the europe report

i am. FINALLY. home.

if anyone thought that touring europe should only be done during the summer, you're wrong. europe is absolutely beautiful during this time as well, although you'd better be smart and layer up.

in a span of 7 days, we visited switzerland, france, monaco and italy with a tour group. not once did it rain, it was pretty much sunny throughout. :)

we started off at zurich, from there went to luzern, interlarken, bern, geneva, montreux and zermatt. switzerland's got it made, they've got some of the prettiest surroundings for vacations, the environment is squeaky clean, the water in rivers and lakes are crystal clear, not to mention their watches and chocolates.

most of the time you feel like you're part of a postcard, the landscape is amazing (plus european fashion is SO much nicer than things you get in the states). the swiss speak german with limited english, so we mainly got by by waving our hands to demonstrate what we needed.

pictures here aren't going to justify what we actually saw, but it's a glimpse anyway. the above is a shot at luzern, the bridge being the landmark of this town.

mount matterhorn. :) zermatt's a ski town (one day i'm coming back to snowboard, WHAT a gorgeous area).

in france we visited cannes and nice. i don't think i was as horribly impressed with cannes as the other places i visited, but maybe it's the time of the year that matters here. architecture in france was very elaborate. you could see that the buildings were old but very well preserved. the shot above is during the drive from nice to monte carlo. i had to keep on climbing on top of my family to be able to see the view since i sat on the wrong side of the bus.

next monte carlo. i always think of mission impossible 3 whenever i think monaco. (it was that famous drive scene :p). monte carlo was kinda like a vegas, but much nicer version of it. we didn't go inside the casinos; stayed outside and wandered the streets.

finally milan. some brief shopping (we spent too little time here), and visited the huge church there. i don't have many pictures of this city since my camera battery died, so hopefully in my dad's camera there're more. am not crazy about italians though. in general they tend to be much louder and rougher.

wow. had an amazing time...i HAVE to go back sometime. but maybe china next?