Luck of the Irish

Hello All:

Sorry to be a little late with our Ireland Blogging, Dublin has kept us oh so busy!

Our first night in Dublin lead us to a place that made us feel at home... IKEA! Just a 15 minute walk from our hotel was that beautiful big blue building. After we hopped off the airplane it was too late to go into town so we hit up IKEA for dinner. It was delicious. I recommend the Moose Pasta, it's organic. :) I also found so many things I want to purchase when I get home, I can't wait to go in Kent!

We visited so many places in our two days in Dublin! We saw St. Patrick's Cathedral, Trinity College, the Book of Kells, the old Dublin Castle, our favorite European Grocery store, LIDL, the largest indoor clock in the world, the Guinness Storehouse and Factory, numerous parks, and to top it all off we saw RIVERDANCE LIVE IN IRELAND. Yay! I will have to say, seeing how Guinness is made and watching RIVERDANCE have to be my favorites. How about you Dino?

Drinking Guinness has been my favorite! The factory was awesome. It was a seven floor tour that lasted about 3 hours for Steph and I between our free tasters, food and gravity bar (360 bar on the 7th floor overlooking the entire city of Dublin). I had to have Steph's drinks since she is not a big beer drinker! ; ). I also enjoyed our visit to the Dublin Castle and our RIVERDANCE show. We had great seats!

Sadly, our Guniness and pub time has come to an end and we are prepared to go to London for one more day before we head back on the states. We had a pretty relaxing one the last couple of days and we even got to sleep in a bit to recover from all the plane, bus, train an taxi rides we have taken.

We are currently at the airport, ready to head to London a tiny bit early to make sure we catch our flight back home to Seattle.

Thank you to everyone for all of their love and support on our Eurotrip and we hope you enjoyed the blog! Our trip has been amazing and we hope that we can do another round of trips like this in the near future!

Talk to you from Seattle!

Love,

Steph & Dino

¡Hala Madrid!

Friends and Family:

We have taken Madrid by storm! What a day it has been! We woke up early and noshed on our complimentary breakfast at the hotel and then promptly headed out into the city.

We decided to take a loop around the entire downtown of Madrid hitting the Royal Palace, Palace Cathedral, Aveniva del Manzanares River, and ending at our favorite park, Parque del Buen Retiro. This was a feat, let me tell you. This was not a small loop, but an extremely large loop, almost 53 miles long. Well that maybe an exaggerating but it was long. Since it was Sunday everyone was out and about walking, rollerblading, and biking. There were so many good places to be outside in the sun and perfectly manicured parks and green spaces, Madrid was a joy to walk in. The river had a park/bike trails running along both sides which gave us a chance to sit down and relax here and there. I even found a swing that was attached to the bottom if the freeway. Scary stuff!

On our loop we ran into a Sunday flee market. What a treat! It was huge. There were thousands of people up and down ten streets selling extension cords to fine pottery. If you need it you could find it.

On the way back we stopped for a bite at the park. We ran into a little cafe but could not read the menu, thank goodness the waiter wanted to help us. He didn't speak English so we resorted to... Animal noises! To explain ham he snorted to symbolize this meal had piggy in it. I quickly snorted back with a shake of my finger that pig was a no go. Dino chimed in a moo hoping for some beef. There was no moo in return. In the end we sat down and waited for our plates anxiously. We received a mixed salad and potato frittatas! Pretty delicious for our hungry bellies. (Dad: It wasn't as good as yours... Let's be honest!).

We then went back to the hotel to regroup and watch some U.S. Open Tennis, go Fed! Soon we headed to find Manchester United playing on a television for us to watch. Where did we end up you ask? T.G.I. Friday's of course, on a Sunday mind you! I'll let Dino finish the rest...

Thanks Steph, I guess I'll take it from here :). T.G.I. Friday's was right next to our hotel so I decided to sneak a peak inside to see if they were going to be playing the Man Utd game. An American restaurant right??? That is right but most of the employees don't speak English :/...a bit weird, but back to the main point, they found the game for us and we sat down for food and drinks to enjoy the game with.

Man Utd was giving me a bit of a heart attack the whole game. They were down 2-1 from the start of the second half and with the game almost ending I just wanted to get out of the restaurant to pout outside. But wait...there is no giving up with this club. We manage to score two goals in stoppage time to win the game 3-2! Steph and I were the only ones in the restaurant and all eyes were on me as I was jumping up and down like the kid I am. Apparently the bartenders were having a training class which I'm sure I disrupted a couple of times :).

After that adrenaline rush, Steph and I had to rush ourselves to the nearest metro to head to the Santiago Bernabeu Stadium! We managed to find tickets to the Real Madrid home game with the help of our friendly receptionist! Real Madrid isn't any team, it is one of the biggest soccer clubs in the world. Although not my favorite, we had to go and check out the home game. The Bernabeu Stadium fits 100,000 spectators. Insane right? We had great seats but it was hard to find them with 100 different gates you had to go through. It turned out to be a great game with Madrid winning 3-0. They only part we didn't like was all the smoking. We were surrounded by smokers and would take turns gasping for some clean air : p. Nonetheless, we had a blast.

When the game finished, we had to fight past the 100+ thousand fans to reach our metro. It took us only 20 minutes to get home and we had to take showers right away to wash all the smoke smell off of us. The day turned out great and we look forward to our trip to Dublin tomorrow.

Love and Miss,

Dino + Steph

Hola Madrid!

Hi All!

Steph and I have only been here for about 5 hours and we have experienced so much! Our flight from Rome was pretty quick and pleasant. The Alitalia planes had plenty of leg space. My knees never hit the seat in from of me at all!

Like good tourists we researched ahead of time so that we could be prepared to get to our hotel in a quick manner. Madrid has a great underground metro, much like the one in London. Our hotel was located right in the center of the city and it took us only two transfers to reach our hotel. The Hotel Quatro is probably our favorite hotel so far...as far as service, location and design go :). After some quick tips from our friendly receptionist, we headed out to explore the streets Madrid.

Our first stop was a nice little café to quench our thirst and refuel our tummies with some delicious sandwiches. We then headed off to see the Plaza de la Cibeles and the Falacio de Comunicacion building. We let our gps instincts go to work and we headed to a massive park in the center of the city called Parque del Retrio. The park reminded us of the openness just like Hyde Park had in London. We were amazed at how many folks were there. Pretty popular for a Saturday night. I was stopping at every other section of the park to see the street performers in action! A guy was even juggling a chainsaw...crazy. So much stuff going on. They even had a man made lake with rent-a-boats for use...so romantic. Might have to do it tomorrow!

After our long walk we heard loud noises and chants coming our way. The streets were filling up with red and white jerseys, flags and scarves. The local team, Atletico Madrid had won the Uefa Super Cup yesterday and they were back in town to celebrate with their fans. I thought I've struck gold! As soon as we found out what was going on, I had to pull Steph in the middle of the crowd to get the perfect view of the players and the trophy celebration. The streets were packed from all sides. All Steph and I could understand and sing was the "We are the Champions" song. Nevertheless, we had a blast. After that celebration, Steph and I headed to grab a late night snack from Haagen Dazs and went back to the hotel to get some rest for our next day.

So much going on and so much to do. Steph is already asleep but I couldn't leave all of our Eurotrip followers out of the loop with our activities. Hope you enjoy the pictures!

-Dino & Steph