God Save the Queen

Our European vacation (pun intended) was quite the 'whirl.' We managed to cram in a tour of 9 countries. Being who I am, I would have liked to go to a few more, but time was against us. Our backpack tour included visiting these countries:

England

Belgium

France

Netherlands

Germany

Austria

Switzerland

Italy

and

Vatican City.

My, that is quite a list. It is really staggering, to me, to think that I've actually set foot in all of those places with their varied cultures and languages.

I have some good stories about the various places we went to, but I think that I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. Let's begin with England:

My, gotta love those Tube passes. They look like the Essex version of 'America's Most Wanted.'

I guess you're bound to look that way after foregoing sleep for a mere 36+ hours.

At the time, I thought these passes were so cool because they were an honest-to-goodness form of European identification.

Poor B.J., he looks like he's been on a 5 day meth bender.

And, what trip to England would be complete without a visit to good ol' Buckingham Palace? Geez, who is that? A fat Axl Rose? Gotta wonder what I was thinking taking that 'brain spider' (hat). I remember why I wore it--greasy hair! I thought the hat looked better than the four-day-unwashed hair. Hmmm...what would Stacey and Clinton say?

Big Ben vs. the Thumb

Tune in this Saturday to find out who will win this celebrity death match.

We had to visit the Hard Rock Cafe--the one in London is the original. I had wanted to visit this particular Hard Rock since I was about 7 years-old. The reason why I wanted to go there is because when I was about that age my brother went to England for an extended period of time, and when he came back he gave me a couple of souvenirs: a sweatshirt from Oxford University (no, he wasn't a student there...unless you count earning a degree in pub crawls), and a Hard Rock Cafe t-shirt. That was my most cherished t-shirt for the longest time, and it is one of the artifacts from my past that inspired my lifelong goal of going to Europe, so needless to say, it was reaching one of my life's major goals to be able to take the cheesy (there's that Axl Rose chick, again) picture in front of the shop.

Interesting fact: Stonehenge is made of stones from the Presley mountain range--200 miles away. Nobody knows how exactly the stones got to where they are, but there they are. Also, no matter the time of year, it is cold. The Stones themselves, also have different temperatures (touch) to them as well; some stones feel 'warm' while others feel 'cool.' And, they really do.

Why is it I always have to act like a jerk and make 'the face'? Do any of you ever feel compelled to make the face in pictures? For any reason?

For what it's worth, I don't know. Maybe it is an excuse to show off just how Gene Simmons-like my tongue is? (I can, in fact, touch my tongue to my nose. How's that for random trivia?)

At any rate the exchange rate was about $1.60 (us) to one Pound (British). Our money didn't go very far in England, so
if nothing else, the look on my face says it all: The U.K. is very expensive.

Goodbye to England and the white cliffs of Dover.