Europe

We are back from Europe!!!! This year Orlando and I decided to do something different since we are in the other side of world so finally we put our foots down and went to Europe for 2 weeks!!! It was great!!!! we are completely exhausted after using every type of transportation available (high speed trains, airplanes, ferries, taxis, motor coach, subways and 1 horse carriage) to visit 10 cities and 7 countries in 14 days!!! After a while I would wake up and ask "Where are we?". I will be processing the more than 1000 pictures we took over the next few weeks and writing down some anecdotes about the trip but for now this was our general impression of Europe.

A. Good things

1. Big food portions - since we usually order about 3 or 4 entrees in Japan in order to be full, it was a relief to be able to order just one thing and be stuffed (especially in Italy).

Here I am eating some pizza in front of the Roman Coliseum:

2. Being able to communicate - for the most part everyone would speak English and in Italy we just spoke Spanish and they would answer back in Italian and everyone was happy.

3. Normal clothes sizes - finally no more 1, 0 and 00 sized pants!!!

4. The history - we went from visiting Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines in Japan back to good old catholic churches.

The best part was the Basilica of San Pedro by far, here is Orlando inside:

5. 7% of the French

B. Annoying things (according to our tour guide "It's not wrong, it's just different" but still)

1. Paying for using the bathroom

2. Paying for ketchup and any other type of sauce - we did not notice this until the end when we checked the receipt!!!

3. The use of different currencies - England and Switzerland should just join the European union so we would not have to be changing from Pounds to Franks to Euros (so annoying!!!)

4. Using 20 cent and 2 cent coins - why? what's wrong with the 1 cent or 10 cent coins?

5. 93% of the French.

C. People

We took a tour around Europe with about 50 people ages 18-35. It was very much like a senior trip except you can't call your parents if you run out of money!!! There where people from everywhere the majority was from Australia and the others where from Brazil, South Africa, Canada and even 3 from Puerto Rico!!! We where not the only ones!!!! I was sooooo happy to be part of an actual group that you can't even image, plus it was good having a little bit of home so far away. We where called a little bit of everything, some of the people in the tour group called us the Puerto Rican express, others the Puerto Rican posse or Team Puerto Rico which where all good. Here we are in from of the Eiffel Tower:

Everyone was from different walks of life. A few people where still in college, some where engineers, teaches, soldiers, accountants and a doctor (one of my new PR buddies). Here we are with some of our new friends hanging out in Switzerland:

My absolute favorite picture of the whole trip is this one we took in Paris:

I know we where not the only ones that took a trip during X-mas so please let us know how your vactions went!!!