ciao bellllllllllaaaaaaaaaaa!

ciao from roma!

today is our second full day in Rome. The ferry over from Barcelona was INTENSE. We didnt get any sleep and everyone was smoking right there on the ship, standing next to NO SMOKING signs. haha. and then we got off the ship and we were basically just standing on the port, with no idea what to do. Luckily a guy from vancouver teamed up with us and we found the train to Rome. So far we love it here. All the food ive had here has been fantastic, more flavor than anything else ive ever tried. The pizza is thin and not greasy and the esspresso is the best in the world! seriously! We wanted to do something fun for ourselves and so we asked around and decided to cut our hair! Emily went drastic and got it cut short and dyed violet black! it looks greatttttttttt! i just got mine trimed and styled and i feel like its the best haircut ever! maybe just because were in italy? anyway, yesterday we walked to the Colosseum and it was sooo amazing! Its really annoying that there are all these people selling stuff outside it though and they constantly harrass you! Then there are these really nasty looking ladies and they try to use there little babies to pull at your heartstrings and get you to give them money...let me just tell you, it doesnt work! Today were going to the vatican and the sistine chapel. Im prepared to be totally blown away. Also, weve decided to come home after italy. so after rome were just heading up to florence and then venice and then im heading to oregon to look for a job and start saving up money again :) miss you guys!

caio spain!

Hi ya´ll :)

Today is our last full day in Barcelona. We had originally planned to hop on over to Madrid but we´ve kinda decided it´s time to move on to another country. Scheduling was getting crazy and expensive, and we suddenly found a ferry to take us from barcelona to rome that was the cheapest option! AWESOME! Barcelona has been an amazing experience though. We saw a band and flamenco dancers perform the other day and it was not like any dancing i´ve seen before. The dancer had so much passion and obviously loved this dance, there´s alot of stomping and hand clamping and i litteraly just sat there with my mouth open. On Valentine´s day it was gorgeous and the sun was shining and we walked to the beach! It seriously reminded us of Hawaii and we got homesick for like a second...and then it passed because we remembered where we were! haha. There was a gorgeous boardwalk with tons of people rollerblading, biking, dogs were frolicking..it was magical people, magical. Barcelona was also the site of the olympics one year so they still had a village and all of this modern setup from that time. It was like we were in another world, it was weird. For Valentine´s dinner we had the most DELICIOUS SCRUMTIOUS FANTASTIC WONDERFUL YUMMY seafood ever. It consisted of prawns, mussels, lobster, fish, and calamari! all grilled and amazing. it´s funny because a year ago i would have never touched any of that stuff but i´m all over seafood now...weird. that´s what hawaii does to you i guess! today we´re heading over to this cute bookshop we´ve heard about and once again getting lunch from the beautiful market (La Boqueria) probably fruit salads that have pretty much every fruit you´ve ever heard of and then one thousand that you haven´t even seen before. I´ve also seen on the travel channel that spain has this wonderful hot chocolate drink that´s really thick and they dip churros in it, and we´ve seen that alot around here so we´re making sure we get that before we leave to italy.

When we get to Italy on the 18th we´re spending four days in rome and then we´re gonna take really cheap regional trains all around the country, probably going to florence, milan, bologna, and venice. We´re beyond excited!! anyway hope all is well wherever you are!

love, Tara

aribaaaaaaaaaaa!

Hey guys! it´s been awhile! the rest of our time in paris went really fast! we visited the notre dame cathedral the pompidou center and the latin quarter and basically spent most of our time trying to keep warm :) yesterday we arrived in Barcelona, Spain and we fell in LOVE! this city is clean, the people are friendly, and the buildings are so gorgeous. we haven´t done much sight seeing yet but today we went to an open air market right next to our hostel. I´ve never seen so many fresh fruits, meet, fish, bread, vegetables and chocolate! The colors and smells were amazing. we will be going back everyday to take advantage of the amazing cheap food!! we were also really happy to find a starbucks here. i know, it sounds lame, but other coffee is really expensive and tiny. starbucks at least has drinks worth the money. we ate an authentic spanish dinner our first night. tapas (mushrooms, and a seafood salad) and seafood paella with sangria to drink!!! yuuuuuummmmm. there are flower stands everywhere on the streets and tons of street performers, which were actually crappy. haha it´s also much warmer and even sunny here. good because more cold weather and we might literally drop dead. we had a bad night last night because we were basically in a room with an alcoholic who was yelling, turning on lights, peeing on himself...you know all that disgusting stuff. but barcelona is so amazing that we weren´t too fazed and are just moving rooms. anyway, i miss you guys :( let me know how you are!

love,
Tara

pair-eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

hey guys!

GUESS WHERE WE ARE NOW? PARIS!! yeah thats right. today was our first full day and we can check the eiffel tower and the arc du triomph off our list. I've been to france before so i wasn't as in awe as i was the first time but it is still soo amazing to get to come here AGAIN, i can't get over it! Our last day in london was perfect. We went to see Wicked, which got cancelled the day we were supposed to see it because of weather. It was the first musical i've ever seen and i absolutely loved it. If it ever comes anywhere where anyone is, go see it, you won't regret it. and Mom, you would love it especially. :) we have to see a muscial in Portland. anyway, the next day we were scheduled to leave for paris very early so we woke up at 4 and started our journey to the airport only to fing that weather by the airport was bad and all flights were suspended! we had to drag our suitcases uphill through snow, one of the hardest things we've done in our lives, and we had to wait awhile in the airport. Surprisingly, we weren't really upset at all though, we are seriously so happy to be in europe that any disappointment is really nothing compared to our entire experience. Our hostel in Paris is GIANT and so nice. we love it here, i'll be able to use the internet alot so i'll be updating my blog again soon. as alwayyyys. i love and miss you all and wish you were experiencing this with me. <333 (look vidushi!) hhahaa

so, it's snowing!

Hey guys! we're at our next hostel in Brixton, London. It's kind of like a huge cozy house with a really awesome scottish bar underneath. We're just relaxing during our second week in london and just going to a few places we didn't get to see yet. We went to the science museum yesterday and plan to go to the National Gallery tomorrow. But anyway, more importantly, ITS SNOWING IN LONDON FOR THE FIRST TIME IN 6 YEARS. People here are freaking out, but it's really not that bad. It's not even really cold and the snow is beautiful and fluffy and makes everything look like it's straight from an English story book :) we have booked our hostel in Paris for 7 days and have book our flight and hostel to Barcelona for seven days after that! So it's france and then spain so far. we're really excited and proud of ourselves for making this happen.
Tonight we are seeing the musical 'Wicked' look it up if you're not familar, Emily has already seen it 3 times and is obsessed with it! It will be the first musical i've ever seen, so i'm prettttttttttty excited!

anyway, i miss everyone and i probably won't update until paris!

love love! cheers!

can i offer you a cornish pasty?

cheers mates!

Here i am in Bath! Today we are doing a bit of sight seeing with a friend of a friend named Tom. He took us out to some pubs last night, they all have really awesome names like, The Pig and Fiddle or Slug n Lettuce :) we leave Bath tomorrow and go back to London for another week. Bath is such a cute and charming town, everyone here is so nice and it's exactly what i thought england would be like, a lot of canes and hats, and tweed and plaid. There is really beautiful architecture here and supposedly alot of films have taken place here including pride and prejudice and if you like Jane Austen she has a whole center here! I'm finally starting to adjust to the cold and the fact that we don't have a blow dryer, but our hostel here is much better than our first hostel in London. We're going to have a lot of time in London to relax seeing as we've already been there for a week and so have seen most of the important sights. We still want to visit Abbey Road and see a musical probably Wicked, look it up if you're not sure what it is, Emily is absolutely in LOVE with it and would kill me if i didn't see it so i'm excited!

Thanks to everyone for writing me comments! It's really good to hear from people back home because i'm a baby and start missing people really easily! If there's something anyone wants from a certain place let me know and thanks for the addresses!

pip pip cheerio friends! <3

candy from europe is cool!

HI again!!!

cheers from london! Emily and i have been going crazy in london! Today we went to portobello road and camden market. camden is known for drug addicts and amy winehouse but it was a really fun town/market. We also went out with an australian friend we met the other day named leigh! It was australia day which is apparently a big deal in london! We went from pub to pub celebrating and wore flags all around london! It was really fun to be australian for a day!
Tomorrow we leave for Bath which is apparently really really beautiful and more of the real good ol' english times that we have wanted to experience. Johnny Depp has a house there too!! Obviously that is something i am extremely excited about!
We've also been spending alot of time in cafe's and bookstores, just relaxing because all the cold weather and walking we do is really tiring.
The other day we walking past Buckingham palace. It was really not what we expected, i mean it's where prince william lives! I thought it would be absolutely breath taking! There were alot of guards around with guns though which was actually kind of scary!
So just to update you we are going to bath for three days, coming back and staying in Brixton, London for 5 days and then we're heading over to Paris. We still aren't sure where we want to go after Paris, we are thinking Prague now, anyone have any suggestions??
Tonight we are eating at Yo Sushi! It's a sushi restaurant that's really similar to Genki but it's alot more futuristic looking. the sushi still goes around on conveyor belts, but each sushi is in a little bubble! HOW AWESOME!
London is bloody brilliant!

The only address i have are my mom, dad, christy and sharon. so if you are not these people can you put your address on here so i can send you a post card!?

<3 Tara

I'm a londoner!

Hey everyone!

Today is the evening of my second day in london! It is such a beautiful city! The first day was almost magical! We arrived at our hostel after riding the tube (we LOVE riding the tube, it's so efficient) it's a really nice hostel, the only thing is it's a little cold!! During the day we explored our area (lambeth, the southern bank of London) and ate our first meal at a little cafe. They loved that we were american and were starring at us, they probably love americans because we had no idea what the tipping percentage was! We found out later we gave them too much! Our first day was also the Inauguration of Barrack and in honor of this, Madam Tussauds (a famous wax museum) was free to anyone with a U.S. passport! We obviously wanted to get in on that deal and so we went and it was so cool! They all looked shockingly life-like and we kept thinking they would move. Later that night we went out with two guys Jeff and Brendan from Oklahoma and Australia and we walked to Piccadily Circus and crossed the Thames and saw Big Ben on the way! It was gorgeous! Then we walked quite awhile in pretty cold weather to a bar called Be @ One. It was trendy but it still had the English Pub feel, we ordered drinks and we actually came at happy hour so it was buy one get one free!!! So i fufilled my goal of drinking in England on my first day and being legal to drink for the first time!!!
Today we were a bit more tired! We woke up pretty early and decided to go to Harrod's and check it out. It wasn't all that everyone made it out to be. The food hall and Chocolate rooms were amazing but the shopping was basically nordstrom's just ten times the size! For lunch we just came back to the hostel and ate and figured out how to use my hair straightener here (very important) haha. Then we went to a popular shopping area on Oxford Street, i bought new boots because mine were ruined by the boston snow! We went grocery shopping a little bit ago and found a great CHEAP grocery store called Iceland. It's very possible to stay here for a long time cheaply, but we'll see how our spending goes.
Tomorrow we plan to visit the Buckingham Palace and see the changing of the guards and maybe Westminster Abbey.
So far it has been a blast but i miss some comforts of home!

that's it for now, also i'm pretty sure i won't be able to upload photos here! sorry!!

i miss you guys!

I'm Sick of Snow

Heyyy guys!

So i've been in Boston for two full days, and it's been really interesting!  Totally not what i'm used to at Manoa but it was good to get this experience.  It was snowing this morning when we woke up and it was so beautiful to see, but it completely sucked walking around in the freezing cold!  But it was actually worth it because we went to Dunkin Donuts!!!!! We went shopping today and ate some delicious pizza from Regina's and tomorrow we plan to see a bit more of the city before i leave tomorrow evening!  I'm getting nervous and excited for London, i wish i could skip all the travel and just arrive there :( i'm kind of scared to go through customs by myself, but i'm sure it will be fine!  anyway, i miss everyone! i'll post again from london!!!!  

love, Tara 

This is where i'll be!

hi friends and family!

Troy had the idea of creating a blog and my friend Christy blogged during her travels so it seems like a good idea to keep everyone updated on my fabulous (or maybe not so fabulous) life in europe! As soon as i get to London, which will be on the 20th i will start to write some blogs and let you know how things are going!

i love you all!

Tara