Switzerland alps

Now I finally get what all the hype is about when it comes to Switzerland. It is absolutely beautiful! The town is like something out of a movie. The stores and houses are surrounded by beautiful mountain peaks with a peaceful lake right in the middle. When we arrived there was an annual festival going on in Lucerne. Thousands of people come out for live music, food and fireworks. Since this week is 4th of July, I have a feeling that I might die of homesickness in a couple of days so it was so nice to get one of the best fireworks shows I have ever seen. We are staying with a young married couple with an adorable son. They are 2 of the kindest people I have ever met and their place is incredible. Tonight we are sitting out on their porch after a traditional cheese fondue dinner, overlooking the alps and having a cup of coffee. We have had an amazing day hiking the Stanserhorn mountain. In the fields along the way the cows have these really huge bells that dangle from their necks. When you listen you hear all the different tones and it sounds like church bells or an orchestra all over the mountains. It has been an exhausting few days and we are about to turn in for the night. We have been in 5 different countries in 5 days and spent the last 6 nights in 6 different places so it will be nice to stay in the same bed tonight.

Southern England and Northern France

The rest of our Southampton/portsmith trip was fabulous. The hike through NewForest was so beautiful. We walked the "tall trees trail" and saw wild horses and deer. It was so peaceful and beautiful. I think we needed to get out of the city and enjoy some nature trails. Our couchsurfing host in Portsmith was so generous and had such a sweet family. They gave up their master bedroom and slept on the couch for us. I'm really just trying to wrap my head around the generosity and kindness that we have been shown over the last few months. It is REALLY humbling!
Yesterday we took the ferry to France. It was mostly a drive day but the landscape in France is SOOO beautiful. We drove through the countryside and little villages. I would have loved to spend more time there. It's incredible how every country has so many differences in landscape and architecture. Last night we drove until dark and then pulled into a campsite. It was raining all night so I didn't sleep more than a few hours. Ugg

Wales and Southampton, England

After almost 24 hours straight of traveling we finally made it. Although I guess when you think about it the whole trip is traveling. Now I know where they get the quote "life is a journey, not a destination". We arrived in Wales and checked out the capital, Cardiff. I had never heard much about the town so I didn't know what to expect but it was a really cool place. It had a very modern downtown but a lot of history as well. Then we drove to the port that the Mayflower sailed from, Southampton, England. Which by the way, its so strange to me that they don't check passports. When we took the ferry over from Ireland there was no immigration check and the since we've been driving we haven't gotten our passports stamped once. I know I'm lame but I kind of wanted to come home with a passport full of stamps. Anyways, England has been really cool as well. We are staying with some couchsurfers and we went to this pub last night to a big couchsurfing meeting. It was so cool. We met people from all over the world! Today we are driving to a big forest area to do some hiking. We are getting a little concerned about our car making it on this long trip. Yesterday we were driving only about 60 mph and all the sudden the car started making this really loud whistling noise. I looked over at Adam and just like he was reading my mind he says to me "maybe we should turn the radio up". Haha I threw my head back laughing and turned up the jams :)

Leaving tomorrow for England!

Getting supper excited for our month long road trip. We will be taking a ferry to England, then France, Switzerland (Alps, mt. Blanc), Spain (for the running of the bulls), then back through France, England, Scottland (where I will say goodbye to my 20's) and then back to Ireland. Ahh... There is so much planned in this trip. We have been trying to plan as much as we can but it is hard because its so far out. Plus it's kind of fun not to plan too much so that we can just take each day at a time.

Last week we kept pretty busy painting a friends house, helping out at our new church's coffee shop, having people over for dinner. Yesterday we went to our first hurling match with our friends Alan and Laurie. Hurling is HUGE in Ireland! Clare, our county, played Cork. Sadly, we lost but it was a lot of fun. It is such a funny country, everywhere you go you run into people you know. We haven't met that many people but still every time we go to town we run into neighbors, friends, etc. 

Ruby and freckles are doing great. They are BFFs now and follow each other everywhere. They are laying 2 eggs a day like clockwork! 

A few thoughts about blogging...

I have officially been won over by social media. I know i'm a trader to my generation but I've never really been that into blogging (or rather my life was never that interesting to blog about. Haha). So many funny and amazing things have happened on this trip that I wanted to write them down somewhere so we wouldn't forget. At first I didn't really think anyone would care to read them but now I realize that this has been a really special way to share our trip with our friends and family as well. I love getting emails and comments and well over 5000 hits on our blog. It makes me smile that people are keeping up on our travels and can share in this adventure that we are on.

Thanks also to everyone who as asked about our chicken freckles. She is doing great and.... we got her a friend!!!! Unfortunately, Freckles hates her and on her first day at our house Freckles pecked at her until she bled. It was really sad :( it's especially sad because she is such a sweet girl and doesn't fight back. We named her Ruby. This morning she laid an egg and we ate it for breakfast. You don't get much closer to nature than that.

Happy Father's Day Dad, wedge, grandpa, Seth, Erik, Derald and all those hard working fathers!

The luck of the Irish

We had the best week of weather that Ireland has had in years. It was 79-84 degrees everyday for the last week.  I don't think I've ever seen so many sunburns in all my life (and I live in la). Everywhere we went people were talking about how hot it is. People come out of the woodwork when the weather warms up. Ireland is so green and has the most beautiful wild flowers! We took a nice picnic lunch to the cliffs of Moher and we went to the beach almost everyday. We mostly went to Lehinch, which is a great little surf town. On Sunday we had a bbq with our new church friends at a beach near Killkee. They have these diving boards that you can jump off. It was a great time! Adam and his crazy pals jumped off the cliff, way above the diving boards. You're definitely not supposed to jump off them, they are about 60 feet up. Not to mention you can't tell if there are rocks below so you have to jump way off the cliff edge. Im pretty sure my heart stopped when Adam jumped. I think I was more scared than he was and he was the one jumping. All's well that ends well :)

Italy- amalfi coast and naples

Wow what a whirlwind of a trip. We are winding down after being on the road for 2 weeks straight. We spent a few days on the beautiful Amalfi coast in southern Italy. We did the "walk of the gods" hike one day and we hiked mt vesufious one day. Unfortunately, its been pretty rainy but we had some good times and good stories with my sister and her husband. On our last day we went to visit Naples. We were on our guard because we heard it is dangerous down there. We went to a little cafe and had pizza and the world famous naples espresso. It was by far the best espresso I've ever had. It was so thick you could stand a spoon up in it. About half way through our meal a local italian man comes up to us and says that we should be very careful because it is a dangerous area for tourists. We spend the rest of the meal scared to death looking at every person that passed us and then we went straight to the car. I'm not sure if the guy was just pulling our chain but we didn't want to stick around to find out. The driving in Italy is soooo crazy! During our 2 weeks our car was clipped 3 times!! As we were packing up to leave adam calls to me from the other room asking if he could throw our shampoo away. Since we had only carry on bags with us we had to buy shampoo in Italy. It was late at night on our first day there so we went to a corner market and bought this nasty brand called Cien. We used it for 2 weeks as shampoo, soap, detergent, everything. So adam asks me if he can just trash it. Sarcastically I call back that we should have a goodby ceremony for it. Suddenly Adam starts singing "you lived your life like a candle in the wind..." In his most serious signing voice. I was doubled over on the ground I was laughing so hard.