Better Late Than Never

This picture is very much overdue! This is Kevin and I with the Koala Bear in Sydney. I finally scaned it onto the computer and wanted to post it. I would put it in the Sydney folder, but I wanted you to see it, and I didn't know if you would look at that folder anymore. So here it is!

At the Taronga Zoo in Sydney

Santa Claus

I told you I would post the picture of us with the Macy's Santa Claus, so here it is!

Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays!

Barcelona Part 2

On Saturday we took the underground to the Sagrada Familia. This is a gigantic church that Gaudi started building in the 1880's and still has yet to be finished. Gaudi died in 1927 but other builders and architect's have continued to build the church and follow Gaudi's plans. It is beautiful. Once it is finished (estimated to be finished in the 2080's) it will hold upwards of 40,000 people! That gives you an idea of the size! It towers over alot of the buidlings in Barcelona.

One entrance to the church

The other entrance to the church. You can kind of see the incredible detail!

Mandatory self portrait

This was taken with the tripod, before they yelled at us and told us we couldn't use it. It was a very stupid rule that applied at other places as well.

Some of the columns inside the church. They are supposed to be like trees. Gaudi's designs were always based on nature somehow. Just look at all the incredible details!

Beautiful stained glass from the inside of the church.

More stained glass from the outside of the church.

After exploring the ground level of the Sagrada Familia, we took a lift up into one of the many spires. It was very cool.

Self portrait from the top. You can see all of the construction gear in the background.

Kevin going down the very long spiral staircase in the spire.

Once we finished at the Sagrada Familia, we went to another Gaudi building called La Pedrera. This is a building originally built as an appartment complex. The outside of the building is very typical Gaudi architecture, but the really cool thing about the building are the smoke stacks on the roof. Each smoke stack is a Gaudi sculpture.

The outside of La Pedrera

The smoke stacks on the roof top.

Just me!

A view of the Sagrada Familia from the top of La Pedrera. You can see how it just towers over the rest of the city.

We walked back to the hotel from La Pedrera and walked around La Rambla again on Saturday evening. The shopping was great and it is always fun to people watch. We went back to the Irish pub for drinks and dinner and then we crashed at the hotel.

We went to the ship on Sunday and stayed in the La Rambla area again for the remainder of the day. There were tons of people! It was probably the busiest day we saw. There were even more street vendors out and we did some more shopping. We went to the Irish pub for dinner again and then went to the hotel to pack and get ready to leave on Monday.

On Monday, we flew from Barcelona to Munich, Munic to Chicago, and Chicago home. We didn't have any problems with our flights, other than a small delay in Chicago and not getting our luggage in Colorado Springs. We did have a great suprise in Munich though!

I bought a book in the gift shop and then went to the restroom before we boarded our 10 hour flight. When I got back to Kevin, he asked me who the foreign doctor was on ER. We remembered his character's name was Dr. Kovac, and then Kevin said he is standing in the gift shop! Both of our hearts started pounding. We were so excited to see him. We waited for him to come out of the shop and asked if he would mind taking a picture with us. He said no problem and we chatted with him for a little while. He was on our flight to Chicago.

Kevin with Goran Visnjic - better known as Dr. Luka Kovac on ER

Dr. Kovac and me! I like to refer to him as McHottie - Sorry wrong show!

Thank goodness I had my camera. Kevin always gives me hard time for always having it with me...maybe now he will lay off a bit!

So we are home now. We got back around 11:00 last night. We still don't have our luggage, but at least we are home! We do not have any other big trips planned until January, when we go to see Celine Dion in New Orleans, since the concert here was postponed and we will be out of town during the evening it was rescheduled.

I will keep posting some of the other fun happenings in our life! Thanks again for keeping tuned in! Stay posted!

Barcelona part 1

Now here comes the good stuff! We got to Barcelona around noon on Wednesday and went straight to the hotel. Our hotel is located on La Rambla, which is a very famous area of Barcelona. This area has tons of shopping and restaraunts, and seems to be open 24/7 - hence the earplugs we wear when we sleep. We have had a really hard time adjusting to the time change so we took a 4 hour nap before we explored the area. We woke up around 5 pm and went to a restaraunt near the hotel for dinner. We had tapas (spanish appetizers), paella (spanish rice dish) and sangrias (spanish drink make with red wine, orange juice and carbonated water/soda). It was delicious. After dinner we wondered around the area, admiring the Christmas decorations and doing some shopping. We went back to the hotel around 10pm and finally fell asleep around 3 am.

This was a cool statue of Christopher Colombus.

This means Happy Holidays in Spanish. The architecture here is simlar to what we saw in Rome and Venice - lots of little alley ways.

We ended up sleeping until about 2:30pm on Thursday so we stayed in the area of the hotel again for the evening. We started off at an area called La Boqueria. This is a market where you can buy all kinds of meats, fish, fruit, nuts, candy, etc. What was interesting, is that they do not waste any part of an animal. So they were selling cow tounge, brains, livers, stomaches, sheep heads, full chickens, pig ears, pig heads, full bunnies, every part of an animal! It was quite a shock, but cool to see!

The entrance to la Boqueria

Some of the full chickens and bunnies :(.

After the market we went to this fountain called Font de Canaleles. Supposedly if you drink from this fountain you will return to Barcelona, so of course I had to take a sip!

We roamed the streets and did some more shopping and exploring. We found this Irish pub that had a happy hour special so we spent some time in there as well! We had a good day and looked forward to more fun to come!

On Thursday night, we had some trouble sleeping again and slept until about 12:30 today. We got up and started moving so we could go to this neat area called Parc Guell. This is a public park with architechture by Gaudi. It was incredible!

At the entrance of the park

The famous lizard by Gaudi

Kevin being goofy!

We are holding up the pillars

This bench was incredible and huge! The view was not so bad either!

Gigantic Cactus

The view from the very top! It was breath taking. The Sagrada Familia is in the back ground. More of that to come tomorrow!

And what better way to top of the day than with a goofy tourist picture!

We are having a great time and I can't wait to see more in the next few days. I will try to post once more before coming home, but if I don't get to it, look for more on Tuesday!

Lisbon

This entry is very short because we did not really do anything in Lisbon. We got to Lisbon around 5pm on Monday and left at 9am Wednesday morning. We spent 5 hours at the ship on Tuesday and did not venture out into the city. I took a few picutres off the back of the ship, but that was it. Maybe we will be more adventurous next time!

The archithecture that I could see was typical European.

Self portrait with part of the Lisbon city skyline.

A statue of Jesus across the river.

New York City

First of all, let me appologize that it took me so long to blog! The internet situation is not always dependable. I will divide the trips since there are so many great picutres! Lets start at the beginning...New York! We had an incredible time in New York and I already want to go back! We got to the city around 7pm on Friday night (the day after Thanksgiving). We took a taxi to the hotel and went straight to dinner. We ate at a great Italian restaraunt across the street from the hotel and then decided to go Rockefeller Center to Ice skate. We got there and it was so crowded (and expensive) that we decided not to skate, but still enjoyed the surroundings. New York is by far the most magical place during the holiday season! The lights and decorations were incredible. I felt like a kid in a candy store.

Radio City Music Hall. The Rockettes were doing their Christmas Spectacular show.

The Ginormous tree in Rockefeller Center.

The Tree again, with the famous statue.

I love this picture!

While we were near the plaza we also saw the beautiful window decorations at Saks Fifth Avenue and ate roasted chestnuts. This was the best way to welcome the holidays!

After we left Rockefeller center, we went to Times Square for a while. I LOVE NEW YORK! We wandered through the theater district looking at all the shows that were playing. I wish we could see all of them, but one will do for this trip. We stayed out until about 11:30 and then went back to the hotel. On the way we were able to stop at Herald Square and take a few night pictures of Macy's.

Just a few of the many shows on Broadway.

Herald Square. This is where the Thanksgiving Day Parade stops, right in front of Macy's.

On Saturday Morning we went to the ship and did our work. We met up with Kevin's Friend Rico and had a quick bite to eat with him. It was nice to finally meet him! We went back to the hotel and dropped off our stuff and then went out again. We stopped at Macy's on our way to Times Square and saw the Famous Macy's Santa! We traveled to Santaland via the Polar Express and the North Pole. The set up they had was fantastic. I don't have a picture on my camera, but I will scan in the picture we purchased when we get home! It was so fun!

Here is Kevin on his way to see Santa...

After Macy's, we went to Times Square and had dinner at the Stage Deli before the show. They have the best pickles!

We had some spare time after dinner so we wandered some more. We both had to go to the bathroom and finding public restrooms in Times Square is not easy. We saw this sign that said "Charmin, gotta go" so we went in. This was like a theme park for bathrooms. The presentation was incredible and they had staff members cracking jokes and cleaning the toilets every time someone went in. It was awesome!

Here is the sign. FREE public restrooms!

Here is what the stalls looked like. Every stall was cleaned after each use! AMAZING!

And the photo after the magic!

After the lovely bathroom experience, that took about 30 minutes, we went to see Shrek the Musical. The show was so fun! It was not the best musical I have ever seen, but it was very fun and enjoyable! We went to the stage door after the show and got a poster signed by the cast members.

This is the guy who played Donkey.

I got a little start struck!

This is John Tartaglia - Pinocchio - he also has a show on the Disney Channel called "Johnny and the Sprites" and was the original Princeton in Avenue Q

This is Chris Sieber - Lord Farquad. He was great!

And this is Brian D'Arcy James - Shrek!

Sutton Foster, who was amazing, did not come out of the stage door and we missed her. Slightly bummed, but seeing the other people was still fun!

Here is the final poster and Shrek all done up!

And to top it all off....

Just us in Times Square!

We had an awesome time and I can't wait to go back sometime soon!! Hope you enjoy these pictures!