know what college students traveling on a tight budget will do to save a few bucks! We spent the evening planning the next few days and a few of our days on our next big travels that will be here soon then we know it! We crashed, only to get up early again!
Thursday morning we were up bright and early to finish a few things, pack and take our time getting to the train station to head to our next destination! We boared the train around 1000 and set off to Zagreb, the capitol of Croatia. We really didn't want to visit this city but it was the only big city in that area of Croatia we knew we could find a room and get to where we really wanted to go in Croatia. Once we arrived, we asked where the bus station was and set out to buy our bus tickets to the Plitvice Lakes National Park. This is why we came to Croatia, but more on that in a minute. After we got our tickets, we headed to the city center and then to our hostel. It was a little difficult to find but we managed and were soon checked in and had our bags dropped. A few things on our hostel. We had a 4 bed room with a bathroom in the room. Little did we know the bathroom was open for everyone in the hostel to use so we had people walking in and out of our room all day and evening, especially when they got home from the bars at 0200-0300. Oh yah, I was extremely happy about that one! It was ridicolous. Ok, enough of that. The city was nothing special so we walked around for a bit, saw the few sights and then headed back to our room that was just above the temperature outside to warm up and get ready for the next day. We tried to get a good night sleep but were awake from 0200-0300 so we were a bit slow in the morning. But regardless we were up bright and early and on a 0730 bus to take us to the lakes. Every city we had been in the previous few days had all been extremely cold, foggy and wet, but once we got outside the city, the fog lifted and the sun came out and the temperature warmed up. We had planned on it being very cold all day and each had on a fair number of layers but we ended up removing a majority of them once we got off the bus. It was a 2.5 hour bus ride and once we were off, we found a map and set out to explore the park and beautiful lakes. We picked up a few "tour guides" at the beginging of our walk. Two local dogs were tagging along with us for the first hour or so. They were muts, but cute. Lynsey named the one Sparky and I named the other one Cleveland, we called him Steamer for short. The lakes were by far the best part of the trip. They were so unbelievably beautiful and the water was so clear you could see so far down. We were 80 m's above the lake and were able to see large schools of trout swimming around in the lakes. Very cool. We walked pretty much non-stop for 5 hours around the lakes and did so in a t-shirt and long sleeve shirt. It was really nice outside. Check out the website for the park here: Plitvice Lakes National Park. We hoped on a bus passing by around 1700 and were back in to Zagreb by 1900. We pooked around the city for a bit and then headed back to the hostel to clean up, pack up, relax and get ready to leave in the morning. We were going to be up bright and early to start heading back to Brno.
We boarded the train at 0725 headed to Vienna and then to Bratislava, Slovakia. We had to make a quick stop there to get a few things and were able to get the few things we needed and get back on a train to Brno, all in under an hour of arrival. It couldn't have worked out any better. So we got back in to Brno, got a few groceries for the last few days and then headed back to the room. We were glad to get back last night and get one more good nights sleep. We even managed to listen to the Badger kick Pitt's butt in B-Ball and WW play a heck of a game against the tough Mt. Union team. Good job and great season Warhawks!! We spent today, Sunday, doing laundry, cleaning, organizing and packing up a few things. So much stuff to do, so little time and no idea just where to start! We'll get everything done though!
I'll post another entry before we leave on Tuesday the 19th for 2+ weeks of traveling I promise. It was a great 5 or so days of traveling, especially since it was with a great travel companion
We miss you all back home and our looking forward to seeing each and everyone of you upon our return home. Until next time, drive fast, take chances!! Take care and be sure to keep checking in. You just never know when we'll post something new for ya to read or pics to check out! Until next time, ciao!!Jon and Lynsey
Dec 08 - 2006
ALL DONE WITH SCHOOL and we are going to have some visitors come January!!
WE ARE GOING TO HAVE VISITORS IN JANUARY!!! YAY, WE ARE SO EXCITED!!! So my dad, cousin Tyson and Grandpa Hall himself will be making a trip over to the great continent of Europe for 11-12 days the middle of January. We are going to retrace grandpa's route he took during his tour of duty during WWII. It's going to be an awesome trip that is for sure, plus we'll be seeing some landscape we've never seen before! Can't wait! I'll give you all more details as they come about, but they are comning for sure. Tickets are booked and 4 nights of hotels are reserved!!
So, after 2.5 months (actually just over 2) of school (and by school I mean 2 classes one day a week for no more then 4 hours and just over a month of work, 20-28 hrs a week, 2 group presentations for one class, 1 paper for the other and a short paper and presentation for our internship) we are done with our schooling here in Brno!! It's a sad, but happy, day for us. Since it's been awhile since I've last filled ya in on our lifes here, I'll do that quick and then give you some insight to what lies ahead of us for the next 6+ weeks
Last week was pretty uneventful. Spent the majority of the week working (24 hrs) on our project at work and then the rest of the time we were working on the last few papers and projects we had to do. We spent the weekend here in Brno to relax and refuel our bodies from always being on the go. It was a nice weekend. Went to dinner at a restaurant just down the road that a former WW and fellow Brno traveller suggested. Very good and filling. We finished up all our projects, papers and presentations today so now all that's left is our presentation for our internship we give together on Monday and then we'll have nothing left to do here in Brno for school. It's kind of sad actually. To think, we will be staying in our room only a few more nights and then it will be a different city or country every few days for the next month and a half. CRAZY! Since we are done with school and work (as of Monday afternoon the 11th) we figured we'd do some traveling and exploring before we set out to travel and explore Make sense?? Well good, I'm glad it does So here is a little timeline for our next week/week and a half!
This weekend we are heading to the town where HOSTEL was actually filmed (not Bratislava the actual town). The whole town is protected as a national heritage site so it should be pretty cool. We'll spend Saturday and Sunday there and get back Sunday night. Monday we are taking our bags to work and heading to Vienna for 2 nights and then from there we will head to Slovenia and Croatia until Sunday sometime. Don't know exactly where we are gonna go once we get there but we have a few ideas. We'll get back Sunday night/Monday morning, pack up all our stuff, and I do mean ALL our stuff cause we have a lot, clean the room and wait to get on a bus to Brussels with the Belgiums and that will be the start of a month straight of traveling! And some more good news, we changed our tickets home from the 17th to the 24th so we get an extra week in Europe!!!!! Heck ya!
Well dinner is on the table and Lynsey's got her hands on her hips with her head cocked to the side telling me to get over here and eat the dinner she has prepared (like she always does). So I'm going to obey and fill my little belly with some good home cookin. Stay posted and keep checking in. You just might never know where we will be next. Take care and know we miss you all who take the time to read about our lives.
Ciao
Jon and Lynsey
So, after 2.5 months (actually just over 2) of school (and by school I mean 2 classes one day a week for no more then 4 hours and just over a month of work, 20-28 hrs a week, 2 group presentations for one class, 1 paper for the other and a short paper and presentation for our internship) we are done with our schooling here in Brno!! It's a sad, but happy, day for us. Since it's been awhile since I've last filled ya in on our lifes here, I'll do that quick and then give you some insight to what lies ahead of us for the next 6+ weeks
Last week was pretty uneventful. Spent the majority of the week working (24 hrs) on our project at work and then the rest of the time we were working on the last few papers and projects we had to do. We spent the weekend here in Brno to relax and refuel our bodies from always being on the go. It was a nice weekend. Went to dinner at a restaurant just down the road that a former WW and fellow Brno traveller suggested. Very good and filling. We finished up all our projects, papers and presentations today so now all that's left is our presentation for our internship we give together on Monday and then we'll have nothing left to do here in Brno for school. It's kind of sad actually. To think, we will be staying in our room only a few more nights and then it will be a different city or country every few days for the next month and a half. CRAZY! Since we are done with school and work (as of Monday afternoon the 11th) we figured we'd do some traveling and exploring before we set out to travel and explore
Make sense?? Well good, I'm glad it does So here is a little timeline for our next week/week and a half!This weekend we are heading to the town where HOSTEL was actually filmed (not Bratislava the actual town). The whole town is protected as a national heritage site so it should be pretty cool. We'll spend Saturday and Sunday there and get back Sunday night. Monday we are taking our bags to work and heading to Vienna for 2 nights and then from there we will head to Slovenia and Croatia until Sunday sometime. Don't know exactly where we are gonna go once we get there but we have a few ideas. We'll get back Sunday night/Monday morning, pack up all our stuff, and I do mean ALL our stuff cause we have a lot, clean the room and wait to get on a bus to Brussels with the Belgiums and that will be the start of a month straight of traveling! And some more good news, we changed our tickets home from the 17th to the 24th so we get an extra week in Europe!!!!! Heck ya!
Well dinner is on the table and Lynsey's got her hands on her hips with her head cocked to the side telling me to get over here and eat the dinner she has prepared (like she always does). So I'm going to obey and fill my little belly with some good home cookin. Stay posted and keep checking in. You just might never know where we will be next. Take care and know we miss you all who take the time to read about our lives.
Ciao
Jon and Lynsey
