It was the best of times...it was the worst of times

I First thought of this title because it was the BEST time and the WORST buttttt its even more fitting because

Written by Charles Dickens....ENGLISH 

This blog is about....TWO CITIES

One of them...LONDON

If you never read it in high school (I didnt...cliff notes...sorry Mrs. Donahue) like you were suppose to, its a great book and I really appreciated reading it when I got out of college so do it. Its 10:00 pm here and I am just starting this blog, so the writing is probably going to drop off pretty quick here so bare with me.  

So Kat was here and we had the freakin best time.  When we were younger her mother Karen (my adopted mother) would read us those Choose Your Own Adventure Books, so we kind of deemed this trip our real life choose your own adventure.  We picked 3 cities and explored them all. First stop, my stomping grounds Innsbruck.

re re re rewind...way to matchy matchy/tack tack

We had the best weather ever and if you cant tell by our attire and all the green it hasnt been the coldest here lately.  Which gave us the perfect walking around weather.  I made Kat try some Austrian beer and of course one of my favorites a Kebap. 

Shit, I forgot we went to Dachau for our first stop.  Okay so actually when I picked Kat up in Munich we headed to Dachau, Germany to see the concentration camp.  That was the first thing we did.  I have an extreme fascination with the Holocaust.  That sounds really weird, but I just cant know enough about it.  Besides science, I think I have studied this horrific event more then any other thing in life.  So anyways now that you think I am a freak, we both really wanted to go. 

It was sad and depressing.  It was overwhelming and mind boggling.  We could just not wrap our head around the brutality and the fact that this actually happened.  It one thing to read about it, its definitely another to step foot in a gas chamber. It was tough, and that's why it is still there to remind people that this did happen and to not forget.  I definitely wont.

Munich, Innsbruck...AMSTERDAM.

First of all I dont know why there is that myth that Amsterdam is all about smoking pot/getting high legally because its not, there is actually a beautiful city...

  I did like it, would I go back? No, but I am glad I went. We spent two nights in Amsterdam. Getting around was a nightmare, we got lost everywhere!  I think I would have enjoyed it more if we had good weather.  We did do the Vincent van Gogh Museum, walked to Anne Frank's house, saw the flee and flower markets, and walked the canals.  We would just set out everyday with no agenda and just walk, eat, walk, and have a Heineken. The people were the most friendliest people I have encountered thus far in Europe.  

Ang this ones for you...everyone can use a little Gwen in their life

The red light district was weird.  The girls are displayed in what looks like a barbie container/holder :

kind of like this (is this girl for real by the way?!?!)

I was thinking they were going to be nude and busted, but they were actually somewhat clothed and just minor trashy.  It reminded me of Vegas or New Orleans a wee bit (sorry for people who live there).  But when you really thought about what they were doing it was CREEPY, they stand there in there little glass cut outs in the side of a building and try to seduce people to come in (mainly guys, not all) not to a club but to you know what.  Prostitution is gross and so sad for these women, I was judging them for sure! 

Here comes the worst of times, luckily or not luckily for us it only lasted about 10 hours.  We hopped on the plane Easy Jet from Amsterdam to London Luton.  This was suppose to be a 45 minute flight.  So we are in the air about 20 minutes and we hit some pretty bad turbulence.  You know that kind where you look out your window to make sure the wing is still attached.  About 30 minutes in the turbulence is the worst I have ever experience, I am talking people are making ohhhs and ahhhhs because we are going up and down so violently.  

Pilot comes on and tells us that we are preparing for landing and we start our rocky decent.  I say a quick prayer and wheels hit the runway and then before I could even tell what was happening we were rocketed back up into the air.  The plane is dead quite and then you can hear the murmur "did we just land?!" ahhhhhh ya we did and now we are back up in this storm and WHAT THE F*&^.  Literally 20 minutes passed before we heard from anyone and that was the pilot finally filling us in that it was a normal procedure and that the wind was to strong but we should land in about 20 minutes.  He sounded like he was going to cry NO JOKE.  So I just loose it.  Kat is sitting to the front left of me and I tap her and tell her I am loosing it and I just start balling.  All I could think is that we are now circling to burn fuel.  And the turbulence starts to get WORSE.  And then syncronized I hear all the bells going off.  Barf time.  

Let me tell you it wasnt like oh Betty in row 8 is barfing and Ralph in row 18 it was like every other row.  Poor Kat, the person next to her probably popped a blood vessel.  AND THEEEEEEEEEEEEEN people started running out of bags, and the crew was to scared to stand up so they had to take to the isle. 

I mean it was a nightmare, all while I am asking myself if I am ready to die, and how I never thought it would be in a plane crash. About an hour and a half goes by and we finally here from the pilot that we are going to land in Birmingham another airport.  We finally did land THANK THE LORD, only to be stuck sitting on the plane for another hour because the airport is closed for the night and they need to reopen customs for us.  Only to be told that theere were going to be coach buses to take us to Luton, only to walk around the airport for another hour to find out there were no buses.

So there we are two Americans almost killed, shaken, tired, and lost.  I just grabbed a random guy (who looked safe and older) if he knew of anyone going to London and how we could attempt this.  He informed me that he was teaming up with this two Danish girls (about our age) to get a cab to London.  Score!   So we wait about 2 hours for the cabbie to come, time to relax!  NOT.  We get warned by the guy that cab drivers in London without meters are assholes and that we need to be firm with him that when we drop the guy off that he is to take no more of our money.  Sweet.  So the cab driver drives 100 mph (seriously) all two hours from London, every bump I woke up thinking we were still on the plane.  We pull up to the guys house and he is giving to the cab guy "you will drop them off, they will not pay you a cent more" like screaming. So that added to the uneasiness of the whole damn trip!  Well we finally made it to our London hotel at about 4 am.  NEVER EVER EVER fly Easy Jet.  It was really nice of them to send me an email saying that they were sorry, no refund or credit.  Oh did you want to call them and bitch?  They charge more then Miss Cleo per minute.  

More best of times....

London, I miss and love you. 3 nights was not enough! My favorite city I have ever spent time in.  I could hands down live there.  It was lively, grand, and interesting.  The accents were to die for, and the bangers and mashed were bad either.  We walked and walked and walked,  through parks, squares (circuses), over bridges, by Buckingham, Big Ben, and took it all in.  My favorite part of London was going to see the show Spamalot (it is a must, THANK YOU JAIME!!!!)  We died laughing through the whole thing, we even got asked to be quite we were laughing so hard.  

So happy to be alive!  The parks were gorgeous and so green, kinda pissed we missed Kate apparently her and George were at Kensington park the Thursday before!

Stalking someones kid..

We found some new friends...

Such tourists...

Wasnt that impressed with Buckingham

oh Canada

Or the London Bridge because its just a normal bridge, its not falling down, and it took forever to get to

Okay for all these pictures I can honestly #nofilter on all of them, its that unbelievable in person 

found a new wedding venue : )

Got to go to my dream store Harrod's which was partially closed because their alarm system was down.  

22 years later and we finally got to experience Europe together.  We did get to choose our own adventure, and I wouldnt have choose it with anyone other than Kat!  I will never ever forget this trip, one of my all time favorites!  Thank you so much!