Coming Home!

We lost to Neuchatel 4-3 last night in a fun, fast-paced game. Bre Julius, Abby Kratske and Britt Colucci had the goals. We are in a quick layover in the Paris airport and will be heading home soon! 

Europe Update

Sorry I haven't gotten a chance to blog much, but here is an update on our week. 

Saturday we had a great guided tour of Como and a welcome meal at our hotel. We met our guides Paul and Danyella and had a nice swim in the pool at the hotel. We caught out second wind so we went across the lake to a "disco" on the beach on Bellagio. 

Sunday we went to Bellagio which was just a 5 minute Ferry ride across Lake Como. We had a free day to shop, eat, swim or anything else we could find. We found their "beaches" are rocks so we didn't do much sunbathing, but plenty of swimming!

Monday we went to Milan and had a short tour and a day to do what we wanted. Most of us went to the Duomo (the 3rd largest cathedral in the world). Some went shopping, but most of us just looked around at the Prada, Gucci, and Armani shops.

Tuesday we had our first game. We drove to Zurich, Switzerland and the other teams bus driver have us a tour. We got to see the International Ice Hockey Feseration which was awesome! We played Zurich, who were the champions of the Swiss Professional league and lost 6-1. 

Wednesday we rented a private boat and took a tour of the Ligurian Coast. We stopped in Camogli for swimming, shopping, etc. It was raining a bit, but that didn't stop us from swimming in the Mediterranean Sea. All of us Midwest folk were excited to float around in the salt water.

Today we had a free day and there was no shortage of options. Some went golfing in Mennagio, some went to Lugano for the day, some went hiking, and my family rented a car service and went to Venice for the day. It was absolutely beautiful! 

That's it for now! We are heading to Neufchâtel (sp?) Switzerland tomorrow to play our second game. I'll let you all know how it goes. We are looking to come back with a win!

Hello everybody! The Internet at the hotel is tough to get on so we weren't able to post the past couple days. Lugano forfeited so we won our first game by default. We played the Swiss national champions for the professional league tonight (Zurich) and we lost 6-1. We started to play a lot better in the second and third so we are really looking forward to our next game on Friday!

Hello From Europe!

 

 

We are officially  in Italy after a long, but fun day in Paris!  Brad from Eurosport Tours picked us up and all of our bags had arrived so all was well.  We had a wonderful first dinner and the breakfast this morning was superb as well.  We will be heading over to Como this morning where we will spend out next week.  Here's a recap of our first day!

We departed from Minneapolis last night at 8 pm and landed in Paris at 11 AM (4 AM our time) and hit the ground running.  We had an eight hour layover so we figured instead of hanging out in the airport we would visit a few of Paris’s wonderful sights.  We were picked up by Jacques (our bus driver) and Ann (our tour guide) and they did a great job showing us the must-see sights in a short 4 hour span.  We had a quick lunch and a bus tour of the historical side of Paris.  Ann let us stop at the Eiffel Tower so we could take pictures and buy a couple souvenirs (I bought 10 Eiffel Tower Keychains because they were 5 for a euro…I’m having a bit of buyer’s remorse wondering what I’m going to do with all of them).  We ended the tour by stopping at Notre Dame Cathedral which was absolutely stunning on the outside and in.  I’ve heard so many things about it, but you really can’t find words to describe how magnificent it is.

Jacques got us back to the airport with plenty of time to spare.  We were happy about this because having 41 English speaking tourists trying to figure out how to print off our boarding passes proved to be a bit more difficult than we were expecting. We did find a very helpful English-speaking employee that got us situated so all was well.

 If the first day is any foreshadowing, this is going to be a great group to tour with.  Everybody warned me about how hard this first day would be.  Between a night flight, jet lag, culture shock and having 41 different personalities, I was warned to prepare for the worst.  However, today was a pleasant surprise.  Everyone seemed to adjust to any stress or any curve balls we were thrown and we just soaked up Paris and made the most of it.  Can’t wait to see what Italy has in store for us!