Catching you up to speed

Wimbledon: purely amazing. If you ever have the chance, you MUST go. The town is like the Hamptons.. but even more ritzy. The Octagon house where I met my mentor to get the tickets was probably a 5 million dollar home. Tented yard, all you can eat/drink, all day. Awesome. As far as the match went, Margot and I were unsure of exactly what to do when we got in.. it was way overwhealming. Obviously the Wimbledon experts knew to queue for the matches they wanted to see, but we were learning on the fly... we ended up in a 2.5 hour queue for Court 1 tickets.. but we got them.. (excellent seats mind you) and it was phenomenal. We ended up seeing two matches: the first was Lisicki vs. No. 5 Kuznetsova.... it was an upset and an uproar. By far the coolest tennis match I could have ever seen. The second match we saw was also quite comparable. It was the No. 1o Gonzalez vs. Ferrero match.. which was also a huge upset. (Mind you, both Lisicki and Ferrero ended up losing in the quarterfinals a few days ago to Venus and Murray respectfully.. but the energy was still unreal.) We also each tried the "Wimbledon drink".. would you expect less?. It's called a Pimms and Lemonade. It's got cucumber, lemon, orange, and mint in it. Not awesome, but okay just to say I did it I suppose.

Trip to Amsterdam: A 7 hour ferry cruise ship, 2 busses, and 14 hours later.. oy.

Amsterdam: Not my favorite city.. but definitely an experience. Where I left you I think I said I was about to go on a Heineken Brewery tour, then a canal tour, then to the Anne Frank House. The brewery was pretty sweet.. the canal tour was not. Anne Frank House was surreal. Sad as hell, but glad I went.

Bruges/ Trip to Paris: I'd found out that morning that the maids had stolen 50 euro cash from me during the day before, so I wasn't particularly in a good mood when we left Amsterdam... but we had something to keep us entertained on the bus, so it all worked out... :). Also, I lied a few days ago when I said we were stopping in Brussels... apparently it was Bruges, Belgium instead. Same effect I think though. Bruges was cool... I'm glad we didn't spend a whole day there.. we just stopped for a few hour lunch in the afternoon on the way to Paris. Bruges was originally a walled city, so it was cool to walk around the path where the city limits used to lie. Basically I ate too many chocolates and a huge waffle. All delicious, but it put me on detox mode for all of Paris.

Paris: This may be my favorite city so far... London's a close second. I love the culture (wine is more prominent than water), I love the atmosphere (minus the intense PDA), and it surprisingly reminds me a lot of DC. Yesterday we were starving when we got in so we stopped a cute little Brassiere like 2 blocks from the hotel for salads and wine. We're staying in the Bastille area (right by the statue). It's a fine area, we have a full kitchen so we all decided to save some money while in Paris (considering the salad and wine was 17 euro each yesterday) and cook for ourselves. There was a cute little market this morning in the square/park area across the street. It had everything imaginable for cheap prices. I also love having to learn French impromptu because I know nothing about the French language and basically no one speaks English. I think I may like Paris so much because it's not only a true culture shock, but a challenge. Everywhere else we've been, everyone has spoken English. So here it's actually fun to have to speak French to the produce market-stand guys.. and have them laugh at you, but be patient and nice enough to correct you and make sure they understand.

We also had a bus tour of Paris today.. not that cool, the tour guide kinda sucked, but I suppose it got us acclaimated to the area a bit. Tonight may have been my favorite evening on the trip thus far. Eight of us got wine, packed dinner, took the metro down, and sat on the lawn by the Eiffel Tower for like 4.5 hours. We saw it go from day to dark (it doesn't get dark here until like 10:30-11PM.. it's tiring) and the Eiffel Tower got all lit up and absolutely gorgeous at night. The lawn area was packed.. we saw someone get proposed to (the entire park clapped and hollered for them), and there were some guys playing guitars, drinking wine, and smoking cigarettes behind us... it provided some excellent entertainment. The whole monument area reminds me soo much of DC though.. just bigger, prettier, and with a lot more gold decoration. Absolutely perfect evening though.

Tomorrow we're headed to Versailles and if the weather holds up we'll probably picnic somewhere near the Arc de Triomphe in the evening. Oh man, if I could only afford to live abroad.

Ps. interesting fact I learned today from our monotonous tour guide: it was 90+ degrees today without the humidity... aka it felt like hell, and there's basically no air conditioning anywhere in Paris (with our hotel as an exception).. but the last time they had a heat wave like this it was in 2004 and 13,000 people died due to heat exhaustion. Nuts!

Anyways, sorry to leave you on a depressing fact, I'm sure I'll write again before I leave Sunday. Hope you have a Happy 4th!!!