Lisbon, Portugal

I LOVE Portugal! On Tuesday night Sherilee, Starr and I slept in the Dublin airport, and caught our 6am flight to Lisbon. We're pretty much in love with our hostel and never want to leave. We're staying at the Travellers House and it's pretty posh I must say. It was voted in the top 10 hostels in Portugal. Not only do we love our room and the amazing breakfast and the incredibly helpful staff, but we have made some really good friends. We decided to stay an extra night in Portugal because we love it here so much. Today was a little sad because all our friends had to leave this morning and go back to school, although we will have a chance to see a couple of them when we are in Spain. Our first night here we went out to dinner at a little place called Fado Maino. It was a really neat experience. While listening to traditional live Fado music we got served dinner, a drink, and dessert all for 20 euro. On Thursday we took the tram to the train station and then took the train out to Sintra. This little town was so gorgeous, words can't even describe how beautiful it was. We first visited the Quinta da Regaleira, which is a palace and gardens. The palace had this spooky book room that looked like it had drop offs all around. I reached my hand down to see and It looked like and arm was reaching up to grab me. Of course I screamed bloody murder and it was ten times louder sounding since it was in a palace. These drop offs turned out to be mirrors in the floor, hence the mysterious hand. The gardens were amazing as well. We hiked around for a long time, it wasn't your everyday forest. Every few steps there would be a random cave to explore or a tower or some historc piece of architecture. After we finished touring the gardens we went to a recomended pastry shop for lunch called Piriquita. I got a mocha cheesecake, some egg tarts and a hot dog in a biscuit, all for 2.85 euro. We toured the town a bit more checking out the clock tower and an art museum. While we were walking to the museum Starr and I were walking ahead and we heard this whang noise. We looked behind us and Sherilee had walked into a pole! The funny part is there was a group of Portuguese guys walking right behind her and they were laughing so hard. Starr and I were pretty much dying.
Well this is just a small part of our many activities over the past few days. We have been blessed by the people God has placed in our path and the adventures he takes us on everyday. We will be taking the train to Porto tomorrow so we are a little bit sad this is our last night in Lisbon. However, we have to keep going or else we will never make it to all our destinations. I would definately recommend coming to Portugal for a fun vacation. Just picture palm trees with midevil buildings, it really is the Hawaii of Europe!

Ireland

Iknow....isn't Ireland so Beautiful!! We went on a bus tour to the Burren and the Moher Cliffs. This was most definately the highlight of Ireland for me. It has rained everyday here; so last night we prayer there would be good weather cuz we didn't want our tour to be cancelled. This is what we woke up to-- a clear blue sunny sky! Pretty much so far we've just been in the city; I was so amazed at the gorgeous countryside. The Moher cliffs are 750 ft above sea level. Last week a lady died there; I guess she was too close to the edge and fell off the cliff. Don't worry mom it was a windy day so we stayed well away from the edge("safety first.") We also made a bunch of other stops. We stopped for lunch to eat traditional Irish food, saw the Dunguaire castle, toured the Ailwee caves and got really educated. I wished I had brought my journal because the bus driver was giving us "information overload" and it was all really interesting. The tour started at 10:30am and ended at 5:30pm. Tonight is our last night staying in this hostel and then PORTUGAL here we come! We are "sleeping" in the airport in Dublin tomorrow night cuz our plane leaves super early and we don't want to pay for a hostel. I guess we'll see how much sleep we get, we'll be too excited!

Galway

We are staying at the Claddagh hostel and we met five girls who are from all different countries but are all O'paring in Dublin. They came to Galway for the weekend just for fun. They invited us to go out with them last night so we had a good time. Two of the girls are from Germany, one from Brazil, one from Polland and one of the girls is from Switzerland. It's funny because everone here thinks that we talk really fast and they can't understand our accents. We think some of the Irish accents are really hard to understand but they are really cool to listen to.
This morning we went to a Methodist church that is right near our hostel. It was very different than what I'm used to but we are glad that we went. This afternoon all three of us fell asleep for three hours. We havn't been getting to bed at a decent hour since we got here so we probably needed the day to rest--it's Sunday anyways!

Dublin

Today we took a three hour train ride from Dublin to Galway. We are staying at a super cheap hostel but it's not nearly as nice as our last one. On Wednesday we moved to the Abraham House in a different part of the city. In Dublin we really enjoyed insane good irish bands and we also got the chance to visit St. Patrick's Cathedral. It was also cool because a friend of Starr's that's going to medical school in Dublin got us in to Trinity college for free to see the Book of Kells. It was really interesting to be able to see the original manuscripts of the four gospels. The college also had a place called the long room. It has 1/4 million of the oldest books. If you've seen "Beauty and the Beast" it reminds me of the part where the beast takes Bell into that room with all those books. Everyday we do an insane amount of walking. Yesterday morning I woke up and the back of my legs were so sore, I'm pretty sure I also pulled a stomach muscle trying to get my 32lbs pack on. Well I hope everyone is doing well. I miss everyone at home and would love to hear from you!

Steph's in Europe!.....

Well, my trip to Europe has begun. Mom and Dawna saw me off on my first EVER plane flight from Kelowna to Calgary @ 10:30am. When I arrived in Calgary I had a couple hours to kill in the airport before meeting Sherilee and Starr at Starbucks. We met up at 2:00pm and Starr's parents saw us off to London. The 9 hour plane ride went by really fast. They fed us supper(chicken casarole) which was actually pretty good; and then I slept for a few hours. At 8:30am London time they woke us up for breakfast. I was totally not hungary because it was 12:30am BC time; but I ate anyways. The plane landed in London @ 11:30 and we found our way through the crazy confusing London airport, and caught our next flight to Dublin. The flight was only 55 minutes which Sherilee and Starr slept the whole time cuz they didn't sleep at all on our 9 hour flight. When we arrived in Dublin it only cost us 1.90 Euro to take a 45min bus ride to our hostel called "The Avalon House." It's a pretty nice hostel, it has free internet and a kitchen and its pretty central to a lot of cool places. It costs 30 Euro a night each so we are hoping to find something a bit cheaper. After checking out the hostel we decided to get some fresh air before going to bed. Dublin looks like a really cool city and besides getting a little bit lost on our walk we had fun chekin' out the place. We went to bed at 7:30pm and now Sherilee and I are wide awake at 4:30am. We get a free breakfast at 7:00am and since we didn't eat supper last night we are really looking foward to the meal.

It was also really fun to see my other good friend from Capernwray- Candace Clarke(she's the hottie in the turqoise dress). She was one of Sam's bridesmaids. I definately have lots of good memories with those girls. We did the whole Newyears celebration....more dancing.. more food..fireworks and we all brought the new year in together!

My really good friend Sherilee (from Capernwray) just happened to be vacationing in Great Falls with her parents; so we definately had to get together. She stayed overnight at my uncle Dana's house with me on Friday and came to the wedding ceremony with us on Saturday. We are going to be seeing each again very shortly because we, along with another friend are going to Europe together for 3 months. ahhh so excited!


Dawna, Christine and Harmony stayed up all night at Tim and Christine's house the night before the wedding making the wedding cake. They had a few minor setbacks but the cake turned out lovely. Good job girlz--and good job Tim welding those cake stands.

Christmas 2006

Everyone came home for Christmas this year except for Jan; she went up north for the Holidays. It was fun to see everyone and spend some quality time eating, visiting, playing games and watching movies. I missed the Davidson/Aylard hockey game this year which was kind of disappointing because I heard afterwards that we won something like 22-7. "sorry Aylards, maybe next year"
We celebrated Christmas on Christmas Eve this year(never done before). It worked out good because I had to work for part of Christmas day and also Reisha and Ben could spend time with Harpers. Dawna made crepes for breakfast and then we opened our gifts and stockings. As usual mom made an awesome turkey dinner "thanks mom."