MIA (missing in action)
due to conflicting schedules, this blog, our last blog, will be
written by only casey and keelin.
you all may be wondering where we have been the past few days. we are
now here to quell your worries and explain exactly what has been
happening.
the last few times we wrote, we didn’t include where we were or what
we had been spending our time doing. there is, in fact, reason behind
this. we were coming home. being the sweethearts that we are, we
wanted to surprise our family and friends, so after day two in nice,
we trekked our way west to ol’ madrid. there we wrote blogs about not
doing anything and mullets. the truth is, we didn’t do anything, and
we saw way too many mullets.
you now may be wondering as to why we decided to skip a majority of
spain and france and completely cut italy out of our itinerary. you
may also be curious about us coming home four and a half weeks early.
the reason behind our choices came from the fact that maggie was
homesick. unfortunately, casey and keelin were still having a grand
ol’ time. but, when one member is unhappy, the morale of the group
seems to plummet and nobody is able to have a good time.
sooo… after nice, we took a thirteen hour train ride over to
barcelona. word to the wise… never eat chinese food in barcelona.
also, never look for a post office. both of these actions will leave
you in a state of bitter dissatisfaction. if that’s a word. after
spending our nine hour layover in barcelona, we took a five hour train
ride to madrid and then found our way to the metro going to the
airport. we got to the airport around midnight. the decision to go to
the madrid airport was made in nice. when planning this trip, we
bought tickets that flew out of madrid, to frankfurt, to portland, and
then finally back home to eugene. the tickets that we purchased were
unrefundable and we had to stick to the same route if we didn’t want
to buy new ones. being that it is peak season to fly in and out of
europe, we were kind of screwed when trying to get tickets home. after
hours and hours of waiting lists, standby, and hopeless attempts to
follow our original route back to america, we broke down and called
karen, the travel agent back home. being the gem that she is, karen
was able to find us some tickets. but since it is us, and it is
europe, we couldn’t buy them from her. because lady luck is always on
our side. we were told to find a travel agency in the madrid airport
and tell them exactly what we wanted and at the price. at this point,
we came to the realization that we don’t rule the world and yes, we
would have to pay more than the estimate handed to us by karen. good
thing was, we were making it home under a thousand dollars. bad thing
was we were coming home a month early and paying for it…
after we secured our tickets, we looked for a hotel. our flight
wouldn’t be leaving until the 28th and it was currently the 26th.
well… you know how we feel about the gay community. love them. but
sometimes it just sucks to be screwed over by every single breathing,
and some inanimate, objects. gay and lesbian pride festival was in
town and every single hotel was booked. BOOKED! the airport was our
new home. we figured it wouldn’t be THAT horrible since we did just
spend about ninety seven days on trains getting over to madrid. in
fact, the airport would be better. we’d be saving money and we would
have some room to stretch out and what not. so that night, we put our
belongings in lockers and went out to experience a little bit of the
nightlife in madrid. we had a midnight dinner and discussed churros,
but decided we’d put them on the back burner, because if we didn’t,
we’d have to walk home to the airport since the last metro ran at
1:30. tired and well-fed, we found a space to sleep in a secluded area
of the airport. we got all of our stuff and surrounded ourselves by
carts. in all attempts to stay awake, casey and keelin went so far as
to drink some coffee. little did she know, warm things put kiki to
sleep and the girls were unable to stay awake much longer. oh… the
bitter hatred of the world. who would harm such fragile objects as
ourselves? nobody, we thought. we soon found out just how naive we
were to trust the spanish gypsys… the next morning we awoke to
missing cameras, ipod, eighty usd, and kaitie. the blackberry. this is
why there has been a shortage of bloggage. frantically calling home to
shut down service on the blackberry, we frightened poor jim and toni.
they called the blackberry and a couple of gypsys picked up and said
they were the police and blah blah blah. “don’t shut off service, we
mail to you, yes?” i don’t know if you know the lyerlas, but jim and
toni are not so easily fooled. they shut down the phone. back to
spain… casey, maggie, and keelin got to deal with the spanish
police. that is when we found out that they are the twelve people in
all of madrid that don’t speak a word of english. even the gypsys
that robbed us could speak better english. useless. they even laughed
in our faces about the possibility of getting our belongings returned
to us. upset and a few belongings short, we found our way back to the
beautiful city of madrid where we celebrated our loss of everything
that was important to us with some churritos and chocolate sauce.
intoxicating. you really don’t realize how filling those suckers are
until twenty minutes after you shoveled forty into your mouth and you
are paralized from the waist down. we somehow wheelbarrowed our bodies
out of the chocolatier and made our way to the grocery store, where
being 18 (with the exception of rebelious casey) we bought alcohol for
the 21 and older back home that we care so much for. back to home, aka
the airport, where we tried to convince the spanish police to let us
see the tapes of the camera that was POINTING AT US when we got
gypped. but they wouldn’t let us. because they’re the spanish police.
so we sat for hours. and hours. eventually it was 2 am and none of us
were asleep due to the raging paranoia that maybe next our bodies
would be stolen and sold to the world of human trafficing. in said
state of paranoia, we saw a man talking on a phone. of course, this
phone had to be a blackberry and there was no doubt in our minds that
it was ours. so we waited for the theif to walk away from who he was
talking to and we approached them. we asked the strangers to describe
the phone, but we were just hallucinating because it was a flip phone.
unfortunately, our jumping to conclusions made us some new friends.
weird ones at that. but, they were nice and sat with us for three
hours and talked about things that didn’t matter in life. once they
boarded a plane to chicago or something, we gave a sigh of relief and
waited for our plane to show up, which eventually, surprisingly, it
did. we got to dusseldorf at 11 pm and started our twelve hour
layover. i don’t know if you’ve ever been, but the dusseldorf airport
is amazing. following this blog, we will put up some videos of our
safari adventure filmed that night in dusseldorf. that is if we can
figure out how. so blah blah blah twelve hours pass, we get on a
plane, fly nine hours, end up in vancouver bc. trina “t ball” wright
was awaiting our arrival with a giant maternal grin and snacks for the
ride home. lucky for us, she knew what was up and took us to get some
taco bell RIGHT AWAY. we made it back home around 1130, after a ten or
so hour car ride where the three of us slept 99 per cent of the time.
and now, here we are. keelin is currently living with the lyerlas due
to a run in with a bitter sister of hers claiming that their house was
hers for the rest of july. casey is enjoying the time spent with dear
keelin and turning 18 in a few days. maggie has since been missing. if
you see her, report to keelin and casey stat.
well, as promised, the travelers are home and…
we are safe.
they’re back…
The infamous mullet has made its return to main stream Europe and has come back with striking variety. Coming in all flavors including long short, curly straight, gelled and sprayed. Quite frightening if you ask me. We attempted to capture one using the phone on our camera to show you just what type of freaky species we are dealing with but it proved imppossible to do justice to. Due to various reasons such as glare off the lense and speed walking on the part of the owner.
Casey
quickie
Today was uneventful. Very hot. We each read a book. Blackberry’s dying. More tomorrow.
K
another day in nice
So today was our second day in nice. We awoke to angry Asians and a very filling breakfast. It was pretty much the same as all hostels offered but somehow todays seemed to be bigger. Weird. But after a late breakfast we changed and got ready for our very busy day. Being extremely subburnt from yesterday, none of us really felt like going to the beach. We walked through old nice a little, noticing how it was Sunday so next to nothing would be open. We decided to take a long lunch at a cafe. We ordered our drinks and then our food which was pizza and pasta. The waitress took our plates almost immediately after we finished eating but then she asked if we want the check or coffee or anything but we planned on getting desert so we asked for a few minutes. A few minutes turned into an hour and we got the idea that it was a game they play with the Americans. Are how long it takes the Americans to say something to get their desert, or something weird like that. But three and a half hours later, we left the cafe feeling very full and confused. We had some time to kill so we walked up a beautiful hill which I think we have pictures of that may be up. But the buildings were multi colored and it was amazing. We sat and relaxed a little before heading to the market for dinner and snack supplies. It being Sundays and with no luck on our side, of course it was closed. We headed back to the hostel, very exhausted from our day, and have crashed hard since. We are in the process of going to bed and it seems like we will all sleep well. Have a wonderful day and you will hear from us tomorrow.
Maggie
Nice
Street
Rocky Beach
Overpopulation
nice is nice
Today we awoke in our beautiful hotel room to a sunny day on the southern tip of France. We packed all of our belongings and headed for the hostel we had booked for this evening. We couldn’t go to our room because check in wasn’t until three and it wasn’t even noon.so we just dropped of our bags and headed for the market where we purchased the essentials, water and tanning oil. So we then made our way to the beach which was surprisingly hard to get to due to the iron man competition being held here. The beaches were overwhelmingly full and sandless. We found an empty spot and laid our towels over a bed of rocks. We tanned for an hour and then made our way to the water which was a little too cold for our liking. So we went to lunch a very nice lunch. I had nuggets of chicken and Maggie and keelin had burgers. All very satisfying.we did some walking around the town and then went back to the hostel to check in. We found that we will be sharing a room with four other girls. Not too bad. Nice digs compared to Amsterdam. We set up our beds and then went back out. We found a lovely little ice cream stand and indulged a bit. After that we walked around the market set up near the shoreline and looked at some goods. Looked no better then the Saturday market to me. We have since made it back to the hostel and are awaiting the darkness in order to perform a midnight mediteranian swim. Wish us luck. Over and out.
Casey
exhaustion is our new home boy
Hello everyone. It’s Keelin. I know it feels like I just blogged and you want one of the other girls but get over it. I haven’t written for days, the last one was just lost. You’re stuck with me. So, now that I’ve thoroughly disappointed each of our followers, I’ll tell you about our day. As Maggie bitterly told ya’ll (that’s American!heart heart Lexi) we stayed in an upscale hotel in Lille last night. For some reason, there was a parade of sorts outside our window. The noise did not stop all night. It made for a great start of the day at 5 AM. That’s right, we woke up at 5. In case you live under a rock, 5 AM is that time of day that 99% of the world’s population would rather be dead than be awake. If you’re an early bird and you love being awake at 5 AM, then I hate to tell you this, but I automatically hate you. I suppose I should take this time to apologize in advance for any bitter emotions conveyed through this entry. I’m moody right now. But here’s the thing… This is our blog, so I can write however I feel and if you have a problem with it close the browser right now because you’re probably an early bird and I don’t like you anyways. So back to our day (you’ll probably see those same five words about 956 times in this entry-I’m feeling a bit ADD tonight) we caught our train from Lille to Paris at 6 AM. When we got to Paris, we had to take the RER from Gare du Nord to Gare du Lyon. A fifteen minute ride and we had half an hour before our next train left the station. Being the gangsters we are, we made it to our gate with time to spare. The train ride from Paris to Lyon was probably about two hours long, but I’m not even going to pretend to care because I slept the entire time. Go lethargy! Once in Lyon, we had an hour and a half to spare before boarding our next train. We found a great inexpensive cafe, Paul, and bought some food. Maggie got four little cheesy bread things. Casey got two of those, a sandwich, and a slice of chocolate cake. I got two bread things, a sandwich and a chocolate chip bread thing. The food was SO good. And cheap. Our favorite. And no we did not devour all of it at once. We’re not little piglettes. We ate it over the three hour train ride to Marseille. On that train, there were separate rooms in each car with eight seats in each. We shared our room with a twenty or so year old French boy. I think he thought we were annoying, but get guess what? I don’t care. He’s French. As a wise boy once said, “The only thing the French have is french fries and they didn’t even invent those, America did, and we felt sorry for them so we named them after the French.” 
so… Back to our day, the train ride to Marseille wasn’t horrible. While Maggie played her gameboy, Casey and I used Kaitie, aka the blackberry if you forgot, to check out this great site that Sarah from Amsterdam told us about. It’s called thesuperficial.com. You should probably look at it right now. Well, after your read the rest of my ranting. The rest of the train ride was spent sleeping. For me at least. I think Casey slept too. Maggie probably didn’t. Poor girl. So we got to Marseille and waited at that station for two and half hours to then realize that our train was fifteen minutes late. Yes! When our train did decide to show up, we found that it was small and packed. Most uncomfortable ride so far. It’s probably about as uncomfortable as the metro. Only the metro is better because that’s our g unit and it’s only a few minutes per ride as opposed to the two and a half hour ride from Marseille to Nice. But alas, we did finally arrive in Nice at 645. We walked to our hostel, and once again I was amazed by our navigational skills. We found that baby right away. There was only one problem… It was booked. We decided to reserve a room for tomorrow night and then we walked around and looked for a hotel to stay in for the night. Unfortunately, everything was booked. We went to seven or more hotels, only to find out they were full. Even Best Western. Here’s the thing though… Best Western is American. We’re American. Doesn’t that give us priority? Throw a French bum out and give us a room. However, France is backwards and doesn’t follow the common sense rules so we had to search for hotels for two hours carrying around our fifty pound bags. Life sucks. Here’s what I don’t get, why are they all booked? I mean, Nice is nice and it’s right on the water, but that is seven plus hotels full. It’s not THAT great. The whole town is currently under construction and it’s France. Who likes the French enough to fill seven hotels? So when we found a hotel, we were so exhausted slash smelly that we were turning European and we didn’t care that it was out of our price range. Let me explain one thing. I am a clean girl. I shower every day, and despite what my mother says, I even shower when the new Harry Potter books come out. So when I had to travel as much as we did without showering since Paris, two days seems like a much longer time than one would think. So the first thing done was shower. Thank God it was in the top ten of best showers ever taken. After the shower, I sat in our 116 euro room and asked myself, “What is so great about the French?” unable to come up with anything, I turned to the blog to vent. Unfortunately, I wrote for about an hour, only to submit it and it only published the first six sentences. WTF? All signs point to French conspiracy. So now that I have finished take two of the blog and made myself sound like a racist biatch (I’m not by the way, I’m just tired and resent the French), I will join my fellow travelers in Dreamland. There, I will enjoy a steak and some Taco Bell and the top ten most American things I have ever heard of. So good night.
K
PS today I decided that one of the first things I’ll do when I return home is watch Team America. (f yeah)
Train pics
Train I
Train II
Bored
Marge
Dormitory
stayokay (lost message from K)
So last night, the little french brats woke us up at 1030. Yeah… We were asleep then. But anyways they were being loud as ever so I opened our door and glared out. I don’t know if I glared at a person or a fire extinguisher or what, but when I slammed the door and banged on it, I heard a flurry of french hushes and silence. Well… Close enough to silence. So we ended up waking up around six and showering and getting ready. Then we went down to the breakfast room to get our food and the brats were flooding the room. Life sucks. At around 745, we hooped on the metro. I have recently come to the realization that the thing I will miss most in Paris is line 13 on the metro. That’s our boy. But moving on. We caught our train to Lille and were on our way. Right now we’re sitting on my bed at the hostel. We’re in an all girl dormitory this time. We’re talking to a nice couple all about the sights and the city. When we got into town around 4 and have been exploring since. Such sights… We passed by many live shows. I’ll let you interpret which kind. Sorry if this entry seems confusing and blah blah blah, but we’re talking to these girls and it’s hard. But anyways. I don’t think I have much to say. So on we go to experience the nightlife of Amsterdam.
K
today sucked.
So casey told you all that we had left Amsterdam early and were on our way to nice. Well, the lady that gave us our tickets and told us which gate to go for lille, the city that we would use our eurorail passes to get to nice, she failed to mention which stop we got off at but on our ticket it said a city or station so we thought we would be fine. The train goes and goes and goes and reaches its final destination, brussells. Apparently we had to get off of the train like two hours earlier. We then had to buy another ticket to go to another town to get off the train to get on another train just to get to France. We get to lille around seven ish and find out that there was either a crash or a strike that prevented any trains to nice for tonight. So we decided to stay in lille for the night and catch a very early train to get to nice. As we look outside the train station we see four hotels automatically. We go into a couple and they are either full, too expensive or too dirty. We decided to give ourselves a break and splurge on the nice hotel where we currently are at. After lugging our luggage up four flights of spiral stairs we are ravishingly hungry. We were so desperate, we went to mcdonalds. It was horrible. Yet the most satisfying burger I ever had. Even though its not sitting quite well now. But that’s all for our very uneventful yet extremely tiring day and we will hopefully be blogging from nice tomorrow. We shall be riding trains from six in the morning to about six or seven at night. Wish us luck.
Maggie
