On Thursday April 5th, at the humble Mendoza airport, my parents were waiting for us. We had a schedule to follow, so after many hugs and kisses, we were headed out to Hotel Uspallata, up in the Andes. This is where the wedding was taking place on Saturday, and where we would stay until Sunday.

It was wonderful to head up into the imposing Andes. I wanted to stop everywhere to take pictures, but I decided to instead relax and take in the view without a viewfinder in the way.

At the hotel, my grandparents (my mom’s parents) were waiting for us. They had just celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary, and I had been really looking forward to hanging out with them. They were staying at the hotel until Sunday as well, so there was going to be plenty of time to do just that, and that we did.

My brother Juan and his bride Heidi were also there, but we didn’t get to visit much because several other people were also staying at the hotel for the whole weekend, and they were busy being gracious hosts and doing that stuff that people who are about to get married do.
My other brother, Emiliano, wasn’t staying at the hotel, but instead rented a small cabin with his girlfriend Claudia. That was probably a good move on his end, because he was probably more comfortable and quiet at night and didn’t miss out on spending time with everyone else.

On Friday, we took a little road trip to some unique places around the area. The first stop was the Tunduqueral Hill, also known as “Tundunqueral Apus”. This place is about 4 miles from Uspallata, and it was used by the Inca as a sacred site. From what a local guide told us, they made sacrifices on the hill back then! We were also told that at sunrise and sunset, you could hear the animals that gave the place the name, making a “thunk thunk” noise all around the valley.

From  there, we went looking for some “ruins” that were either really hard to find or really disappointing. Either way, it was high noon and lunch time! So we took a drive back to the hotel, where a cultural lesson was about to be taught to Kelly firsthand.

As the CIA will tell you, 92% of Argentina is Roman Catholic, which means that on Friday April 5th, “good Friday” was being observed. Therefore, red meat is something that just cannot be eaten all day, and that’s how Kelly got to suddenly take a bite of an empanada filled with tuna. One bite was all it took to reassure that her dislike of fish had not changed, but luckily cheese empanadas were also to be had. This should have been a preview of what was to happen for dinner. I won’t go into details, but I will say that seafood paella and Kelly will never again be typed in a sentence together.

Anyway, we spent a fair amount of time walking around in the beautiful landscape and weather. Kelly loved the trees, and how could she not? They were starting to change colors at the end of the summer, the sky was intensely blue, and the rows and rows of them are magical to look at.

On Saturday, the wedding excitement was in the air. Things got started early in the morning, with a very nice ceremony that included God/Jesus chat and even some bible readings. Kelly had a good time trying to keep up with the whole thing going on in Spanish! A fun and very unique detail that I’d never seen before were the mimes that showed people where to seat.
I got lots of “ooohs” and “aaahs” as I walked around with my big fancy camera taking pictures, which I admit was pretty fun. I took hundreds of pictures, and it took me several hours to go through them all and select a few keepers. Here are a few of my favorites:

Uspallata landscape

Proud parents with my brother

Heidi's entrance

One of my favorites just because it describes the moment and feeling of the bride's entrance..

Main dish fo lunch: goat, chorizo, morcilla (blood sausage).

Emiliano, Juan, Nico... Aguilera

Kelly took this one, but I like it because it's me goofing off and people in the background enjoying either that, or my sweet ass.

Same window, very different feeling. My dad and Kelly catch a breath from the dance party.

There are a ton more pictures on Flickr, here’s the link to see them all: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nicoyogui/sets/72157629863297555/.

The wedding reception was pretty amazing. The food was almost every culinary thing I missed about Argentina, and there was plenty of it being served. During lunch, and almost like an Improv Anywhere/flashmob, 3 opera singers burst into melody, surprising and marveling the 100 or so people there. Everyone truly enjoyed the up-close and personal opera act. After lunchtime, the party got started with some karaoke. Kelly and I wanted to dazzle everyone with our Bon Jovi imitations, but the DJ didn’t have any Bon Jovi. To mend Kelly’s shattered heart, we got into a stack of authentic Cuban cigars. My uncle, dad, older brother, Kelly and I were all puffing away, and somewhere in there, it happened. The moment I’d been describing to Kelly to get her pumped for the trip had finally come: Strange music in Spanish, everyone dancing wildly and singing along… (And when I say everyone, it’s everyone). The dance party picked up when we joined it with our Cubans ablaze. FIESTA!

The party went on for a good while, and we had a fantastic time. We ate and drank, danced and laughed, and witnessed the formal commitment of my brother and my new sister. I’m pretty sure that’s the definition of a good reason to travel home!

The next day, everyone left the hotel. Juan and Heidi were heading to their home in Buenos Aires for a couple of days, and then were going to embark on their honeymoon to Colombia and Panama.
As for us, we had already planned to take a road trip with my parents into Chile. Tales and pictures from that part of our journey… those are for another post.

The challenge consists of having a DEXA scan to determine your start body fat percentage, and have one at the end. The person who dropped a higher percentage of their start BF%, wins a trip to Hawaii for 2. Pay attention there, it’s tricky. To make it simpler to understand, let’s say that someone starts with 30% body fat and ends the contest with 25%. This person lost 5 points of percentage, but the percentage compared to the start was 16%. Someone who goes from 25% to 20% also dropped 5 points, but compared to the start they lost 25% of what they started with, so the second person wins.

I went in for my body fat scan, and the result said that 21.7% of what one could call “Nico” that day was basically fat. This wasn’t too far from my start point in 2010, so I knew what I could accomplish, and I set my goal to get that prize.

Lucky for me, I’ve been really into reading about fitness in the last year. I spend hours a week between SomethingAwful’s “Watch and Weight” forum and reddit’s “Fittit“, ending up reading all sorts of blogs, articles, research articles and of course tons of anecdotal evidence. From all the knowledge broscience I’ve acquired it was easy to develop my program. Since all the information was readily available for me, it wouldn’t really be a secret for me to keep my plan to myself. So, here’s what I did:

• LEANGAINS : Diet? Yup. This one is pretty simple, which for me meant not eating for 16 hours, thus only eating during an 8 hour window (for me, it was 11:30am to 7:30pm).
  Every single day, I aimed to consume at least 160g of protein. On the days that I did weight-training, I’d shoot for a target of 2300 calories, with most of them coming from protein and fat. On the days that I wasn’t pumping iron and acting like a meathead, my calories intake could only be around 1700 calories.
  This whole Intermittent Fasting thing was actually easier than I thought. Waking up and working for hours? Sure, bring it on. I was actually very clear-headed and as pleasing as always! Other people doing this also share in their experiences that they are far from cranky or sleepy monsters, but that they feel pretty good. Besides, try not eating for 16 hours:  That first bite tastes so good it’s totally worth it to not eat for 16 hours everyday so that lunch tastes like a gourmet meal.
• HEAVY-ASS WEIGHTS: Not only did I weight train, I committed to actually improving. I followed the classic Starting Strength method. One thing that made it easy to stick to the program and track all my sets done was Fitocracy. You can see for example my last gym workout before the final DEXA here: http://www.fitocracy.com/view_workout/5606365/. Squat: 245 lbs for 3 sets of 5 reps… Bench press with 155 lbs  for 3 sets of 5… Deadlift 265 lb for 5 reps. And after all that, come out feeling like Ronnie Coleman.
• FASTED CARDIO: Even more eyebrow-raising than not eating for 16 hours: don’t eat for 16 hours and try to do cardio right before eating! It really isn’t hard to get the heart pumping even if you haven’t eaten in the last few hours! I just imagined fat melting off my body as I headed out for a swim or a walk instead of for the lunchroom.
• EVEN MORE CARDIO: On the days that I didn’t go to the gym to lift things and put them down, I needed to do something on the evening. So, I would either go for a run or use the bike on the trainer.

And that was the plan, the easy part. Next up was sticking to it and hoping that no one else was going to be willing to hack their body so much to win a trip to Hawaii.

Low-and-behold, executing the plan was easy and enjoyable. I kept receiving positive feedback in many different ways: lifting a weight a little heavier than the week, props and comments on Fitocracy.com, seeing changes in the mirror after about 5 weeks and then having people comment on my changes in person… that’s what kept the fire going.

The fire that melted 43% of my fat. Because on March 28th(exactly 10 weeks after my first scan), my body fat percentage was of only 12.2. Boom! I was very happy with the product of my hard work. All that sacrifice, commitment and perseverance paid off. If I were to give one piece of advice to anyone trying to figure out just how I did it, it would be to stick to the plan and give it time. Everything else is easy to find, it’s not a secret. The only thing that’s missing is having what it takes, which is hard to find if what it takes is a lot or hasn’t been found in a while.

Anyway, my part of the challenge was done then, but there was the little detail of having to wait for all the other 150 contestants to get their final scan, which wasn’t going to happen for over 3 weeks. The final results of the whole challenge were announced yesterday, and fortunately for me, no one else beat me, and the trip to Hawaii goes to Kelly and me. That’s the part of winning the challenge that I feel was up to luck.

But seriously, (and very aware that it might come off cocky): I feel like I also earned it.

PS: as a true follower of the W&W forums and fittit, here are my before/after pictures for evidence, motivation, comparison and further anecdotal evidence.

Easily, this quickly became a favorite new place that I’d love to go to again. Kelly’s also a fan of die Deutschen, having been there before and feeling an affinity to it above other countries (she bet on them in the past World Cup when they played beat Argentina).
Plenty of beer was drank from huge mugs and the food was unpretentiously awesome; we didn’t look for fancy dinners, we instead feasted on huge traditional and old fashioned German treats such as currywurst and Shnitzel. One very entertaining and economical (aka: free) thing to do in Germany is to try to speak German without having ever spoken a word of it before. To spice it up, you could even try reading some of those crazy long words out loud to a local, with bonus points if you can pull it off with a straight face.

I felt that Berlin was the most “homely” city we visited of all. Somehow, despite the language barrier, it’s easy to feel part of the city after just a few days of being there. The welcoming vibe might have to do with their absolute lack of open container laws, and everyone having a beer at any time of day, whether it’s someone sipping from a cold one in a business suit on the subway during the morning commute or just a dude crossing the street downtown. It’s almost like Burning Man!

The biggest highlight of the trip was seeing my friend Dinah, who I hadn’t seen since the end of our AFS exchange program in July of 2000. Her and her boyfriend, Basti, drove all the way from Hanover just to hang out with us for a couple of days!

Seeing Dinah was great. We were young kids back in 2000, and although we’ve both obviously grown and matured, we both felt like each other hadn’t changed much. It’s like the old cliché says: “We picked it up just where we left it off”. Kelly and Dinah quickly established a connection sharing experiences and thoughts about teaching. I had no problems getting to know Basti, who is a pretty goofy but brilliant guy who evidently makes Dinah very happy. We were pretty well set for an extended international double-date.

Our first full day in Berlin, we took a tour through the folks from Fat Tire Bike Tours. Dinah and Basti didn’t really know much about Berlin, so they came along for the ride too. We went on a nice and long visit through most of the common sights, learned some fun facts about Berlin, got to have lunch at a beer garden, even got rained on for a bit. Most of the pictures from the trip (which are here, by the way) are from the bike tour.
Having gotten most of the touristy stuff with a cool bike tour, the rest of our time was spent hanging out without many plans. As it happens to be, this is something I really enjoy doing somewhere new: wandering and  discovering, to experience firsthand things that you can’t learn from a tour. This is how we ended up stumbling into cute little colonial-like villages tucked away in the middle of the city and somehow walking over 20 blocks downtown without finding an open bar. Turns out, aimless strolling on Berlin’s uncrowded streets provides a great opportunity to talk, learn some fun German words and turn the whole thing into a very unique and memorable night out.

Dinah and Basti promised that Hanover was much cooler than Berlin. Our parting words included “see you soon”, so it’s safe to say that sooner or later, I’ll be stepping on Germany again.

We stayed at the Eden Hotel, which was pretty fantastic as a centric starting point to go around Amsterdam. Everything was close, and the glorious buffet breakfast gave us plenty of energy to walk to all sorts of places. There was one minor annoyance, that affected Kelly much more than me; our room was the first room on the very first floor, so we were close to the elevator and its engine room. A high-pitched screeching noise seeped the walls and into our room non-stop. However, the noise didn’t vary on volume or tone. That might make you wonder why I’m sharing this strange detail, but we spent many hours talking about how to fade a sound into the background of the curtain of noises that feed into our ears. While on the subject, we somehow deviated into spiritual chat about bodies being vessels of our true selves, and all sorts of really deep stuff that there’s no way I’m blogging about them. What’s important is that some of my favorite moments of our entire trip took place in our hotel room in Amsterdam; reinforcing my beliefs that it’s not where or why that matters most, but who.

On the note of being shmoopy and romantic, I must say that I found Amsterdam much more romantic than Paris -the City of Love. You know, having been to both those places now, I don’t feel entitled to saying snobby things like this, but I think it’s worth explaining. In Paris, the fear of a gypsy stealing your soul, the masses of people everywhere, the shitty traffic and the sheer smell of piss everywhere,  make it a bit difficult to feel all the love. We certainly tried, having candle-light dinners and making out smooching at the Eiffel Tower for hours.
Amsterdam’s vibe of “be and let be” was much more conducive to romance for us. Walking everywhere hand in hand or hugged together wasnot a problem; there weren’t dozens of people trying to rush past you. We felt like sitting by a canal and let our feet dangle together; no one gave us a dirty look, tried to sell us a souvenir or came to sit right next to along with fifty other people crammed in a river bank. Not even! It was easy to feel like it was just the two of us.

We rode bikes and it was great. Although it was with a tour company, it was probably for the best. There are so many bike paths that you could get lost without a guide! Mike’s countryside bike tour was a ton of fun. We went from being downtown and an actual part of bike traffic (they really are everywhere!) to the countryside in less than 20 minutes. Suddenly, farms, lakes and windmills are all you can see. The tour took 4 hours, and it taught us a bit about Amsterdam, Holland and The Netherlands (not the same thing!), cheese (a cheese farm was the lunch stop of the tour) and those crazy and fun-loving dutch people.

We did go by the red light district. A quick walk-by of De Wallen gave us enough to talk about back home: the professionals are definitely better looking than any we’d ever seen before in real life and we saw a satisfied customer paying and saying goodbye.

Out of all cities, Amsterdam was my favorite. It felt like a little big city, with tons of things to see and do. There is a lot of interesting and entertaining history to it. There are weirdos around, lots of them. It’s easy to get around, but big enough that you need a map to know how to get somewhere. We liked that talking to the locals was super easy, because everyone spoke perfect English. But what I liked the most had to do with the same topic as our hotel room chats: noise. Or rather, the lack of it. Partly because most people are on super comfortable and silent bicycles, and because the few cars that there are, are not ridiculous SUVs, being in the middle of the city felt nothing like it to our ears. Such a nice feeling, being able to talk to the person next to you without having to yell or get a mouthful of smog.

To summarize: I’d go back to Amsterdam. One thing’s for sure: don’t take your kids there, I wouldn’t!

All our pictures are here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nicoyogui/sets/72157627398685778

After the first few footsteps in Gare du Nord, I knew our vacation’s time for adventure had come. Trying to hide my “holy shit, I don’t remember any French” face, I guided us to where all the taxis were hovering. I flagged one down, and the first words that came out of my mouth were not perfect French. Far from that, they weren’t even in broken French! It probably would have been excusable if I’d gave it a shot in Spanish/French, but nope. I might as well have been wearing a Hawaiian short sleeve button-up shirt, because this was me:  “Excuse me, Do you speak English?”.
Luckily, the cabbie said “Yes” and we managed to get to our hotel, giggling the whole way there because we just had a small preview of what our next 3 days were going to be like.

We stayed at the Hotel Eiffel Capitol Paris, a pretty modest little place that made up for its lack of modern amenities by its service, charm and above all: location. We were three blocks away from the Eiffel Tower, which we went and saw right after we put our suitcases away. And we saw it again, and again and again.

Time for the list!

• Unlike England, Paris was difficult to get around in. Sure, it was partly because everything seems to be named the same: Take two spoonfuls of maple syrup, hold your breath, and all the subway stops end up sounding the same.
  In addition to the language barrier, the subway is not entirely a subway. There is a combination of underground trams, above-ground trains and inter-city long-distance trains that make it worthwhile to double-check what train you’re getting on. Fortunately, we didn’t end up taking a train to anywhere we didn’t want to go, but we did sit on a train that didn’t move for 5 minutes until an inspector came by to politely ask us to disembark, since we had arrived to the end of the line for the day, since the rest of the route was under construction.
• Paris was the place where we wanted to be for our first anniversary of married life. In fact, that’s why we planned our trip! The other cities, all the other stuff… that’s just filler. Really awesome, memorable filler.
• The Eiffel tower is great. We did many things around it, as it meant something for Kelly and I before we even got there (and now it means even more).
  We took the elevator to the very top (reservations are the way to go!, we waited 5 minutes with a dozen people unlike the poor fools that were in line for hours with hundreds of others), took pictures and marveled at how vast and humongous Paris is.
  On one evening, we decided to go have an dinner appetizer on the fields by the tower and wait until the sun set and the tower is lit up.
  
  It turns out that this is a very popular thing to do, even amongst Parisians. Right next to us was a group of about six young adults that were not only obviously locals, but painfully superior in their partying ways: They had coolers full of hard alcohol, mixers, champagne, wine and beer. Oh, wait, they’re locals, so don’t forget to include the cigarettes that they all smoke like it’s the age before knowing that they’re cancer sticks. Anyway, these guys were pretty loud and fun to watch. We debated befriending them, but we had enough for ourselves with our modest plate of cured meats and a little wine bottle.
• Besides the Eiffel Tower reservations, we didn’t have much planned. We figured we’d play it by ear, and that’s how we ended up going to the Louvre on the day that it was closed. Oh well, we still got to walk around a lot.
• Since the subway was more trouble than it seemed to be worth to us, we ended up walking around a lot. This yielded a much richer experience in my opinion, there’s no way we would have walked by what seemed like an abandoned public showers underground plaza – and was now being used instead as a gigantic urinal that you could smell from a block away.
• One of the most picturesque walks we did was from the top of the Avenue des Champs Élysées to the Arc de Triomphe. Walking past famous shops, seeing people ranging from dressed up model wannabes to the stereotypical fat tourist, being almost run over by someone on a Vespa or trying to take a picture without a huge tour bus in it, we could have spent all day just hanging out there and not getting bored.
• Eating in Paris was pretty fun. Most of the fun comes from not knowing what something on the menu means and ordering it anyway by pointing a finger to it.
  However, most restaurants cater pretty well to foreigners, despite the preconception that the French will treat you like a second class human if you don’t parler le français. Once you understand that in Europe, waiters are laid back and you have to be assertive, the whole feeling of “service sucks” goes out the window. I have no complaints about the way we were treated, au contraire.
  While on the subject of food, I do have to say: The French know how to make fries, but they don’t know how to eat them. Mayonnaise is not complimentary at all!
• The gypsies are present in Paris, but they share their annoying ways with trinket salesmen with some sort of African origin. The gypsies hustle with their petitions just like in London, but the African tchotchke slingers are all over the place with tiny Eiffel Towers, magnets, t-shirts and whatever else one could imagine would be a good souvenir. They are all ready to take off in a split second, with all their goods on a blanket that transforms into a bag with a draw string.
  We saw this in action a lot by the Eiffel Tower, where the way of the black market (ouch, no pun intended) is to whistle when a cop is near. Suddenly, you see a bunch of thin and dark-skinned men running in one direction, and they’re all smiling and laughing because they know they could run two marathons before a pansy cop in full uniform would catch them.

Our visit to France went pretty smoothly, except for the very last hours. We boarded our train to our next destination, settled into our seats and we were away! Relaxing and looking forward to the rest of our trip, we weren’t expecting the bucket of ice-cold water that was coming our way.
The train captain came by asking for tickets, we handed him our passes. He told us that there was a problem, and that we hadn’t gotten our pass validated right before boarding, and we were going to have to pay a fine of €150 because we were missing a stamp. He gave us a shake of his head, literally asked us: “Have you not read the tickets’ instructions?”, told us to get our stuff together and that he’d be back to see what could be done.
Freaking out because that was a lot of money, we read and re-read the train pass booklets. He was right, we apparently needed to check-in before we used the pass on Continental Europe (this train pass didn’t count for the Chunnel trip, but was our transportation for everything else). It would have taken us less than 5 minutes to get it validated, but we were already miles away from Paris.
After about 10 minutes of panic, Captain MeanPants showed up again. He told us that he’d decided to waive the fine and proceeded to stamp our passes without much problem. Although relieved that we didn’t have to spend a ton of money to cover up for a small oversight, we couldn’t help but wonder why he had to be so rude about it all. Sure, we could have paid attention to every single word on the tickets, but if he had the power and ability to make it all work out with a simple little stamp, we only had one conclusion to draw from this experience: he was a dick because he could, and also, because he’s French.

We certainly look back into our time in Paris with much fondness, despite the small hiccups. The many wonderful memories will definitely outlast the bitter time on the train. Even so, we have even gotten to the point where we can laugh about it all, and that’s when you know that not even a snotty train captain can ruin traveling with your better half.

Oh yeah, the pictures are here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nicoyogui/sets/72157627273975309/

London:

• We stayed at the Waterloo Novotel. It was a very nice hotel, just a couple of blocks away from the subway (aka, the Tube) and also from the Parliament. The only bad thing about the hotel was that they didn’t include breakfast. I don’t think pegging the hotel for the rude Italian tourists would be fair, so I’ll leave that for later.
• England was definitely the easiest city to get around in that we visited. Perhaps this was because the maps we got were well designed, clear and understandable. Perhaps it had to do with everything being in English, and the lack of a language barrier. It definitely helped that the Tube was straight forward and not a spaghetti-like mess of lines and stops.
• It only rained once on us! We were expecting to experience the famous London crappy weather, but we saw the sunshine more than half the time we were there. However, when it did rain, it was pretty awesome, and we walked around under an umbrella in the early evening as we tried to find a place to eat. The day after the rainy night, there were puddles everywhere.
• For anyone traveling to London for more than a couple of days, look into the London Pass. We had one, and it helped us figure out what we wanted to see, and there are plenty of discounts in there that in the end, the Pass ends up paying for itself. We even got a free canal trip out of it, which saved us time and gave us a unique view that we probably wouldn’t have sprung for if we had to pay for it.
• There are tons of tourists everywhere! Specially with the “nice” weather, walking around the major attractions (the Big Ben, for example) was pretty hectic. People pile up trying to get a picture, gypsies bring on the hustle and try to get you to sign a petition of some sort(which I think is a distraction to get into your pockets, bags and purses). On one hand, it’s a pretty colorful experience because there are people from all over the world, but it can be a bit stressful if you’re not ready for it. Luckily, we didn’t have any bad experiences (or got robbed by a gypsy).
• On one day, we walked several miles and tried squeezing in as many sights as we could. Our feet got pretty tired early in the day, but we kept on keeping on.
• An early morning, we took a trip to Abbey Road, which turned out to be lots of fun and costing us a trip on the subway and nothing else. We crossed Abbey Road on the same intersection as the famous Beatles album cover, and got tons of pictures.
  Kelly told her mom that we’d be there, and since it was early morning, it was only about 10pm in Reno. Kelly’s mom happened to be looking at the Abbey Road webcam, and saw us goofing off live over the internet! She says that she could hear us laughing and yelling “Go over there!” and counting down for pictures and the like. Good times!
• As many will tell you, the most forgettable thing about London is the food. Our best meal was at an Indian restaurant! We did experience “pub food” at a very friendly little joint near the hotel.
  If I had to talk about our culinary experience in England, it’d be pretty simple to explain: Fish & Chips, Indian food and above all: beer.

Liverpool:

• We took a day trip to Liverpool because we wanted to do the Magical Mystery Tour. Kelly is a huge Beatles fan and looked forward to this for a long time. I like them too, but I pale in comparison to Kelly’s knowledge of their history and music.
• The trip started by taking a train from London to Liverpool. It was my first time on a train, ever!
• From the Liverpool train station, we walked all the way to the Beatles Story museum. It’s a self-guided audio tour that takes a good hour or more to go through. I learned lots of new Beatles trivia, got to hear some music from before the band was official and enjoy my wife being a happy fangirl.
• After the museum, we got on with the actual tour.  The bus was pretty goofy, very old fashioned and smelled like cabbage. Ok, maybe it didn’t smell like cabbage, but it wasn’t a fresh smell either.
  
  The bus took us around to many places in Liverpool, like the houses were each of the Beatles were born or raised. Everytime we went to a place that had a song named after it, they played the song through the bus; for example: “Penny Lane” and “Strawberry Fields”. Pretty fun!
  We’d stop at most of the places and take pictures. A total act of herding tourists, but we enjoyed playing our part and we absolutely got out, took pictures and looked around with big eyes taking it all in.
• The tour guide on the bus definitely made this worthwhile. We had to look him up after we got home, so we’re not 100% sure about his name being Neil Brannan. Anyway, he was funny, witty and shared a lot of cool stories about the Beatles. He was even in the movie “In His Life: The John Lennon Story“. Here’s a YouTube clip I found of him giving out the tour: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZFAk8lqrSQ. If you’re going to Liverpool, do this!
• Liverpool was a perfect one-day trip. We got in, we did everything we wanted to do and we even had time to spare to hang out downtown. We debated going to Stonehenge and having a day trip for that as well, but it just didn’t happen. No regrets though, Liverpool was definitely worth it and a very cherished memory.

All of the pictures from England are on Flickr, so go there to see a bit of what we saw. Here’s a link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nicoyogui/sets/72157627396790814/

Rest assured that  a series of posts recapping our travels will come sooner or later, along with the hundreds of pictures we took!