wir lieben berlin

first off, gramps, sorry i havent been keeping up with this. internet cafes are hard to find and surprisingly expensive, but i hear youre footing the cost now so thanks!

so to update you: lauren and i are completely and utterly obsessed with berlin. hence why we have been here since friday and keep pushing our stay one day longer. the city is fascinating, between the ww2 history, the funky arts scene and the awe and grandeur of the citys expansive layout. oh and its super cheap, added bonus. we are staying at an adorable b&b where the owner has perfectly decorated each room (ours is asian-themed) and he puts together a breakfast plate for us to have each morning when we wake up. we have luckily timed our visit well and managed to be here for both christopher street day, the citys gay pride parade, and the fete de la musique, a free city-wide music festival celebrating the first day of summer. we have had such amazing meals because the city is not very touristy and so the qualitys much better, especially the area were staying in. i will say that we havent met many people in berlin other than our likely-gay host andreas but oh well we have just been soaking up all the incredible sights of the city (the people watching here is incredible). i am sort of starting to feel like lauren and i are an old married couple though (dale dont hate me) because we have every meal together, talk about the weather, climb into our double bed together every night...ahaha ok lets hope she doesnt read this.

anyways, our next plan is to take a 14-hour overnight bus to paris thursday, then meet up with gabe and nick there for the weekend. sunday me lauren and gabe will head south to milan and hike at cinque terre for a few days, assuming we actually book our proper trains hostels flights blah blah blah...planning takes so long! (advantage of doing it all in advance i suppose). although our planning here has been fun, and has often involved sitting in a sketchy 24 hour store, beers in hand, furiously looking up flights online. so thats kind of fun?

ok well tonight we are off to grab dinner and then maybe a drink although last night we didnt get back til 4 so maybe no drinking tonight...yeah last night i had the stupid idea to walk home at 2 am and it took TWO HOURS to walk home. they told me the city wasnt walkable but i just didnt quite believe it i guess. bikings the way to go here, so we finally rented some today.

i love and miss you all, and ill try to keep you updated more.

xo, caro

ps. alissa, happy now?

still learning how to do this - here are the actually impressive pictures

so i'm not quite sure how this blog thing works, but i wanted to throw in a few more pictures from the actual conference. thursday night we went on a geneva harbor boat cruise, and friday night the awards dinner was at the beau-rivage palace....just as beautiful & fancy as it sounds. enjoy the pics!


inside the palace dining room:

the beautiful beau rivage:

us ladies on the palace balcony...glimpse of lausanne at its finest (mountains, lake, wine..)

on the boat in the geneva harbour:

again we on a boat:

ok love to all of you at home!!! peace out fo now.

xo, caro

week one at the babson conference...busy busy busy

so after a week in Lausanne working for the Babson conference, it's time to move on to our next destination. i wish i could tell you what that was right now (zermatt or paris?) but we'll figure that out tomorrow. right now we're packing up everything at the conference, the participants are parting ways, and i'm essentially useless as far as clean-up goes because my brain body and feet are dead. thank GOD for nespresso. this week has lasted so long and yet we've seen so little of the city. we hope that this afternoon (post-very necessary nap of course) we will be able to venture into the heart of lausanne - the old city center which apparently has a beautiful gothic cathedral and quaint boutique shopping. a few friends from the conference said that they would show us around via bike tour this afternoon, so if we can summon any energy, that's our plan (i'm secretly hoping it starts raining so that's no longer an option...is that bad?) i wish i could tell more about our week right now, but it's probably best if i work the registration table at this point. here are some pictures to fill you in on the trip so far:LB and i arrive in zurich lookin so fly in our backpacks...we walked around the city for an hour or so but since it was sunday it was quite calm and uneventful.

then we got to our amazing hotel room in lausanne which we spent far too little time sleeping in...

you can see the marina from our window...a very nice view that we had breakfast to most mornings (when we could squeeze in a sit-down meal).