So, it's been a while since the last post. It's been a pretty busy last couple months between working all day, trying to plan a move to Grand Junction, and planning a trip to Europe. Over the next few weeks I'll hope to include the exciting bits, specifically what transpired in the old country. In the short term here's the scoop and the notes I took while over there. I flew out on the 30th of December to Brussels, Belgium where the Pirate picked me up. After a fun New Years we spent a day in Belgium before driving to Venice, Italy via Lucern, Switzerland. A few days in Venice was all we took and then we went to Rome via Assisi. We ended up in Rome a little longer than expected because someone or something decided they preferred the car with one broken window rather than a complete set of intact windows. Following the repairs we drove down to Sorrento, Italy and the next day we drove to Pompei, which is pretty friggin awesome. The next day we drove to Florence via Mt. Vesuvius and stayed at this really sweet 17th century palace in downtown Florence. After Florence we drove to Nice, France via Pisa, Italy. The plan was originally to visit Cinque Terra, but after our car troubles we were a little too uncomfortable with leaving the car unattended. We left Nice for Avignon, France and traveled through Monte-Carlo, Monaco and Marseille, France. The next day we drove to Paris via Millau. On the last day we made it back to Brussels and flew home on the 19th. Like I said I'll expand later and some of the 2000 odd photos, but for now just the notes:

Stucco is for lazy artists
European bathrooms; belgium, venice minimum surfaces to clean; they're thinking ahead.
Venice and the little streets
Hot chocolate
Not enough handouts
Hotel nerva, rome.
Hotel baserlator, lucern
Hotel orion, venice
Camera died venice, too bad
Assisi looked fantastic
Roman police all day, was it just the rain?
Bricks; bricks are friggin tough. The whole forum was brick faced with marble. Makes me really want to learn about masonry. It was crazy the way they just kept piling rocks and cement on top of each other.
No alarm clocks.
The coffee! Pages about the coffee!
When they say take everything out of the car, they mean everything!
Hotel antiche mura; standard american hotel room, amazing breakfast, great location and grounds
Pompei was the highlight so far,batteries died just at the start of rick's tour.
In sorrento get a scooter.
When the gas light turns on fill up; 1km I pushed, we coasted 10km, I maxed out at 20kph!
italy is very poor.
Naples truly looked horrible, pompei was trying (had the first public recycling bins).
Speed limits, staying in your lane, and stop signs. Yeah right
No truck passing signs and automated radar guns would be cool in the US
The hills; italy has them eveywhere! It's no wonder that they make good cyclists, the hills and the traffic.
Palazzo nicolini; amazing room, worst coffee, lame breakfast for the price, very nice staff, safe parking..
Florence; lots of bikes, scooters, natural gas buses.
Wicked sore from pushing the car.
Paintings for suckers; if a child can do it, it ain't nothing special.
Accademia; david and a bunch of religion.
am I in florence or the US?
Who pays for the restoration of historic churches? Does the church or city pay, do they share ?
Cardinal virtues; fortitude, prudence, justice, temperance; theological virtues; faith, hope, charity.
Pisa was awesome, could definitely live there.
Cinque terra looked gorgeous, I can only imagine what the coastal villages were like.
Monaco is a country! Who knew!
You can't drive to cinque terra,so go to Nice instead! The weather would've made it a letdown anyway. The drive through the area was beautiful though.
Good bread in france, bad coffee.
I don't like crème caramel
Didn't make dijon, went to monte carlo in monaco, had coffee (not bad) in marseille at Bar de la
Marine, which was made famous in the movie Marius (french)
spent the night in avignon cuz marseille was shady. Then onto paris, which meant no bruges.
Will need to go back to marseille.
Southern france is as gorgeous as they say.
going someplace without a plan is not good; nice, marseille, carcasonne, could be great if we had a plan
Oh, have a fucking map of where you're going. Or bring the internet next time!
Marseille was sad; it had great buildings that were really rundown. We had the highest temp though of 14.5 C. Oh and finally the smell of the sea.
Millau viaduct was awesome!
Highways were empty in france, was it because of the outrageous tolls, gas and car costs? In italy all the roads were always packed! Are the french more poor? It would be interesting to know the answer to this one.
I will never own a car in europe. Need to look into the tradeoffs between a scooter and a motorcycle.
Send laeti the pics
2 days in sorrento without seeing a mcdonald's
If you drive a gray fiat bravo you're a dork.
Citroen makes the ugliest cars i've ever seen, opal next. The audi s5 is a sexy beast of a car. who makes alfa romeo?