who's on first

Grandpa: This is Lake Como.
Grandma: I wonder what como means.
Jessica: It means what.
Grandma: I don't know.
Jessica: Como means what.
Grandma: I don't know what it means.
Jessica: WHAT!
Grandma: I DON'T KNOW!

Good times in western Montana!
We arrived in Missoula to meet Grandpa and Grandma Allen for lunch. After lunch we headed to their home in Corvallis. Grandpa met his new best friend -- Lola. "Look at that dog!"

We played a quick couple games of Golf Toss... I say quick because the victories were fast and brutal. We then toured Corvallis, Darby, and Hamilton with excellent tour guides - Grandma and Grandpa. Last night we wrapped up the evening with rousing games of Farkle and Bananagrams with Grandma while Grandpa bonded with Lola.

This morning we had breakfast a la Grandma -- pancakes with a secret ingredient... I could tell you, but you know what that means... and headed out at exactly 9:00. And exactly 10 hours later, we rolled into Puyallup after excellent subs at Staggering Ox in Spokane and a trip across both the continental divide and the mountain into the pacific time zone.

Alas, friends... our travel is just about over. Cross your fingers for one last successful standby flight!

duck, duck, MOOSE.

First on any agenda is obviously to find the nearest Starbucks. After that mission was accomplished, we headed east into Cowboy Country. I felt like even in the car we should have been addressing each other as "ma'am". We had yet another beautiful drive today. Just look at the photos and be convinced, I can't explain it and give it justice.

We passed the time with a murder mystery on CD. Four discs later we found the murderer was Gordon. Sorry to ruin it for you.

Crossing into Wyoming just past the Yellowstone west entrance means Shandon and I got to check off a state we both were missing from our List of States to See. Time to start thinking about the next checkmark... anyone for a weekend getaway to Fargo, North Dakoka? Hmm? Any takers? We saw 4 important things today while touring Yellowstone on our way to Old Faithful:

1. Hot springs and mini geysers all over the place

2. A buffalo chilling near the road, with one bystander going WAY too close to get a picture... she did not get the memo that one person dies per week from an animal attack in Yellowstone.

3. A moose or elk. Why the "or", you ask? Because Jessica said elk, Shandon said moose, and Laura didn't have a clue.

4. Joe Biden. The aforementioned elk/moose creature wasn't seen too closely because Joe Biden and his entourage were taking pictures so we had to fly by at 45 miles an hour as park rangers waved on the peons.

We arrived at the Old Faithful center and one of us stayed out with the dog, one went to the restroom, and the other was giddy with excitement about the gift shop. (I'll let you figure out which traveller was which...) So anyway, we missed Old Faithful's eruption (if that's what you call it) by 2 seconds!! Major disappointment. We had to wait 90 minutes for the next one... the park ranger said she was predicted to go at 4:12, so we wandered some of the little springs around the area and, sure enough, Old Faithful faithfully spewed right on time. 4:13 to be exact.

We had dinner in West Yellowstone at... get ready for this... Buckaroo Bill's BBQ. Enough said.

Another night in Butte, Montana!

worldtrippin'... roadtrippin'... whyyoutrippin'...

FROM THE CAPTAIN'S LOG...
Blue skies, gorgeous lakes and mountain ranges to be seen all through Montana and Idaho. Mining town of Wallace, Idaho, a winner. Self-proclaimed "CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE" and Silver Capital of the World.
Four lovely ladies headed east and the one that gets the most attention while eating in Coeur d'Alene (shout-out to the Rosses whoop whoop) is the one with the one-inch underbite. That would be Lola. (The bulldog, in case you need a reminder, o ye faithful blog follower...) Go figure.
Logged 12 hours, 17 minutes in the Nissan. Give us a rental car with unlimited miles and we'll take it seriously!
END LOG.

Today's Agenda... Old Faithful Geyser... approximately 3 hours, 17 minutes away from Butte, Montana, our current location. That may mean 4 hours, 17 minutes, Laura driving time. Slow and steady wins the race, Jessica and Shandon, so pipe down.

no rest for the blog weary!

okay, okay... a blog in the USA! FINE! You win!

Well, we are not still stranded in Dulles International Airport, living off the See's candy booth and overpriced Starbucks. We made it out... it was a close call, but we managed. We got into Seattle at 1:20 a.m. (Pacific Standard Time)... which would be 10:20 a.m. Europe time. Our luggage arrived in Seattle before us, so it was waiting nicely by baggage claim, looking a little lonely. Jessica was at the curb and we were out of there about 40 seconds after landing.

Yesterday was a major recuperation day hanging out in Puyallup... uh huh, have fun trying to pronounce THAT! We spent a good part of the day trying to settle the details of our upcoming road trip to Yellowstone... because every good Europe trip should be completed with a jaunt to a geyser in Wyoming.

Jessica introduced us to heaven in a cup... also known as Bigfoot Java. It's amazing.
We started off the morning this morning with a walk to get coffee there. I highly recommend buying stocks in Bigfoot Java because it is going to revolutionize the coffee world. Hmm... I've had two and just thinking about it is making me thirsty... so anyway....

The big event of the day for me was Jessica teaching me to sew my very first pillow. See photo below and be amazed. Shandon's big event was getting her hair colored by Jessica... a huge HIGHLIGHT of the day... huh, huh? Hair colored? Highlight? Get it? Not impressed? Fine.

Lola (the bulldog) practiced her skateboarding tricks today, then resumed her busy schedule of napping. Shandon practiced her electrician skills by rewiring some sprinkler wires in the backyard. She also used foil to replace a blown out fuse... give her duct tape and a wrench and she could rule the world.

We are gearing up for a ten hour drive tomorrow... look out, Interstate 90... three girls, and English bulldog, an ice chest with pita chips and hummus, and major GPS capabilities are coming your way in a rented Cobalt!

Waiting. Running. Shoe shopping.

Picture it... Amsterdam, 2010.
WHOA WHOA WHOA... you are thinking how in the blazes did we get to Amsterdam, right? Well... over night ferry from Split to Ancona, flight from Ancona to Brussels (which was an hour late and everyone STILL clapped at the end and they announced, "Yet another ON TIME Ryanair flight!"), followed by roaming around Brussels looking for two very important things... the bus and Belgian waffles. The waffles were a bust. The bus driver said it was fifteen minutes to the train station, but he obviously meant 50. A short time later we were on a train to Amsterdam, sharing a train car with four guitar players who sang Oasis songs with German accents. Good times but, to be honest, these two wanderers were a tad bit grouchy, tired, and hungry.

The Amsterdam train station is amazing because you take the escalator up and you are at the airport PLUS restaurants, shops, even a grocery store were there... and... prepare yourself for this... a Starbucks.

There was some sad news. My luggage didn't make it out of Holland. It's final resting place is room 236 of Citizen M hotel. Its replacement has a zipper that works and seams that are not coming apart! Joy!

That was a long story to get us to Amsterdam, but there you go. Anyway, so this morning we got to the airport at 9 for our 11:00 flight to Chicago. Yes, yes, I got a Starbucks! We are flying standby and the lady at the counter kaboshed us because our shoes were not closed toe, which were not in compliance with business class attire. Okay, so at this point it is 10:30 and we fly through the passport check and try to find shoes to buy. None. We fly BACK through the passport check into the main station and buy hideous pumps, then run back through passport check. (That makes three Amsterdam stamps in one passport, folks) At the gate, we went through security and barely made it in time to find we didn't get called for the flight. We bonded with other standby passengers and commiserated. No worries, though, because we made the 12:00 flight to Washington, D.C... hold the phone... in business class! The shoe run was worth it... even though half of Amsterdam was laughing at us saying how much they all couldn't believe we made it with new shoes. We should have gone for Dutch clogs.

Now we are waiting in D.C... waiting... waiting. It's ugly over here. Cross your fingers, your eyes, your toes that we somehow, some way make it to Seattle. We're coming, Jessica! We're coming!

P.S. No pictures. We are a sight.

Juliana was at the door of Casa Margarita promptly at 11:00 to evict us. Sad, but we had to leave and store our luggage in a luggage storage place with an old Croatian man who was a big fan of the high-five. We are crossing our fingers our luggage will still be there when we go back to pick it up.

Our ferry is at 22:00... that would be 10:00 p.m. to those of you not on military time. We had a lot of time to wander around aimlessly and check out parts of Split we hadn't seen. The best discovery of all was this amazing coffee concoction that looks like a Slurpee. Starbucks + 7-11 = Laura is one happy traveller. It also means I had two today. But don't worry, I skipped the gelato for the day. We all have to make sacrifices... :)

The big event was the Split Hop-On, Hop-Off City Tour Bus... minus the hop-on, hop-off part. The lady explained why they weren't including hopping on and off, but after discussing what she said in length afterward, we couldn't come to a consensus. All we know is that instead of letting us get on and off where we pleased, we were onboard for an hour trip around town. The end.

The tour was entertaining. The lady... Ivana, to be specific, LOVES her country. She noted that there has "never been a fire in Split... because we take care of our town". She also bragged that you can swim in the ocean without worrying because "there are no dangerous fishes or sharks and if there are, the sharks are friendly and won't eat you". Talk about reassuring! If only Avila Beach sharks had ANY sort of manners! Ivana was also a fan of announcing whenever anything to be seen was too expensive for us peons onboard the double decker bus. She would say, "there are yachts to your right, you could rent one, but you have to have much money to do that sort of thing". We would have to stick to the 14 Kuna city tour, thank you very much! The best part was a ten minute stop at Bene, this little lagoon on the outskirts of Split. Like any good lagoon, it had a slide in the middle of the sea.

The rest of the afternoon was spent on the beach of Split. It is much more crowded than yesterday's beach extravaganza, but the perk is SAND. No pebbles to be seen. Just a lot of speedos.

And now... the bad news, fans. You will not hear from us for a whole day. We are boarding the ferry in T-minus 2.5 hours and will be headed back to Shandon's people. Italia.

Arrivederci, paisanos!

Having a ball in Bol

You kidders with all your "split" puns! Who knew we knew such punny people back home! Loving the comments, bigtime! :) So... break of dawn ferry to Brac Island (the "c" says "ch", in case you are wanting to work on your Croatian accent in your spare time), but only after stocking up at the market for bread, cheese, and grapes. There is this huge outdoor produce market every day near the palace. After the ferry landed us on the island, we took a bus from the town of Supetar to Bol. Bol is THE beach to go to. The water was gorgeous and the coast is rocky. We rented beach chairs and an umbrella and had ourselves a couple dips in the Adriatic. Just your average day here in Croatia.... We spent all day on the beach then wandered around the town until it was time to catch the bus back. It took us 2 seconds to both fall asleep and when we woke up, we were back in Supetar. Dinner tonight at the place below our apartment! I had the same thing as yesterday, of course -- stuffed peppers! Shandon went with grilled chicken. That is about it... tomorrow we split from Split at 7 p.m. on a night ferry to Ancona!

Nothing like waking up thunder and pouring rain in a foreign country! Good times had by all in Zagreb this morning. After wolfing down free breakfast at the hotel... and, you know, smuggling out two rolls for later... we took a cab the two tenths of a mile to the train station. In our defense, it was POURING when we called it. It is not our fault the sun was shining merrily by the time the cabbie showed up. It happens!

6 looooong hours later we arrived in Split on the coast of the Adriatic. You step off the train and are facing the beautiful ocean... which was a very cool sight but not nearly as cool as the sight of a lady holding up a sign that said SHANDON ALLEN. I have always wanted that to happen to me... our lives are complete. Our lovely Split hostess walked us along the promenade, ocean on one side, Roman looking ruins on the other... about ten minutes until we got to the Apartment Margarita. Trip Advisor said "stone cottage" and it is! We are above a restaurant and from the front window you can see the sea! Juliana (that is not quite her name but it's not coming to me, so... Juliana it is) left us and we were on our own to explore Split.

First up... lunch. Duh. We ate at the restaurant right across the alley from the apartment, which made it exciting to say, "I'll just run up and put the leftovers in the fridge. Be back in a minute." LOVE IT HERE! :)

We found the ruins of an old palace... there's some good history here, but, unfortunately, this isn't a very informative blog, so google your heart out and let me know what Split is all about! All I know right now is that it is SWEEEET! There are all these alleyways going all over the place and you get lost but eventually show up facing the ocean somewhere and it all works out.

We had dinner at this cool place in the middle of the maze of stone buildings. The meal cost us 97 Kuna, which means I nearly had a panic attack, then did the conversion and realized the total was $17. Whew. Anyway... the promenade was pretty empty this afternoon but in the late evening it filled up with families galore. It had a carnivalish (uh huh, real word - carnivalish) feel with cotton candy, popcorn, balloons, etc. Throw in the mediterreanish feel of stray dogs and cats running amok, and you've got yourself a Split party. When we finally headed home at about 9:30 (party animals!!!) we left quite a party out there.

Tomorrow we are jumping on a ferry to one of the islands, called Brac. Major beach day!

Well... good night! And, as they say in Croatia... "No, we don't take Euros."

Coveted "Quietest Country" Award goes to...

Croatia. It won by a landslide. Just wandering the narrow streets with the rows and rows of outdoor cafes, there was just one thing missing: noise. They are quiet around here. And gruff. That about sums up Zagreb.

But let's go back to Slovenia for a moment. Shandon and I got up at 8 and went down to the advertised "American-style buffet" included in our hotel. SCORE! I'll tell you what... they did it up right! I made mine more of an "Armenian style buffet" because I went straight to the stuffed peppers and had myself a breakfast dolma. Guess what else... Ljubljana is the Book Capital of the World. No kidding. I was among my people all day yesterday and didn't even realize it. We hung around the hotel until check-out... okay, I cannot tell a lie... we went back and slept until 11:30. All this blogging and jumping takes a lot out of us, apparently.

Our train from Ljubljana was at 2, so one short jaunt to a market and a kebob for lunch later, we were headed to Croatia... but only after discovering the neatest contraption since the Snuggie... a conveyor belt that takes your luggage up train stairs for you. (I sure hope you are keeping track of the number of kebobs two girls can have in one 24 hour period, because the tally was up to two... so far) As people filed off our train before we embarked, we noticed boys were shirtless and many girls had knotted their shirts high. It took us 2.2 seconds to realize the train was full and NOT air conditioned. That's okay, you are saying to yourself, sit by the window, Shandon and Laura! Nope... full train, we had no choices, and our window was the broken one. We sat in a compartment with four others... there are these little rooms with three seats facing each other. The other four were from Switzerland, but they were more than willing to share their Skittles and their Croatia guidebooks with us. We only accepted one of those offers... and you should know it was for the guidebook. The train stopped at the Croatian border for a customs official to stamp our passports. This is the first time this has happened, because you can travel anywhere in the European Union without stopping.

So. Zagreb. Quiet. People are not super friendly. Cool buildings. We checked into our super cute and old hotel, then walked to the center. It took us five minutes to find the best bread place in history. We then had a kebob for dinner... ahem, that makes 3. In the main square, I was busy setting up the timer for a picture when I heard Shandon yell, "Hey guys!" I could not imagine that she actually found someone she knew in Zagreb. She did. It was our friends from the AC-Free Train Ride... you can see them in the back of the picture waving.

I think my favorite part of this town is the abundance of corn on the cob stands. Who doesn't enjoy that!? Anyone can get a churro... Late cappuchino in the hotel cafe and we are done!

Headed south tomorrow down the Dalmatian Coast!

short blog... after all, we've got Hallmark Channel in English to get to.

Today was the country Trifeca... not the county Trifeca, like hitting up Kings, Madera, and Fresno counties in one 24 hour block. We had three meals in three different countries... so "let's start at the very beginning... a very good place to start." (If you thought to yourself, "Hmm, that quote sounds like those lyrics from The Sound of Music," you are absolutely right and I commend you.) Anyway... Woke up in Udine and had a wonderful breakfast courtesy of Hotel Principe, including cappuchinos. Can I get a CHA-CHING!? They were delicious and started the day off right. We caught the morning bus from Udine to Villach, Austria. An hour and a half on a bus sounds not so glamorous, but it was some intense scenery as we went through the Austrian alps. The hills were alive... (ok, that is the LAST Sound of Music reference, I promise) We arrived in Villach, Austria, and made the best discovery of the day... Billa. What is Billa? Only the BEST grocery market this side of the Danube! We stocked up on groceries and snacks as if we hadn't eaten in a week... leave it to us to think we hit the jackpot when we found foreign hummus and pita bread. We enjoyed Billa turkey sandwiches while waiting for our train. That was about it for Villach. On the train from Villach to Ljubljana, we befriended a lady from Zagreb who gave us helpful hints for our upcoming Croatia jaunt. Okay. Slovenia. A+. Ljubljana is AWESOME. Our hotel was a quick walk (900 meters... uh huh, we operate in the metric system now... we're legit) from the train statio. The architecture is like nothing I've seen before. The bridges are impressive. There is the Dragon Bridge and the Triple Bridge... the Triple Bridge has three ways to get across and the Dragon Bridge has... drum roll... dragons. We wandered all over the city; it is actually pretty small. We had kebabs for dinner in the main square then returned to our hotel, only to find the hotel lent out bikes for FREE. Say it with me again... CHA-CHING! We rode bikes (Shandon led the way without abandon, I trailed behind like a big chicken) all the way up the hill to the castle. Actually, we rode halfway up the hill then walked the bikes the rest of the way. Don't judge. It was tough. LJUBLJANA WINS EVERYTHING! Croatia, you have big shoes to fill.