ALASTAIR + LALEINIA

We're at the end of the first year, so we only had one long weekend left for some traveling. We decided it was finally time to check out Frankfurt. So we booked flights to Luxembourg, cause it was cheaper and Frankfurt isn't far at all. We're just crossing off countries one weekend at a time! Once again, we picked up our rental car and drove to see a bit of Luxembourg before going to Frankfurt. Alastair's family lived there for a time, so it was fun to place the location to the memory. Like, in Luxembourg, we went to these old tunnels where Alastair's family went. Emre was pretty scared, he thought there were going to be dragons. So he had Alastair hold him the whole time. We walked around a bit while Alastair bid online for next year's classes. The next day was spent touring Frankfurt via bikes. After spending some time finding a parking spot, we walked to a corner store and grabbed some stroopwafels. We love those things! We rented the bik...

Luckily, Grandad's visit overlapped with a four-day weekend! We decided to rent a car and go to the south of France where Connor served his mission. The trip started off with a problem - getting the cheapest car possible also meant getting a car that didn't fit us all! We rented a Fiat 500 which turned out to be a convertible, which would have been great if the weather cooperated. Anyways, we were going to meet up with Connor's girlfriend Alexanne, and then were going to convoy for the rest of the weekend. We ended up having to put Connor on the bus to meet us in Perpignan, and then we ended up just parking the car at Alexanne's place and all going in her parents' car. We had a really nice lunch with her family before taking off! We spent two nights at an airbnb outside of Aix-en-Provence in a town called Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume. I think it was literally someone's place that they live in and just move out for nights that someone rents it! We didn...

I'm thinking back on this part of the trip, kind of amazed that we actually pulled this off. We passed through eight countries in three days, driving over 1,300 miles. Kind of wild, very rushed, very worth it! The goal was just to pass through as many countries as possible, seeing what we could from the car. We started in Milan and drive through Mt. Blanc. We stopped in Geneva, Switzerland for the night, before heading through Liechtenstein, Austria, Germany, Slovenia, and doing in Pula, Croatia for the night. We then went back to Milan to watch AC Milan vs. Sampdoria, surrounded by the ultras. The highlights of the trip were the following: Gorillas visit Connor We decided we would go and visit Connor on his mission in Geneva. I didn't want him to be the guy who's brother visited him, so we decided to go in disguise and not tell him we were going to be there. In the after Halloween sales we bought gorilla suits for $5 each. My dad got his address so ...

Slightly rested from the last few days of excitement and adventure, we woke up as the Eurostar was arriving in Paris and headed out into the Parisian capital. This was to be a test not only of our traveling endurance, but also our French language skills. Both of us had taken lots of French in high school, and we enjoyed giving it a go after so many years. Long story short, we were terrible but much better than we thought we would be! We gave French a fair effort throughout the day, but almost all those we spoke to reverted to English for us. The plan was to start the day with our bucket list in mind by climbing the steps of the Eiffel Tower. We figured that if we went straight there, we wouldn't have to worry too much about queues. We arrived, realized how cold it was, saw there was no line, and left in search of warmer clothes! This was the day that Laleinia forsook her fashion over function mentality (although she still looked really cute). That's what cold, we...