Ireland - Finally here!

We had a great time in Ireland...visited the Keane family farm, saw gorgeous countryside, hiked, drank guinness, what more could you ask for?!?! See more pictures by clicking on the turtle.

Roma!

Okay, so it's here! The last set of pictures. I had a harder time deleting duplicates out, so there are an awful lot of pictures from Rome. We had a great weekend there...enjoyed the sun, the food, the people, the soccer (Eurocup finals: Italy vs Spain). Hopefully the pictures tell enough of the story...2 days in Rome sure isn't much!

Trier - a fun find

We'd read that Trier (a German town, just over the border from Lux) was worth the visit if you had time. So we decided that my last Friday night, on our way to the airport for our weekend in Rome, was the time to stop in. Good thing we did 'cause we found the most fun summer all-town party! We ate yummy brats and drank great German beer. Plus we happened upon a couple of finds in the music industry (pay attention to the 2 videos in this set of pictures). The town had blocked off the whole city center to make it into what felt like a county fair. They had food and drink vendors nearly every 20 feet, and bands spread out among the many fingers of streets. The 3 white guys were my favorite (again, see the video). Trier, needless to say, was a hit! (and I'm pretty sure we missed out on a bunch of historical sights, but at least we saw Porta Nigra which was pretty cool! Not sure exactly what it was, but hey, it looked old and special).

June 16-20
2 weeks in Luxembourg have already flown by! Pont Aldophe (or "new" bridge - built from 1900-1903) above, is one of my favorites in the city, that supposedly has no less than 110 bridges! Guess that's what happens when you have a city built on 2 rivers. We took a mini driving tour one night this week to take some pictures with the bridges and fortresses lit up. Unfortunately, our camera doesn't really do the nighttime justice.

I took the camera along on one of my runs thru the valley and city. This one was taken from up on the red bridge - or pont rouge - it's fondly called. The real name is Pont Grand Duchesse Charlotte, but I guess they decided that's too long to say on a daily basis. You can see more pictures from around the city here.

The reason we're here

The Red building is where Andrew has been working most of the time. The industrial looking stuff is right behind his building, and somewhere in there is concert hall named "Rockhal". Avril Lavigne and Kylie Minogue both performed there recently. There isn't a whole lot in this town called Esch-sur-Alzette, but supposedly it's on the up and up as it rebounds from being a run-down steel industry town.

Eurocup 2008!

June 17:
Go Netherlands! We stumbled upon a fun bar in the Grund (the part of town in the bottom of the valley that runs along Luxembourg city). Sure was hard to deal with all of the cigarette smoke, but we had a blast joining all the soccer fans for a night of pizza, beer, and football/soccer. We were hoping to go to this place for dinner, only to walk in and find out that they didn't serve food. Fortunately, we saw another table order a pizza for delivery, so we jumped on that wagon. There were definitely more Holland fans (look for the group of orange folks with tall hats in the video) than any other team, but France and Romania (guy in yellow shirt) were represented as well. Didn't see any Italians at this spot though.

We're going to Italy!

June 13-15: Cinque Terre!!!
This was our first experience with Ryanair...one of Europe's cheap airlines (and they make sure you know it too! All of their marketing boasts cheaper flights). Definitely wasn't a luxury airline, but it got us where we wanted to go. We flew from a small airport about an hour outside of Frankfurt, Germany to Milan, Italy. Once in Milan, we picked up our tiny little car (nothing fun though, a Chevy Matiz) which felt like riding in a scooter with 4 walls. It got the job done though! After spending a late night in Lido, Italy (just outside of Milan), we finally arrived in Cinque Terre on Saturday around noon.

The drive in was pretty amazing, with narrow, winding, roads up at the top of the mountains along the coast. You'll have to look at the rest of the pictures to see how awesome the weekend was! My obligatory disclaimer though...I love the place so much that there are a lot of pictures, and many of them very similar! :)