Romania! What a Wonderful Country! :)

I know I know I've been a bad bad blogger, but I just needed time to reflect on the trip so I could show more of the meaningful pictures on here rather than all the touristy photos! So here is the rest of our trip... :)

Day 6: Thursday, June 24th 2010 Bucharest, Romania

We arrived very early in the morning to Bucharest and since we had had practically no sleep on the tiny plane we wandered around Buch until Phil finally got a hold of the Matea Family to let us rest at their house for a couple hours, after we woke Uilian the son, took us around Bucharest. Here are the photos after our nap:

This was in Cigmigiu park on a paddle boat near the fountain. This is where Romania was dedicated as a country, not specifically where this photo shows but in this park. It was cool to see how nice of a park they had for being a 3rd world country, I had no idea how rough Romanians had it until I visited!

This is Phil and Iulian Matei He played our tour guide, not that Phil didn't know his way around but it was very nice of him. It was his family that let us stay with them while we were in Bucharest. They were such nice people, his mother, Vaselica, cooked us the MOST AWESOME Sarmale ever!!! Phil has cooked it for me in the states before but hers.... OH MAN SO SO SO SO SO SO SO SOOOOOOO GOOD! :D

This was my first 'inghetata' or ice cream in Romania, and the only reason I got it was because I had to use the restroom and you have to buy something at McDonald's to use their restroom. They have a code for their bathroom that shows up on the receipt, it was interesting!

This was my first encounter with Phil's favorite Romanian food of all time, the Saroma. I wasn't a huge fan at first but I did crave it afterwords! After this Marian, the dad to Iulian, took us to visit more people, I was very tired but did get some more ice cream out of it! :) They spoke lots of Romanian and I spoke so little at this point, every now and then I would hear words I understood but not very often!

Day 7: Friday, June 25th 2010 Constanta, RO

We took a train today to Constanta to meet Florin, who spoke EXCELLENT English. I was so excited to talk to a Romanian finally who could actually understand me. I asked him lots of questions and got many answers. He got us an awesome little apartment to stay in for the 2 nights we were in Constanta. I was sad that I didn't get photos of him I just wasn't in a photo mood that day I guess! :(

This is the FANTASTIC Italian Pizza Place! The pizza was AMAZING! They don't have tomato sauce so they use this sweet ketchup that is so super yummy! I wish we had brought some of that home! They also gave me fresh apple juice, it was really really yummy and even when it was mixed with some of Phil's Sprite it was pretty good too. (Sprite needs a new flavor that has apple in it! ;)

this is the train we rode in to get to Constanta

This is a photo of us in the Gondola, or air taxi in Mameya It was a lot like a ski lift only it was in a room. We would have loved to go swimming at the cool water park there but it was raining and the next day we had plans.

Day 8: Saturday, June 26th 2010 Constanta, RO

This is the Photo taken at the 20 year anniversary of Missionaries serving in RO! This is Carol VanWagner doing a caricature of Phil. They had a little Open House to celebrate in their LDS Villa.

This is the Mosque in Constanta, I think this is a pretty cool picture of it so I'm sharing! :)

Phil, Carol, and Dave with the view of the Black Sea and the "Jacks" that ease the tide as it comes in. I loved this city!

And this is the RO temple... j/k it is a CASINO! crazy huh!? For a Casino I thought it was really cool and I think this photo should be a postcard! lol!

This is at dinner where we had a Turkish meal with, Phil, Tibi (Phil baptized him while on his mission), Mariana and her husband, the Branch President. We were also seated with Dave and Carol and I took this photo.

Day 9: Sunday, June 27th 2010 Constanta, Tolcea, & Galati, RO

We were able to attend church while there in Constanta, it was very awesome and I KNOW that I am part of the true church because I felt the spirit so strongly there. I even cried to one of the investigators when she was asking what I thought of Romania, I was trying to say that I felt bad for all the things I take for granted that they don't even realize they are missing. Carol helped me to explain this as my tears were not making sense to this Romanian woman. I think that Carol explained it best, "God said now there is a weak one (herself and I) send her to America and this one (the Romanian girl) is tough send her to Romania."

London days 3, 4, & 5

Day 3: Monday, June 21st 2010 South Hampton, London Temple, London, England

This was the day that we visited Stonehenge. Unfortunately for us it was closed due to the Summer Solstice, which meant it was closed until 4pm and we arrived at 11am, it was a bummer but we can say that we've been! :)

This was as close as we could get, the side of the road while driving. If you look closely you can see guys in yellow cleaning up the mess after the big sunrise party.

This is Stefan, Phil's good Romanian buddy who is serving a mission in England. Phil and Stefan were both very excited to finally see one another after so long (5 years or so). It was his P-day so we were able to go to lunch with him in the mall at a chicken place.

This is Phil and I at the London Temple. Since it was Monday we were not able to do a session but we got to walk around the grounds, which was very very pretty!

Parting photo of us and Stefan

View of the temple, it was so pretty, I wish I had room to post all our photos but you would get bored. Sorry that the order on the last two photos got messed up, I can't change it either so just deal with it! ;)

This is us near the Chippy place! The fish and chips (fries) were so YUMMY! WE loved IT! The Curry sauce is the yellow one and the peas sauce is the green one. Phil really liked the curry sauce and I really loved the malt vinegar on the fries! YUMMY! Garth was right when he said this was the best place for fish and chips!

Day 4: Tuesday, June 22nd 2010 Tower of London, Les Miserables in London, England

 

Tower of London the Castle of many be-headings.

and below the Tower Bridge

Right after this Phil Brad Liz and I went and saw Les Miserables, it was so so good! We loved it! It was unfortunate for us though because the Jonas Bro, Nick was in it and he didn't do so good but we still loved the music and the story.

Day 4: Wednesday, June 23rd 2010 More LONDON

 

This is the most expensive stores in London, we were so afraid to touch things, but they did have some really cool artwork that was there of London that I hope to mimic someday! I wish I would have photographed it! 

 

Next we went to the British Museum and saw many things that were in my art history books we only got one photo though because our camera batteries died but that's Phil with the Egyptian dude. After that we had a double-decker bus ride, this photo shows Wendy, Garth, Brad and Liz. Then to end that day we went to Buckingham Palace! What a huge place for one person to live!! It was HUGE! I thought it was cool to see the neat statue there. Very cool!

On our way to our hotel we found a group of people who were taking photos of planes as they landed at Heathrow Airport. Brad and Garth had been talking about how cool the planes were the whole time so it was fun for them to see others interested too!

England/Romania Trip: First Couple Days: Flight There and the London Eye

I'm going to try to narrow down each day down to only a couple pictures so you get a taste of what we did each day, I hope that this will be enough! For the complete album go to my facebook page.

Day 1: June 19th 2010

We flew for the majority of this day so here are some photos on the plane that I took:

Day 2: June 20th 2010 (London, England)

This was our Anniversary day :) YAY! (too bad we were super tired from jet-lag) This day we mostly walked around London. Probably the highlight of this day was the London Eye:

We also learned how to use the "Tube"

Lucky for us Garth and Wendy, Phil's parents, were pros at it by now, having spent a year and a half doing it themselves. It was good to see them! Brad and Liz Green were there with us too it was pretty fun spending our time in London with family.

And we just HAD to have a Telephone Booth photo! :)