Hey Loyal Readers - I'm baaacckkkk!! First Stop - France.

Hello awesome readers.  If you wondered where I disappeared to for the past month or so - we got to go home back to 'Murica for Christmas break.  It was wonderful to see friends and family, but not so wonderful were the flights to and from.  The first was a 20 hour journey filled with intermittent sleep and crying babies... sounds terrible but was nothing compared to the trip back.  My day started at 3pm Alaska time, leaving Kodiak on an hour delayed flight and arriving in Anchorage around 4:30pm.  After getting off the plane I was unable to locate my bag on the shortest leg of my trip...after a slight panic an annoyed service agent went to the back of the luggage area and dug it out for me (no idea what it was doing back there).


My next flight left at 11:20pm for San Francisco, so I hung out for a few hours in Anchorage with friends and ate some delicious Pita Pit (which they don't have in either Kodiak or Europe).  On the next plane (oh and I should mention here I'd been getting over a cold the past few days), I couldn't fully sleep but felt comatose thanks to the Z-Quil I took in the Anchorage airport.  Then at 3am, some nasty nausea woke me out of my comatose state and sent me to hang out in the oh so comfy airplane lavatory for 20 minutes of sweating out my ears...seriously...it was coming out of my ears.  Is this too much info?  Okay we'll skip ahead and fast forward to San Francisco where I proceeded to have an 8 hour lay over and slept like a homeless person on the floor for 2 of those hours only to awake to a crowd of people around me who were apparently boarding a plane in the - what I thought - was abandoned area of the terminal.

Fast forward again 6 hours and lets begin Satan's flight to Frankfurt from San Fran...a wonderful 11 hour direct trek.  Needless to say, by the time we landed, my fever was through the roof and I felt like my conscious self was floating outside of my body.  The good news is I was recovered by my birthday and was surprised with a trip to Strasbourg, France by my awesome roommate/teammate Sid!

The photo to the left is my reaction to finding out she wasn't driving me off a cliff and instead to a different country!

Town square with a giant Christmas tree.. apparently Strasbourg are like the neighbors who never take the Christmas lights down.

Our first stop was the Strasbourg Cathedral, an enormous 466 feet tall (which these days, I know, doesn't seem like a lot) was the tallest building in the world between 1647 and 1874.  Inside the cathedral is an impressive 18 meter tall astronomical clock (see picture below).  Legend has it that the creator of this clock had his eyes gouged out afterward to prevent him from recreating it. 

Neat window... check out how warped it is.  The glass resembled bottoms of glass bottles - hey, maybe they were!

Our next stop was a tasty sushi lunch and then on to Le Petite France, the most well preserved Medieval town in Europe set on a series of locks and canals.  For anyone traveling this way, I definitely recommend a stop here.  It's worth it! (And French sushi isn't so bad either, wiiiii wiiiiiiiiii)