thirty dirty days in europe I'm so pumped to take this trip and I wanted a memento/journal of stories to have when I return as well as keep all of my loved ones back home updated on my traveling!

Its early in Bordeaux right now, about 745am which means its 145am back home, crazy. We are heading to Paris today, its about a 3 hour train ride from here. So far the French have been super nice to us despite warnings that they supposedly hate Americans...but we have yet to meet Parisians so who knows! Bordeux was beautiful, but I wanna talk about Barcelona really quick, a definite favorite city on the trip and one we should have planned for more time  for. First of all Barcelona was so cheap and each night we were there we ate like kings and queens for under fifteen bucks each! And my great sister Lauren hooked Heidi and I up with a sweet hotel room one night with a terrace overlooking one of Barcelonas most popular squares! I cant wait to show off pictures of this place, it was unreal. The boys loved it too, but not as much as heidi and i becuase at the end of the night they had to walk a few blocks back to their not so nice smelling hostel, ha. Bordeaux is literally the city that never sleeps, each night we were there we didnt head out for dinner until around 10pm and STILL had most crowds beat by that. I definately wanna get back there one day. Anyways, now we are leaving Bordeaux. We got here late night the day after the last, so we really only had yesterday, but we made the most of it. Bordeaux is known for its wine, so yesterday am we asked the front desk at our hostel where we could go to check out some cool vineyards and the lady circled some stuff on our map. And it looked within close distance, so we thought it would be cool to rent bikes and bike there. So we rented bikes, biked north and come to find out she directed us towards a wine store! Luckily there was a tourism office across the street and we told them what we were trying to get into and they do wine tours, so we got on one of there afternoon wine tours. They bussed us to the wine regions, along with about 30 other people, and we visited two very popular chataus which produce their own wines. Bordaux is made up of mostly vineyards, it was so cool to learn about it all. We did a couple tastings at each chateau and they talked to us about their wine and the history behind it. All Bordeaux vineyards have guidelines of how to grow their grapes, one of which being they are forbidden to irrigate. Their wine history goes back 2000 years! So they are very particular about holding the tradition of their ancestors, and keeping the soil very natural...and by the taste of their wine, theyre doing it right...it was yum yum! So after the 5 hour tour, we walked around til dinner and then sat at one of the outside cafes and ate some really really good food! And although scallop taglilenni doesnt compare to a huge burrito at chipotle that id pay 20 bucks for right now, i appreceiate everything about being here....ive only got a week left and i will enjoy every baguette i get! well, off to Paris. we are spending a couple days there, then london, then amsterdam, then germany to come home! ill write more the next chance i get, hopefully on a computer thats keyboard is decent, this keyboard has about half the letters all mixed up and in weird places, making for a choppy writing experience, sorry about that!!!