Absolut Ice Bar

Last Monday night, we were fortunate enough to be admitted into London's exclusive Absolut Ice Bar for a whole forty-five minutes. Kept at a soul-withering -5 degrees Celsius (or about 23 degrees Fahrenheit), the entire bar, including tables, chairs, walls and glasses, is made of ice imported from Sweden or some equally cold nation. No time was wasted as we quickly collected our drinks and set about taking pictures, fiddling with our capes, and placing bets to see who would be the first to get their tongue stuck on any of the surfaces of the bar. When our "time slot" was finished and we were unceremoniously booted out like the riffraff that we are, I was actually relieved to step out into usually frosty London as it was about 15 degrees warmer outside!

Snowbunnies!
(note the blocks of ice in our hands are our glasses!)

XTREME!

For some reason, I thought it was a fantastic idea to jump out of a perfectly good airplane in Interlaken, Switzerland last weekend. Although we couldn't get very many skydiving pictures, here are some from the paragliding we did the next day!

See if you can find me in the trees!

The de la Rosas storm the Emerald Isle

Skipping Stones over Lake Killarney

Hanging out in front of St. Paddy's Cathedral

Mike posing next to a prehistoric GIANT Irish elkCreepy and cold Celtic graveyard

On the way to Blarney Castle and Dad kissing the Blarney Stone

Mercy at the Irish National Stud FarmIreland is chiiiiillllly

Mmmmm Guinness!

If it's not Scottish, it's CRAP!

To appease my father and pass along the wealth of knowledge that we gleaned from our three-day tour of Scotland, I've decided to dedicate this post to the vocabulary lesson given to us by our guide, Ped.

wee = small
dram = measure of whisky
jobby = poop

There were many other, more racier gems of the English language learnt this weekend, however since I'm pretty sure that my grandmother is reading this post (Hi Nana), I'll simply leave you with these pictures:

Oktoberfest

When we arrived at Oktoberfest in Munich at around 1 pm, little did we know that the drinking tents had been full since about 10 am that morning. No tent entrance means no beer which means no fun...however, we managed to squeeze our way into one and a nice waiter served us, so mission accomplished!

It's a Small World, after all....

Here's a picture of me and my friend Krisa sharing a drink in a cafe in Rome after we just happened to run into each other in our hostel hallway--neither of us had a clue that the other was in Rome, much less the same frickin building. I believe we simultaneously shouted, "Oh my GOD" before breaking into equally simultaneous laughter. I love coincidences.

EDIT: Also, check out Krisa's guns. I think she could kill me with her bare hands. Nice.

´´Should we be concerned that a man with a gun just told us to get back inside our room?´´

No? Super. Well, goodnight then.



(Sarah's explanation)
To our parents: We want to make it clear that we are unharmed and safe. HINT: you all should not worry. Since ¨the incident¨ we have been blessed by the Pope and are confident that his blessing will facilitate safe travel adventures in the future.

Now for the scoop: We arrived at our hostel, Hostel Zeus, in Athens. (Yes, Athens again. We had to take a bus from there to catch the ferry to Italy.) Anyways, we got to the hostel at around 10pm.

Once we arrived to our room, I noticed that the remote to the air conditioning unit was missing. So, to relieve ourselves from the heat, I proceeded to the reception to fetch the remote. I opened the door and standing there was a man with a gun (no, he was not a member of the police)- a handgun of some sorts. He motioned to get back in the room, so I did as he requested.

At that time, I quickly closed the door and turned around and told Christina about the gunman. She proceeded to seek refuge behind the twin bed. Mary was in the communial restroom and had no idea any of this had taken place. We decided it would be smart to plan an escape route, with the window as the best option, not the twin bed.

Basically, we think this guy was chasing someone on the street, maybe someone who owed him money or sold him bad drugs, and he just ran up into our hostel looking for his guy.

The bright side: The gunman was not a rampant murderer. He had a clear opportunity to shoot me, but he decided to pass it up.

The moral of the story: Always plan an escape route

Befriending the locals on Mykonos

I don't know if you can tell by the picture but the pelicans on Mykonos are pink, quite large and unafraid of people...and possibly rabid, but it was worth the picture.