We got off of the train and had to find our rental car, still sick and unable to propel my own limbs, this was the longest hour of my life. I sat laid on the floor next to the rental station while my family moved like icebergs trying to arrange our car. Now keep in mind there are 5 of us, and I think we had about 10 8 bags between us. So of coarse we got a vehicle capable of comfortably seating us, as well as a place for all of our luggage. Right? Well m good sir, you could not be more wrong. We walked up to our “car” and I thought maybe we each got our own?! No such luck. This “car” technically sat 5 people but that’s riding the bitch hump in the back. And what about the trunk you might ask? Haha……no such luck. All we had was an “area” behind our seats that fit about 17/32 of our luggage. So naturally the rest of our belonging sat on our laps for the anticipated 2-hour car ride to our timeshare. Now I say “anticipated” because that wasn’t including the hour and a half pit stop we made in an effort to find food to cook for dinner that night. Most of you haven’t ridden in a car with my father but I could best describe his driving like a mule chasing a carrot only the mule never looks at the road and every sign he sees is in French and faster and more acquainted mules are honking and racing by us. Let us not forget that the mules whining children and wife are in the back seat unable to even see what is going on due to the luggage covering every inch of the vehicles windows. A nauseating experience at best.
We arrived at our condo, my family got settled in and I took a 6-hour nap. After my nap I was feeling a little better and we all enjoyed a really nice meal that my mother had prepared for us. I had homework to do so I got right on the computer afterwards and spent just about the rest of the night doing that.
The next day, we had a few things to do and everyone wanted to go se some sights around town, I wasn’t really feeling up to that so I just stayed in and finished my homework. They got back and my older brother Ben and I went down to the rental shop to rent our ski equipment for the next day. My little brother was leaving the following morning and m older brother won’t be in the states for Christmas so we decided to celebrate Christmas that night. My older brother brought us gifts from Cambodia and some other countries and my parents bought us all little things from around town. We had a really nice meal and just drank wine and talked for the rest of the night.  The next day, we decided not to go skiing because my older brother had gotten sick. So we saw Ryan off and mainly just hung out that day. I realized that a term project for one of my classes was due that night, rather than in 3 nights, so I did that real quick and then sat around watching non stop soccer and curling on TV (luckily in English)

The next day, we all drove about an hour (it takes 30 minutes just to get down the mountain) to the ski resort. My brother and I skied while my parents explored little towns in the area. We got on the lift(that we couldn’t see the top of) and wondered when it was going to end. We had to get on 3 separate lifts to get to the top of the mountain and it took us about 40 minutes to get to the top. Amazing sights up there. I think this was one of the highlights of my trip so far. Just so beautiful and perfect for skiing, unfortunately we wore about 987234x more clothing that we needed and were sweating within minutes. We took a break to eat some food and covered ourselves in snow just to cool down. Best skiing of my life! We then skied to the bottom where the lift had just broken, the only option was to wait for it to get fixed, or ski on completely flat ground for god knew how long. We didn’t want to waste our day to we decided to see where the path took us. We assumed it was to another lift but we had no idea. We started along the path and when we turned the corner we could barely see the other lift off in the distance. After about 20 minutes of this we came to a snow mobile sopped on the mountainside, he yelled something in German and pointed to a rope he had just thrown out. No clue what he said but we instinctively grabbed the rope and he took off. And he was moving too, it was a lot of fun. The really fun, and fortunate part, was that we were zipping by all of these people that had been practically walking for an hour to the next lift! We were so lucky It was time to head down but my brother had wrecked so he wasn’t able to take the usual route down. We took winding paths all the way to the bottom.
We met up with our parents and headed for home. Really great day.

The next entry will be Paris, France!

The next day was rainy and grey and my little brother was still sick. We walked around all morning, not really doing much. Around lunch time I started to get sick and wasn’t really worth much. We had given our bags to the hotel and I hadn’t dressed for the weather we were experiencing. Cold and sick, we continued to walk around the town. Our train to Switzerland wasn’t leaving until 10pm so we were finding warm ways to kill time. We finally found a book store and sat down to get warm. I was in the bathroom puking up until it was time to go get our bags and head for the train station. The train was a “sleeper” train. Each cabin had 6 beds and after everyone got settled we slept until about 7am. The following morning we found out that our 6^th bed as taken by a nuclear physicist from CERN. FREAKING CERN. Now if you don’t know what CERN is, they are basically the leading research facility in nuclear physics, have he largest particle accelerator, and dabble in things such as figuring out the creation of the universe. Just minor things like that.

Next stop is Port De Solie, Switzerland

The Next stop was Florence, Italy. Known for it’s museums of sculptures and paintings, we naturally did none of these. Most of our time was spent just exploring different shops and walking around. My dad got sick in Rome and by Florence, had passed it along to my mom and my little brother. The weather was grey and a little rainy most of the time. Florence was a LOT smaller than Rome but had plenty to explore. This is where the statue of David is but we never made it in to see the real one, there was a reproduction in one of the squares that was good enough.

At the center of town was a really nice church but after Saint Peter’s Church in Rome, we weren’t too impressed.

The Picture of the weird looking green vegetable tasted like broccoli only slightly bitterer. While we were there, there was a festival going on, so the streets were abnormally packed and just moving around and staying together proved to be quite a task.

For those of you that don’t know there is a branch of Kent State in Florence (architecture and fashion) and we chose to visit that for a little bit.

Well that’s about it for Florence, The next place we visited was Cinque Terra, Italy.

Day 1 in Rome was spent exploring the ancient parts of the city. Although the entire city is incredibly old, the ancient parts include the coliseum, monuments, burial sites, and various building. Most of these parts where entirely underground until about 200 years ago and are as old as 2500 years. It was very hard to imagine a building being more than 300 years old which is about all you will find in the states. Here are some pictures from the coliseum.

Everything was on such a grand scale, they didn’t just build a monument, it had to be larger than the last and take more time and materials. They used so much material that they would have to rob other sites of it’s marble to complete the next one. Doesn’t make too much sense, but you ca see where some buildings have been stripped. Every seat and most of the flooring and walls in the coliseum were done with marble. This structure was one of the biggest things I have ever been in, but what made it really impressing was that it was built so long ago. Today we have cranes and power equipment. Back then they had pulleys and levers and the backs of thousands of slaves. Here are some pictures from the most ancient part or Rome. Keep in mind, 2/3’s of this was completely underground until about 200 years ago.

That was about it for the first day. We probably walked 10 miles that day just to be able to see everything. So it took a long time. There we taxis and buses, but it wasn’t worth the cost and time it took to wait for them.

The city of Rome was a typical large city. The people were busy and the traffic was crazy. Pedestrians had the right-away so you could just step out into most streets and the cars were expected to stop, but that was a huge risk if you ask me. EVERYONE was in a hurry.

Next entry will be our time in the newer parts of Rome.

This was on the train from Geneva, Switzerland to Venice, Italy, traveling along Lake Geneva.

Here we are trying to find our hotel. It was in an alley that we could barely fit our bags into. I had to bust out the MacBook so we could find it. The offices were in one building and the rooms were in another.

After we got a little settled in we left while it was still daylight out. For those of you that don’t know, Venice is built almost entirely on water. There are no cars. Everyone gets around either buy boat or by walking. The streets are too narrow for cars or scooters. So it was quite just about everywhere you went. We never got a chance to ride a gondola but there were everywhere. Venetians didn’t ride the boats unless it was to deliver food and supplies or pick up the garbage. It was a rather small town so walking was never a problem. It was more the navigation. We got lost a few times but the little shops and restaurants made those little mistakes very interesting.

The next day we chose to see some of the famous sites around the city. One of those sites was the rialto bridge. There were only 3 bridges that crossed the Grand Canal and this was the largest. Riddled with shops and restaurants, there had just about everything around this area.

This shop was on the bridge and I just had to stop and stare. Unfortunately though Venice is in Italy so it was mostly Italian soccer garbage

This was the view from on top of the bridge.

The next site we visited was the square. Just one word. HUGE! One of the attractions of this site is the very friendly winged-rats (pigeons). Next to this was an enormous church that we weren’t able to take pictures of. Definitely the largest structures I have ever been in so far other than a sports stadium.

The rest of our time was mainly spent walking around and stepping into little shops. Venice was a great little town, full of nice people and great food. The next city we are visiting is Rome.

So far our trip has gone off without a hitch. We left our house at 9am yesterday morning (11/30/06). My brother’s fiancée drove us to the airport. Our flight left Cleveland at11:30am headed for new jersey. There we had a 4-hour layover where I slept and my parents watched a movie. The plane for Geneva Switzerland was rather empty so we got to stretch out and get some sleep. I had tons of homework to finish but I made time for an in-flight movie and some video games. They had these controllers in the arms that are were a Phone, a TV controller, a radio, a fax machine, and SNES style controller when you put them on their side, wrapped up into one. Cool idea if the games weren’t made in a guy’s basement that just can’t seem to let the 80’s go.

So we got up at 7am on Thursday and arrived in Switzerland at 9am Friday. Damn time zones make traveling a bitch. When we landed, Ryan was there to meet us. By the way, Switzerland has no customs what so ever, we got our bags and were on the street in just a few minutes. From there we got on a bus and went to the Knox Center where my brother Ryan has been staying this semester. The rooms are really small and really expensive. But I guess that’s typical for Switzerland. We had lunch in the lobby, which was day old sushi, some rice stuff, and a few glasses of wine. Not very impressed with the food so far. The sushi was gross and the wine was practically water.

My parents had a brilliant idea to try and hide the fact that my older brother was joining us as well. Although my little brother had to buy his Eurorail pass and I was involved in most of the travel plans. So it was a pathetic attempt but I acted stupid. Anyways, after lunch, my brother walked in the door fresh off a plane from Cambodia. This is the first time we have all been together since Christmas of 05’. We had to literally run to the bus stop to catch our bus because my older brother was running late and where we are staying is a 10-minute walk from the bust stop. A few busses later and running through the streets of Geneva, we got our tickets and loaded up the charter bus and where on our way to Annecy, France.

After about an hour and a half on the bus we arrived. The scenery was great. It was a little French mountain town that had the cleanest lake in Europe. And it really was.

You could see to the bottom everywhere you looked. Really amazing. There were a few Christmas festivals going on and just about everyone was out and about. We spent most of our time just walking around and dropping into small shops.

Things are just as, if not more, expensive around here, but France is known for that. Ryan bought a little mug for his girlfriend. After a few hours of that we found somewhere to eat and sat down, oh and if you guys didn’t know, your credit cards will not work in other countries unless you call your company and let them know you are going there, kind of a nice security feature but REALLY annoying if you are trying to pay for lunch and there is a language barrier. So after we got a card that worked and ran to an ATM we ordered lunch. My brothers got croissants and coffee and my parents got a slice of pie that was pistachio and orange. The coffee here comes in tiny little cups because it’s a cross between regular coffee and espresso. REALLY GOOD and I don’t even drink coffee. Anyways, I got a small pizza that I saw in the window, little did I know, that the pizza you see in the window, is the pizza that you get. A little put of by that I was still really hungry so I dug in. YUCK, it wasn’t the day old cheese or the weird crust, it was the hidden anchovy!!! But I ate it anyway. I swear this thing was a king salmon though, it was huge. After that it started to get dark and we just continued to talk around. The city lights up at night with Christmas decorations and streetlights. I actually liked the city better at night. We had to get on a train back to Geneva so we found the bus station and headed back. We were meeting some of Ryan’s friends in town for their last meal of the semester. We ate at an authentic Swiss restaurant and everyone got things from to escargot to chicken. I went with the chicken but my brothers shared an order of fondue. They say that you can drink nothing other than wine with your fondue or else you will get rather sick. Really weird, but no one had their arm twisted about ordering wine. After dinner we got back to our hotel and slept like for the first time in 48 hours.

So far I am really impressed with Europe. The people were nice but not as nice as in places like Asia. The food was what I expected and can’t wait to try more.

Stop back soon for my next (hopefully shorter) update!! (Venice, Italy)

If you have any questions or comments feel free to e-mail me at sethtipton@gmail.com or visit my forum so others can read your questions.

See all of the pictures from Annecy and Geneva in the gallery!

And in case you missed it, here is an amazing performance by beck
(Favorite part, the marionettes!)