Beauty and the Beard:
Bound to Wander

Hey guys! Just wanted to do a quick status update. We know it's been a while, but we've had a lot going on. We'll make a blog post for the final days of the trip soon. We're sitting in the airport in Madrid getting ready for our 15 hour trip home. (Aaron needs a beard trim)

We had lots to do on day 55, and we needed to get out of the hotel early in order to get everything done. By 1:30 pm, we were ready to go. Our parking garage was crowded and confusing. Aaron had to do a crazy 9 point turn with Kaylea standing outside of the car to guide him out of the tiny tiny parking space. With only an inch to spare, we managed to get out of the space. But it wasn't over. It took us several U-turns and a lot of frustration to get out of the garage. All in all, it probably took us 15-20 minutes to get the car out of there. Once we were on the highway, everything was fine. Well, kind of. Aaron couldn't read the street signs, or any of the indicators inside the car. Other than that, everything was fine... Can you see the concentration/fear in his eyes? Our first stop for the day was Cuevas del Drach (Dragon Caves). It's a small system of caves and it's one of the "must see" things on the island. Other than that, we didn't really kno...

Well hello there! Long time, no read? Yeah sorry about that. We had no internet for most of our time in Milan. Thursday we had a delicious breakfast at a popular French cafe in old town Genoa before heading to the train station. We arrived at the station 30 minutes early only to find that our train had been delayed 40 minutes. After waiting for over an hour, we realized that we might have somehow missed our train. After speaking with information we concluded that the train had switched platforms with little notice and we had indeed missed it. Too bad. We had actually paid to reserve seats on a nice train. The next train leaving was in twenty minutes and reservation free; cheap-ass-train. Welp it was was 40 minutes late. In fact, the train on the platform next to us that was also headed to Milan, scheduled 30 minutes later, left before our train did. Italian railways suck. And the Italians agree. We finally made it to Milan and made our way down to the metro where we bought the su...

Day 49 started out with a lousy breakfast. All that was available were half-peeled bananas, some gross cereal, and few small pieces of bread and jam for some toast. The juice was OK, but man cannot live on juice alone. We ate what we could and got ourselves ready for the day. Then, all of a sudden, a few hours had gone by. We were still in bed. Kaylea was at a good part in her book, and Aaron had found a cool book the day before. So, we were stuck in bed reading.  ( Into Thin Air and The Martian ! Check em out!) It was already lunchtime. We had seen an aquarium the night before while we were walking around. We decided to get a quick bite to eat then head to the aquarium. It was only a 5 min walk from the hostel. The aquarium was great! Well... we got ripped off while standing in the line, but only a little. A very friendly African man sold us some crap for "donations" to Africa. He gave us some stringy bracelet things, a small wooden elephant, and a small wooden tu...

Well there's not much we can say about our only full day in Venice. It was storming almost all day. And not light rain and distant thunder storming, but shake the windows storming. We tried going out anyways. We visited St. Mark's Plaza and the Basilica Museum, but that sums up anything of note. Halfway through the day the clouds seemed to be clearing, so we spent that time exploring the labyrinthine streets, unique bridges, and narrow canals. We basically spent the entire day walking. So much so that our feet hurt and we decided to head back; no easy feat. Venice is a giant maze. It took us almost an hour to find our way. Almost back to the B&B, we passed a restaurant that made us both stop and inhale. The wafting scent was incredibly enticing. The only thing that kept us from finding a table right then was that we were both still drenched from the rain. We resolved to return for dinner. While back in hour room resting, the storm returned full force and ca...

Day 45 started out slow, as vacation days should. We woke up in time for the complementary breakfast, then made our way back to bed to catch up on some blogging and rest. We finally made it out of the B&B a little after 2 in time for some lunch. We were still a bit tired of Italian food, and we had seen a sushi restaurant nearby. We made our way there, but we were disappointed to discover it was a buffet. We usually avoid Asian buffets, but at this point we had come too far. Everything was going to close at 3, and wouldn't open again until 7. So, we were stuck. The food wasn't horrible, but it was definitely the worst food we've had on the trip. On a scale from Panda Express to Geisha Steak and Sushi, it was a little below Pei Wei. (Kaylea thinks it was worse than Panda Express) All that nasty food was apparently pretty exhausting, because we went straight back to the B&B for another nap. Not sure what time we woke up, but the only thing that got us out of our roo...

Its probably about 3:30 am back at home, but here we've already woken up just in time for breakfast and crawled back into bed. So about 10:30. The past few days have been packed with adventure and energy expenditure. Day 43 began with mini homemade muffins and coffee. The breakfast at this B&B tops all inclusive breakfasts we've had so far. Our first goal of the day was to reserve seats for a train to Venice. After waiting 30 minutes for our number to be called, we realized we had missed our turn. We showed the saleswoman our ticket but she told us we'd have to get another number and continue to wait. At this point we we're quickly gaining on lunchtime and the hanger was creeping in. We decided to go ahead and just use a kiosk to pay to reserve tickets. Boom. Done. Let's blow this Popsicle stand. From there we followed directions to the Accademia Gallery. On the way, we paused a little Indian restaurant. At this point in our Italy tour, we'd grown pretty...