Home sweet home...

Okay, so we have been home for a little over 2 months now...and my mom has been bugging me ever since to finally finish this blog! I guess its time to end this adventure, but don't worry! I know there will be more to come!

Amanda and I arrived in Chicago and took our first steps on American land after 5 months of traveling abroad. Even though we were still a 4 hour plane ride from home, it felt like we'd finally made it. We made our way through customs (no more having to carry around our passports), changed our outfits (we wanted to show off our new dresses), re-checked out luggage, and boarded our last plane of the trip...

I don't really remember the flights from that day, but I do remember the feeling once we landed at Lindbergh Field and finally made it to San Diego. Neither of us could help but smile. Do you ever get that feeling? It really is like there's a hanger stuck in your mouth. I was so nervous to walk down the escalator and see our families standing at the bottom of it, holding up HUGE welcome home signs. My heart was beating so fast as we made our way into their arms.

Once we picked up our backpacks from baggage claim, we headed off to our first meal back in the states...IN N OUT!! Yummy :) Unfortunately, Robby (Amanda's brother) didn't make it to dinner after the airport, but Clay met up with us and welcome Amanda and me home. We enjoyed our delicious burgers and fries, then for the first time in 5 months, Amanda and I went our separate ways- tear :'( . It was LOVELY to sleep in my huge comfy bed, but I sure did miss Amanda and all the other wonders that come with sleeping in hostels!

Thanks for following us along out adventures abroad, and I can't wait til the next time we have something for you to follow!!

LOVE LOVE LOVE :)

A&A

Homeward Bound...

As we waited for the elevator to come to our floor, we found ourselves jumping and high-fiving over and over. For what reason, we have no idea. What I do know is that time is very bitter sweet for the both of us. Tonight, we prepare (and pack) for our return to our home sweet home of Poway, California. True, we only live 3.5 miles away from each other and we will probably see each other every day anyway, its not the same. No more waking up next to each other, sharing every meal, sharing clothes (well that will happen anyway), traveling around, sharies stories and everything else that goes along with traveling. Our parents have even discussed getting joint custody! But this time has truly been astounding, and who greater to share this experience with than a best friend?!

After 5 months, we have reached the end of our journey. Who would have thought that a random winter text message about boycotting the real world would turn into some crazy adventures to last a life time. My eyes are burning because I am so tired. My body aches from walking around all the time. My chipped nails and splitend hairs have seen better days. But I wouldnt trade any of that for this amazing time that Ally and I have shared. Sure we've been best friends for over 17 years, but whats a few more Euro stories to add to the mix :)

Thank you to everyone who has made this trip something special for the both of us. From Switzerland to London and all 11 countries in between (13 if you count the Vatican City and Monaco), it's time to go home. We of course did not get to see everything or do everything, but that just means that we will have to one day return. Hopefully sooner rather than later!

A travelers motto to share: Be a traveler, not a tourist!

For now, goodnight from London. We fly home in the morning!

Love,
Amanda and Ally

p.s. Moms, try not to cry! We'll be in your sweet loving arms soon enough!! Love you guys!

1 Week left...

Hey everyone!!
Right now we are sitting in a little coffee shop called Black Medicine in Edinburgh, Scotland :) Sorry we haven't been up to date on our blogging...we're just trying to enjoy our last few weeks over here and now we are down to only 7 days!!
A couple weeks ago, we were enjoying our time in Spain. Sevilla was so much fun since we had a new travel buddy- Lindsay! The second night we were there, we celebrated her birthday! The hostel set up a little party for her filled with wine and chocolate :) We spent the night celebrating around the city! The next day, Lindsay had to go back to Milan. Matt, who we met at the hostel, joined Amanda and I for dinner and a free Flamenco show. Amanda's friend Matt (not the same one we met!!) from TCU studied abroad here last year and told us some great things to do and see, including Flamenco! All in all, Sevilla was an amazing city to visit!!
Then we headed over to Lisbon for a couple days!! The hostel was awesome and in a great location. Since we took a night train there, we were exhausted after arriving around 9am. We took a nice nap then walked around the town for the evening. At night, we met up with our friend Ricardo from camp!! He took us around the town and we had a great time catching up with him :) The next day, we went to a flea market! It was huge and seemed like it went on forever. That night was Halloween, and we were taking a train back into Spain! The hostel let us use their kitchen and showers even though we already checked out, so after eating dinner we go on our train and headed to Madrid, our last stop in Spain!
We got to Madrid around 8 in the morning and went straight to our hostel. Even though we were tired, we left our backpacks there and went to the flea market, El Rastro. We thought the one in Lisbon was huge...this one was way bigger!! We spent a few hours browsing around all the booths, then headed back to the hostel where we rested for a while. The next day we walked around the city and through El Parque del Buen Retiro. It was beautiful!! My little, Maggie, studied abroad here last year and told us of a great place to get churros- so we did that!! Churros are sooo different in Spain. They aren't covered in cinnamon sugar, and you dip it in melted chocolate! Then we went to dinner at a restaurant she recommended. It was delicious! We wrote down the dishes we ordered so we can try to cook them when we get home :) The next night was free entrance to the Prado Museum so thats what we did! Lots and lots of artwork. After the museum, we tried to meet up with our friend Virginia from camp, but again, not having a cell phone made things difficult!!
This past week we were in Ireland where we stayed with our friend from camp, Saoirse! We spent a good number of days wandering the streets of Dublin (after, of course, going on the free tour!), took a day trip out to Kilkenny, baked cookies, visited the Guinness Storehouse, went to the local pubs, and met up with our friend David from camp a couple of times. We had a great time in Spain and Portugal, but it was really nice to change gears a bit and come to a country with some new scenery...and its nice to hear English again :)
In our last week abroad, we are hanging out in Edinburgh, Bristol, and London. It's still hard to believe that the past 5 months have gone by so fast- but left us with tons of memories, new friends, and tons of laughter :)
Cheers,
A&A

pics chose not to upload, we will try again later!

Ally Amanda Barcelona

Well we didn't film a Woody Allen film, but we did go to Barcelona :) Haha, maybe that was lame, but I thought it was pretty clever! On the 23rd of October, Ally and I left Aix and took a train over to Barcelona, Spain. We arrived that night and checked into our hostel very centrally located right on La Rambla - the main street of Barcelona. It was weird and very sad to leave such a homey place in France, but we were back into traveling mode and ready to go. It was also very hard to switch from speaking all our French to Spanish! Ally took Spanish in high school, so that helped a bit, but we often found ourselves saying merci and then forgetting how to say thank you in Spanish... oops!

We didn't do much the first night because we had a long day of traveling, so we checked into our room, made a great dinner of popcorn and iced tea (without the ice of course), and quickly fell asleep.

The next morning we were so excited because our good friend from home, Lindsay Bracken, was joining us! We met her in the city and took her back to our hostel. We chatted and caught up talking about all of our Euro adventures thus far. Lindsay is currently modeling in Milan, so she has her fair share of adventures! We soon headed out for the day making our way all around Barcelona including the beaches and other hot spots!

The time frame in Barcelona is quite different than we are used to; and we thought France ate late! We had dinner that night around 10:30pm, and we had some seafood-ish paella which Lindsay enjoyed more than Ally and I.

We got back to our hostel just before midnight - perfect timing to shower and get ready for the evening (like I said, everything is much later in Spain). We ended up heading out around 1:30am and the streets were very much alive with people everywhere. We had no idea where to go, so we just walked towards the beach. Along the way, we were lured into one bar/club because they offered us a free drink, and who are we to turn down a free drink!

The bar that we started at would close at 3, then they would take us to another club. We decided it was kind of lame and walked around a bit more, only to find ourselves back where we started from. So we got another drink and sat down and were soon joined by some local guys who worked at the place. After a while, the time quickly passed and we had some new friends who took us to another club. In all, I think we went to 4 different bars/clubs and only had to pay for drinks at the first place! Score! We did a ton of dancing and had a great time just being girls and being together! We had a blast and before you we knew it, it was past 6am (which was really like 7am, because we had the time change) and we escaped back to our hostel!

After sleeping in well past noon (like 4pm HA!), we slowly woke up lounged around for a good part of the day. But it was great to rest and hang out! We were planning on going to park Guell, but it was getting dark, so we decided to do that the next day. A friend recommended a great place for dinner that was near our hostel so we ate there that evening. We shared some tapas and some yummy yummy sangria! We decided when we get home, we will try and perfect our own recipe of sangria! :)

Still adjusting to the time change (my bad!) we woke up an hour earlier than expected, so when we wanted to wake up at 7am, we were actually up at 6am! Since we got a little bit of a late start the day before, we decided to wake up early (extra early!!), grab some fresh fruit from the huge market and walk to Park Guell before our train left for Sevilla.

We wandered around the park for a while and saw a ton of amazing things created by Gaudi. It was really great! Then we walked around a bit more admiring all the architecture and sights.

After a grand time in Barcelona, we were ready for our next stop - Sevilla!

A&A + Lindsay

2 Weeks Left.........

Happy November everyone!
It's officially November, and that means our time in Europe is coming quickly to an end. On the 17th we will spend the last day of our 5 month voyage around Europe waving goodbye to London from the airplane. Its bitter sweet thats for sure, but we are excited and ready for some stability and rest and routine.
We have officially reached the part in our journey of exhaustion... Our bodies ache and I think my ankles are permanently swollen from walking around carrying 50+ extra weight on my back. We laugh uncontrollably at anything and everything. But thats probably better than fighting or losing our tempers - which we have yet to do! Just the other day, well practically every day, I trip (yes it happens multiple times a day now) and we just crack up for a few solid minutes.
Dont get me wrong, we are still enjoying everything and are so excited to see Ireland and the UK! It just takes us a little while longer to get going for the day :)
Sorry we havent been updating the blog much, we're tired! haha
But incase you were wondering, after Aix, we went to Barcelona, Sevilla, and Lisbon. We are now in Madrid and we fly to Dublin tomorrow! We will try to update this before the trip is over!
Happy Fall and Go Frogs :)
Amanda and Ally

French Cooking

Our two weeks in the south of France taught us alot about delicious French cooking! We had delicious breakfasts, lunches and dinners with tea times in between. We also went out a few times to some of their favorite places to try real French cuisine.

Breakfast sometimes consisted of fresh croissants and pasteries, cereal, fresh squeezed orange juice and tea. Some days we would eat breakfast at noon, since we were really good at sleeping in, but it was great to have a real breakfast! They even had peanut butter for me :) SCORE! And homemade jam from Grandma! (Dont worry, we sent some home to share!)

Lunches were either left overs from previous meals or the big meal of the day on the weekends.

1. Boeuf Bourguignon - Francoise made this for us by request after we saw Julie&Julia. SO GOOD! The meat was tender and she used fresh veggies and potatoes (pommes de terre!) from the garden.

2. Veal in some creamy sauce - one sunday, we all went over to Grandma and Grandpas house for lunch and she made some kind of egg and truffle dish for starters and fried mushrooms with a spinich salad. Then the main course was veal with some yummy sauce - I forgot what it was called. We loved sitting down to a huge family meal - everyone was so friendly. It was funny because Alice and Elise would have to translate for us becuase their grandparents didnt speak english. For dessert we had some kind of upside apple pie deal - but I dont know how to spell it in French!

Many days, Francoise would cook us dinner which of course we loved. And dont forget all the fresh French baquettes that we had with every meal :)

1. Duck in a raspberry sauce - Delicious!

2. Quiche Lorraine - that Alice made! Such a quick and easy and yummy meal!

3. Homemade Lasagna - Ivan had us over to his place for dinner one night and taught us how to make homemade lasagna.

4. Pizza truck - one night we stopped by a pizza truck run by Pauls friend James. He made us some pizzas - one with a white cream sauce and one with red sauce. We brought those home and shared them with the boys and they watched a football match - while we drank some tea :)
5. Truffle Pasta - Alice made us some spaghetti with truffle sauce from the left over truffles from grandmas house. Her grandparents have two dogs that they have trained to go into the fields and sniff out truffles! For dessert, Alice made us tiramisu! YUM

6. Paul's Favorite Restaurant - one night after the boys played football, Paul took us all out to his favorite restaurant. It was very colorful and served typical French foods. The waitress explained the menu to us in English. For the first course Ally and I both got an eggplant dish with tomato and mozzerella. Their favorite first course was some kind of duck liver pate spread on toast. Ally and I tried it of course, not our favorite thing. It was a very interesting thick texture. For our second course Ally got some pork and zucchini and I had some steak and potatoe dish. The boys and Alice were much more adventurous and used to the food, so they ate things like seafood and other meats. Good for them! Then came dessert! I had the traditional creme brulee and Ally had a medley of desserts such as creme brulee, chocolate mousse, tiramisu, raspberry custard and something else.

7. Chicken and Potatoes - When Alice came to America, she made us a French meal with some yummy creamy potato thing (gosh I wish I remember what they were all called - but Alice has it all typed out, so ill get it soon). She made it with fresh potatoes from the garden and Herbs de Provence! To accompany the potatoes, we had chicken, and not just any chicken. One that was roaming around the yard just that morning.... Her grandma was nice enough to clean it for us to cook!

Our American/Mexican Meal!
One night, Ally and I made dinner for the whole family. We decided on Mexican! It was kind of interesting because we didnt have all the same things as we do in America. We made chicken tacos/fajitas! We made homemade spanish rice that was kind of interesting, and had white beans because we couldnt find black ones. The best part was probably the homemade guacamole and salsa that we made! The day before, we went to the market in Aix which was full of fresh fruits and veggies that we bought for the meal.

This was in the "stranger aisle" which is where all the international food is! haha!

Since we usually had wine with our meals, we decided to mix it up a bit and made blended margaritas for everyone to try! Yummy :) Since it was a pretty big meal, a fruit salad for dessert was the perfect ending to our American meal.

Desserts - We always had some kind of dessert after our meal. Sometimes it was cheeses, other times we had macaroons, fruit salads, pasteries, cookies and banana bread. Our last night, Francoise brought us her favorite desserts from the bakery.

Baking - Since we had so much free time during the days, we often found ourselves baking. One thing that Alice remembered from her trip to San Diego was the delicious chocolate chip cookies. She even still had the recipe that I wrote out for her 7 years ago! I think over the course of 2 weeks, we made 5 batches of cookies. They turned out a little different every time because we had to improvise often with baking soda and brown sugar. It was interesting, but we did it and they loved them! One night we baked cookies and played cards with Ivan and Axel and there were probably 10 cookies left at the end of the night. We aslo made banana bread (or cake as they call it) which was a request of Alice. The first one we tried to make was at Ivans house and we had to literally guess at how much we were mixing together because he didnt have any measuring devices. It was pretty good, but the bananas sunk to the bottom a little. Our next try was amazing, and we even put in some chocolate chunks!

So much cooking and baking has made both Ally and I really excited to get home and cook :) Get ready parents!!! Alice also gave us a lot of the recipes, so we are good to go!

Yumm - French food :)

Aix en Provence

Let me precface this blog with a short story that happened 7 years ago...

The Youngs are a very welcoming (Jean Welcome! Haha) family and hosted a young (the Young family! Haha) French girl for a couple weeks during the summer of 2002. They had a great time in San Diego!! Years later, Amanda and Alice found each other on facebook. Through the wonderful communication of the internet, Amanda let her know that we would be traveling through Europe and would love to visit her. And now, 7 years after Alice enjoyed her visit in Amanda's hometown of San Diego, she is letting us visit her beautiful hometown of Aix en Provence, in the South of France, for a couple weeks!

We had the best time. It was a holiday during our holiday. When we first arrived, Alice and her fiance Paul met us at the train station. They took us home when her family was gathering for her fathers 50th birthday!! Everyone was very friendly and excited to meet us American girls. We ate a delicious homecooked meal for the first time in a while. After settling in, Alice busted out her scrapbook from her visit to California. It was so fun to look at old pictures and reminice on that trip. Then Alice took us into town where we had drinks with Paul and his brothers, Axel & Ivan. That day was a perfect taste of our next 2 weeks :)

Their backyard and a pic with the family!

We spent many of our days just lounging around their beautiful country home. Throughout the day we would hear the rooster 'cock-a-doodle-doo' but since it was a french rooster, it said 'cocorico!!' They live on a farm where they grow lots delicious veggies and fruits! They have horses and chickens roaming around outside. We would use fresh veggies and eggs while cooking :)

The view from our bedroom and a pic with all the kids :)

Paul is an electririan, so he had work everyday. Alice and her sister, Elise, were in university so they were sometimes busy during the day. When they were not home, we would recooperate from traveling! We liked to relax by watching movies and baking cookies and banana bread! Axel and Ivan also had jobs, but when they were free they would come over and join us all! On one of the first days, we all played tennis...that was entertaining for them! Amanda and I aren't the best at this sport, but its always fun to play :) Some of our favorite nights were spent in Alice and Pauls basement apartment with everyone playing Wii, cards, baking cookies, listening to music and just hanging out. When the boys were gone and working, we spent lots of time sitting around the dining room table with Alice, Elise and Francoise (the mom) chatting about anything and everything and enjoying hot tea and verbena. We also managed to learn some French :)

We did many things over those two weeks, including cooking, day trips, relaxing, visiting relatives, tea times, going to the market and so much more. Stay tuned for details about the trip in other posts :)

A&A