the post that never ends, featuring Rachel, special guest Lisa.

This post will be seven miles long.

My friend, Lisa came all the way from freezing cold Salt Lake to visit me. yay. we spent about four days in Italy going to Venice, Florence, Pisa, and Rome. There is no proof of these events because Lisa holds the rights to all of those pictures, but we can pretend. It rained pretty much every day, but it only dampened our spirits a little. Our last day in Italy was spent in Rome and then we were off to Germany. We spent 4 days in Berlin, Germany doing a myriad of things.

We met several kinds of people. The first night we met some roudy Italian boys. Paolo, Francesco, Fabio guy (i think his name was Julian, or something), Rasta Man (I don't know his real name, that's what his friends called him), and Rolando. ha ha. This is all I can say. Next day we spent our time walking around Berlin. It's a super modern city where everyone speaks English. I loved it! I ate a yummy Bratwurst (Lisa tried mine and perfered it over her Subway turkey sandwich), potato pancakes, and a wonderful little scone. I would gain some major weightage if I moved here. We saw Alexandreplatz (a famous plaza in Berlin with a famous clock that tells the time everywhere around the world). And through our roaming we arrived at the Berlin Wall. The "Eastside Gallery" is the longest stretch of the Berlin Wall that has now been painted on by numerous artists from around the world. It was amazing to see it!

Work Makes You Free
(The gate into Sachsenhausen)

The next day we spent in Berlin we went on a 6 hour tour of Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp right outside of Berlin. This was by far my favorite part of my time in Berlin. It was humbling to see what events took place within the walls of Sachsenhausen. It was the holding place of some important Nazi prisoners. Among them were Stalin's son (a hopeful bargaining chip for the Nazi, but Stalin claimed he had no son, because no son of his would be stupid enough to be caught by Nazis) and also another famous prisoner was a british officer who was the mastermind of the "Great Escape" at another camp, he would be eventually be killed at Sachsenhausen. It was really educating, and extremely sad, but I would recommend anyone go to atleast one concentration camp. You learn so many things.

Germany is also very famous for their Christmas Markets, the most famous being their Gendarmenmarkt Market. Yummy. Roasted almonds, candy, bratwursts, scones...Heaven.

Our next stop. PARIS. The land of...the meanest people on Earth, atleast according to Lisa and Rachel. (and our opinion is the only one that matters)

We also spent 4 days in that city and we DID have fun despite the Parisians' plot to ruin our vacation. We climbed the bell towers of Notre-Dam and listened to the bells toll above the city. We also got to enjoy the stain-glassed beauty within the cathedral. Again check out Disney's "Hunchback of Notre Dam" There is a nice little ditty about the bells of Notre Dam. They're quite famous.

We spent a couple hours roaming the halls of the Lourve museum. Of course we sat and looked at the "Mona Lisa" and even snuck a picture with her. (It wasn't very hard, but Lisa and I are quite stealthy.) The picture can be seen shortly on Lisa Ladle's facebook page. We kept walking around the museum and saw a bunch of old stuff. The highlights are as follows:

1. The Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci

2. The ancient Greek sculpture of Venus. (The girl statue with her arms knocked off.) To see who knocked the arms off see Disney's "Hercules"

3. An actual real life Mummy.


I could have spent hours at that museum, but we were pretty beat, and our feet were hurting so we called it a night. (and by night I mean afternoon, it was 2:30. Lisa and I are fast tourists)

On the way home we got off the metro to take a quick pic of the famous National Paris Opera House. We even got the guts to ask a Parisian to take our picture.

The next day we hit the other two main spots of Paris. The Eiffel Tower and The Arche de Triomphe. Awesome and awesome! The Arche de Triomphe was built by Napoleon a while ago. It was fashioned after the Arch of Titus in Rome (which I've seen about a million times, it's right by the Colosseum.) The Arche de Trimomphe is HUGE. We got to climb up into the inside and eventually onto the roof. It was pretty cool! The Effiel Tower is so much BIGGER than I thought, AND it sparkles at night! Bright blue with cool sparkly lights. That was a neat thing to see. We also got some yummy cotton candy...three times. We like our sugars.

The night life in Paris wasn't as great at Berlin, but we did meet a few people at our Hostel. Some very interesting people! Brazilian doctors in training, a guy from LA with his mouth wired shut (lisa told me he broke his mandable, leave it up to Dr. Lisa to tell me that.), a Korean girl who partied hard, a chinese girl that washed her face 5 times a day, an australian women who was just finishing up her 3 month tour of the world that she had quit her job to do, a South African who drank at 9am, and my favorite; Bulgarian market owner down the street. A little creepy, yes. But quite enthusiatic. He even wanted a picture with us. But no matter how much we flirted he never gave us free stuff. How rude!

We also had the chance to attend the Paris Ward for their Christmas sacrament meeting. It was amazing. I knew a couple of the songs thanks only to Ms. Belnap, bless her. Also I was pleased to see a high school friend, Nate Fairbourne. He was a missionary at the ward and I find that my world is very small sometimes.

Lisa and I truly had a marvelous time in Italy, Germany, and France. I am soo soo glad she was able to come and visit me here...even though I had to take every blasted picture like 20 times to get it right! It was all worth it! Miss her already, and she is probably about to kill me at this moment. She has been stuck in the Rome airport for more than 24 hours because AItalia airline is on strike. Sorry about that!

The trip was a success for me and I am now ready to settle in for a couple days and enjoy Christmas in Italy.

CHRISTMAS IN ITALY!

MAMMA MIA!

Ciao.