I'm back!!!!

Hello everyone!!! Sorry for the massive gap between posts - the last couple of weeks have been ridiculously busy and none of our hostels have had internet access. It's such a pain to track down internet cafes so I just kinda gave up on the whole internet thing except for odd e-mail check here and there.

Where to begin.... well, right now Katie and I are in Nice, France, right by the Italian/French border. We're supposed to be in Florence right now but after a whirlwind week and a half of sightseeing which included stops in Amsterdam, Berlin, Munich, Geneva, and Venice, we decided that we needed a break, so we skipped Florence and we're now spending three nights in beautiful Nice before heading off to Barcelona for four nights, then Madrid for three, Lisbon for three, Lagos for three and then back to London!! Just two weeks left - I can't believe it!!

Last week my good friend Tom (from London) joined us in Amsterdam, and Fiona's friend Anjelica from home joined us as well. We went to visit Anne Frank's house which was quite an eerie experience - it was actually much smaller than I had envisioned and it's so hard to believe that two entire families lived in that space for two years without ever seeing the outside world. In Berlin we saw the Berlin wall, which was actually much thinner than I had expected. It was an incredible sight to see. We noticed that there were very few references to Hitler in the city, which was interesting. They seem to be trying to focus as much on the Cold War as possible and as little on WWII as possible. We saw all the major sites in Berlin with Captain Tom as our leader, and had a grand time and many great meals! Munich was an absolute blast, and of course we went to Haufbrau house (sp?) to drink litre glasses of beer and eat German sausage and sauerkraut. Before I forget, I have to mention that when we were in the Munich train station waiting for our train to Geneva (through Zurich), we were standing around in the newspaper shop buying... a newspaper, obviously... when I heard "No way... no way..." I looked over, and there was my old highschool friend Charles Skelton!!!!!!! Who knew?!?! To meet up with an old friend in a tiny newspaper shop in the middle of Munich... what a small world! I was in shock!

What else... Geneva was beautiful but unfortunately it rained almost the entire time we were there!!! We got stuck in the rain on our way to the UN building, which meant that we were as far away from our hostel as we could possibly have been. We made the most of the situation by dancing in the rain and having bubblegum blowing contests. Katie and I also took off our shoes and ran barefoot in the rain for a while. What can ya do?!

Venice, as usual, was stunning. Katie and I spent a large portion of our time there feeding the pigeons, and we now have many insane pictures of us with pigeons on our arms, heads and backpacks. I can just hear Dad saying "DO YOU KNOW HOW UNSANITARY THAT IS?!?!?!"

Anyway, we arrived in Nice last night after a 9 hour train ride and are staying in a lovely little hotel literally a 1 minute walk from the gorgeous beach. Nice is just beautiful, palm trees everywhere, old European buildings, good food... we're in love!!!!! Katie is actually lying on the beach right now - I got bored after lying there for a few hours! The Meditteranean is a perfect blue and so warm. We're extremely glad we came here rather than spending more time sightseeing in Florence!

I hope this was a sufficient update - I promise to write again when we're in Barcelona as we won't be so rushed and I'll have more time to relax and find a computer!!!!!!

I hope everyone is doing well - I miss you all sooooooooooo much despite the lack of updates and e-mails!!!!!!!!!!! Thinking of you all constantly,

Love,
Emily