JAYanthem blog

My comments from yesterday got rather long so I thought I would split it up into separate posts. So here we go- part two regarding our Europe vacation…

From an overall standpoint we loved seeing all the different cultures and comparing them to what we experience here in the US. For example in France it seems like everyone slows down to enjoy life (maybe too much?!) as park benches were filled all over Paris and diners easily last over 2 hours. In London we found service in pubs & restaurants to be worlds apart from what we are used to back home. The bar tenders weren’t talkative, overly pleasant, or even remotely fast. Of course we never saw a single one tipped by any patrons, so may help explain why. The lack of, or at least lack of decent, tipping didn’t seem to affect service in any of the French or Italian restaurants as we usually had really good experiences there.

One interesting thing we found time and again is how we’d hear popular American music everywhere we went. Brits singing karaoke of Justin Timberlake at a pub, Modern Rock tracks blasted out at of a Venetian bar, and countless local German bands playing hits from the 70′s, 80′s, & 90′s at a festival in Weisbaden. The interesting thing about that festival is they must have had about 5 separate stages all around the town center (it was a huge festival) and each one was playing American music- however half the people I talked to at booths couldn’t speak much English.

Another difference that was impossible not to notice is the difference in eating habits. The Italians eat later than Americans, usually not eating dinner until after 8pm. Although the French eat even much later, in fact our first French dinner was at 11:30pm at an outdoor cafe and the seating was pretty full even at that late time on a Tuesday night. Speaking of eating the food overall was so wonderful over there. I felt like we ate healthier, the food was more fresh, and the portions smaller- although the added courses to the meal probably neglected that a bit.

Now for some important talk- the beer & wine. The beer in Germany was fantastic and because it is pure (no artificial ingredients) as required by German law you can drink away without fearing the major headache in the morning..simply outstanding! Outside of Germany though we didn’t drink much beer, no sir- wine was the name of the game this trip. Over the last few months we were just starting to feel our way around wine, mostly we liked sweet whites- specifically Rieslings. Now I’m not ashamed to say we are complete wine addicts as this was surely a life altering trip. The wines in France, Italy, and even Germany were like nothing we’ve had before. Everything, and I really mean everything we had tasted excellent and probably 80% of it was dry reds which I mostly disliked before this trip. And boy we had A LOT of wine. Between getting a bottle for most dinners, glasses of wine at lunch, and buying extra bottles to enjoy with our fellow tour members at night in our hotel rooms- not to mention all the wine tastings- we had our fair share. Considering the quality of the wine and how inexpensive it was how could you not- heck it was cheaper than coke in many places. We saw bottles for as little as €2 in French stores and we had bottles of wine at pretty nice resturants in Rome for €6. Similar to the German beer much of the wine over there is made under a more natural process and lacks all the additives we are used to which also decreases the chance you’ll have a headache after mass consumption. Yeah I’m going to really miss that wine…

Ok seems like another good stopping point. If you didn’t figure out the navigation scheme in the London tabblo I’ll throw you a bone for reading down this far. Here is the picture tabblo for the Paris portion of our journey.

Pictures: Europe 2007 – Paris