20 hours of train riding, 1 hour of hiking, and one broken camera landed us in Roma!

As you can tell by the title we have been on a train for basically all of yesterday. We got on the wrong train in the morning which turned out to be a 3 hour delay in our Alps hiking adventure. By the time we finally made it to Zurich we had 10 minutes to make reservations for the night train and get on a train to go to Goschenen to hike. Its a good thing the Alps were amazing! The cities and villages were built into the mountains and the trains went through tunnel after tunnel right through the mountains. The lakes looked like blue toothpaste and there were green trees everywhere. You can also tell by the title that I broke my camera which makes me pretty upset. I dropped it on a rock and now it won't close so i don't know if i can post more pictures, I do know i can't take anymore pictures so it is up to Swan to capture our trip from here on out.

We are now in Rome at a laundromat picking up our dirty clothes and checking into our hostel. We had some pizza already and will be heading out into the heat of the day to see all that is Rome. We have our own personal tour guide in Ben so it should be great. Talk to you all later.

Many thanks to the Stoetzel family!

To Emma, Vincent, and Daniel, Merci Merci! To the rest of you the Stoetzel family made our time in Strasbourg very comfortable as well as fun and relaxing. We got into Strasbourg around 6 oclock i believe and we had no clue who we were looking for, but thanks to this blog site Emma and Vincent were able to flag us down. We got back to Daniel's home which was very beautiful and had happy hour filled with conversation about the family as well as differences in our cultures. Everyone spoke very good English and it was fairly easy for us to communicate with one another. We tried some desperado beer, which is similar to Tequiza here, beer with tequila. After happy hour, we (minus Daniel) went to a French Restaraunt which Swan labeled as a French Applebees. We tried traditional french food and our marvelous hosts paid for our meal which was entirely unnecessary. After dinner Andrew needed to go home due to still feeling under the weather. Mark, Ben, Vincent and myself went to a bar for a beer........sorry i don't remember the names! Emma came back to get us and bring us home to sleep.

Our next day was filled with relaxation, sitting around the pool and playing pingpong for almost the whole day. It was exactly what we needed, as 2 of us had been sick and I was feeling a bit run down as well. Emma's friend Lollita (sorry if i mispelled that) came over as well. At 8 it was time for a home cooked french meal which lasted 3 hours and took 4 bottles of wine, i'm not much of a wino but these were delicious. The meal consisted of: tabouli, a tomato and cucumber salad, and sausages. Then we had french fries (pommes), and steak. Then the red wine came out with the traditional french cheeses and bagettes. Ben is obsessed with bagettes and has already eaten about 3 whole loaves. The meal ended with cantelope, and needless to say I was stuffed. But more than the food, the conversation was very fun and we really got a taste of French culture and in my opinion one of the best days of our trip thus far. After dinner we went to a karaokee bar (minus Andrew) where Mark sang Beat it, and Ben bellted out It's my life. We stayed out until 3 am drinking and dancing. That would have been fine but we were to be up at 7:30 to head out of town.

Once again we thank you Stoetzel's, you are more than welcome to come visit us in Wisconsin!!