Sal y Luz in Concert

hey peeps,
sorry it's taken me this long to post but it's been one busy week. 8 concerts in 5 days, to tired to type, no time to type and just no where to type. one of our concerts is online, so you can check it out here.
i can't say enough about the hospitality of the english people, they must be the kindest, most sincere and caring people in the world. we really felt at home here in birmingham. right now i'm typing from the elite capital of the world, oxford england. i wish i could time more but i'm just too tired. i'll get online tomorrow and finish this post, but enjoy the video, i haven't seen it myself sooo if we suck, forgive us.
eLi

missing band....

so in monterrey my band and i would joke about me being the only getting to birmingham because i was the only one with a ticket to england....well turns out that that might happen... not because they don't have a airplane ticket but because they missed their flight from mexico city to london.... sooooo pray that they are able to get on a plane and make it to birmingham. it's 9am here in london and we play at 7pm, sooo we are pressed for time, hopefully i'm not the only one on stage, jaja.
departing to birmingham,
eLi

We will always have Paris

this trip just keeps getting better and better. so i went to see the tour du france....wow, go lance, i can't believe i saw him end his career, what awesome luck i have. i'm pressed for time right now, i'll expand on this blog later. but... moulin rouge was incredible, and dancing until 4:30am last night with gracie made my trip. damn girl you can move, we will always have paris ;)
finally back in london, going tomorrow to birmingham for my concert, nervous but everyone on my tour bus has given me great encouragement. also i have made life long friends that makes traveling worth it. this has been one of the best trips ever even if it seemed a little rush, the aussies made the trip a blast, not to mention the ladies were very entertaining..... i will miss everyone one of you.
from london....again
eLi
p.s. i'll be posting my pics soon....until then, cheerio!

----------------------------------------------
continuing with my post...
paris, what can be said about paris that hasn't been said before. the end of a fabulous tour has come to an end. our tour guide hans is an excellent person, truely grateful for all this efforts and coordinations with our tour. our bus driver renold is the best damn bus parker in the world, and coming from me with excellent parking skills, it means alot. it wasn't a long tour but it wasn't short either. one more day would have been too much. i'm really tired of traveling, sitting on a bus that goes on and on and on. the seats aren't too comfortable either, with the damn seat belt poking you in the ass. the views are irreplaceable, i would not trade this trip for all the money in the world. i have learned sooo much about europe but more importantly about people. i have a new world view on cultures and new friends. one of my new friends john is possibily the funniest guy i have ever met in my life. good luck john with your passport situation! i can't say enough good things about aussie chics.....damn you girls know how to party, and i enjoy partying with you. i bet you didn't think this mexican had dance moves but i proved you wrong. sooo after moulin rouge, which is a must see if you are in paris, we moved next door to a bar. we thought we would change our nightly routine of drinking every night to the bar for one last party. i don't think i've drank sooo much in one week. i wanted to post some pics but the computer i'm at doesn't have a cd-rom :( anyways..... last night was worth every penny. want more could you want on your last night in paris, last night together as one big happy family? dancing until the sun comes up, and getting to know people better. i would go any where in the world with you guys again, i'm serious, what about a contiki reunion in australia or south africa. our group pic at the effiel tower turned out spectacular, even though it was pouring, we all look like models. like any family, we had our good and bad times, but i'm content that our good outweighed the bad and our bad times were few. i think i could go on and on about my tour but people need to use the computer. i will try my best to post pics sooooo. also expect a contiki page with pics that other people on the tour took. you know i love you and that's why i want you to enjoy europe as much as possible from behind a computer screen. sooo now that i'm in london i hope things go smoothly with the transportation situation. today we took our first london taxi to our hotel and we fit 4 big suitcases plus everyones carry on....all inside the taxi. tomorrow it's off to birmingham.... i'm looking at the possiblity in going to scotland...staying with people from the tour. sooooooooooooooooooooooooooo until next time...
eLi

City of Love....Paris

well im in paris and their keyboards suck..... its good to be back in paris, enjoying the views and the city. excited to see the end of le tour du france well ho,eboy lance armstrong will win his 7th straight tour. unfortunately its raining but its worth the rain. also tonight i will be going to le moulen rouge which should be loads of fun and all very entertaining as hans would say. want to make a shout out to sergio, thanks for the email, dont worry bro i already bought you something ;] and did the hurricance affect you in any way? are u ok?
well i have been to the effiel tower; dotre dame; arc de trumiphe and all that frenchie stuff: im getting ready to be done with this tour: loads of fun. paris is qa city that you need to bring a special someone. to bad for me i have no special someone in my life right now but to all you ladies out there, im thinking of you..... its pretty crazy here in paris right now with the tour finishing today: im more worried about going back to london with all the bombs... say a little prayer for me that i make it safely to birmingham for my concerts. im a little nervous about the concerts, but if the crowd modivates us, we will have an awesome time. saludos a mi grupo sal y luz k ya estan en birmingham. au revoir from paris!
eLi

Switzerland....Luceren

i cant believe everyplace we visit i want to stay for longer. now in switzerland, home of chocolate, watches, swiss army knives. beautiful, beautiful, beautiful....ill write more from paris. we are going to a stock market bar tonight with drink prices going up and down every 7 minutes...and with market crashes, hopefully i dont crash...jeje
from switzerland...
eLi

Venice...mama mia!!

today we get to explore venice. its more than i excepted. where do i start. the women, mucho bello, the food - fantastic, the city - memorizing. it is early this morning and have not yet fully explored the potential of venice. making this a quick post, and show some pics. enjoy.
eLi
p.s. i have just download my pics from my camera and have updated all my posts with pics from my trip. i have you enjoy them as much as i enjoyed taking them. to everyone that leaves comments, thanks... they really make my day ;)

Munich-Austria-Venice

Left munich this morning, someone told me that beer would not give me a hangover because it was all natural with no chemicals, hmmm they lied, thanks hans. i didnt feel well this morning sooo i just slept at the back of the bus. the drive from munich to austria was breath taking. we stopped in austria, a stop that was not programmed and it was wonderful. austria has been one of my favorite stops, definitely have to come back to austria. we continued through to italy. if i had a choice where i wanted to live it would be in the italian aps....wow. i chatted with several girls on that bus ride, first time i didnt sleep. we talked about all sort of things but mainly girls, in specific one in eagle pass. they opened my eyes and my soul is at peace, and im enjoying my trip now, worry free, stress free, and with no strings around my neck. we arrived in venice, great hotel. we all went out last night. some had more fun than others ;) some people got in trouble, but everyone is living it up like theres no tomorrow. i was a little scared of drinking because of my previous night, but the australians really push you and i had to represent mexico well. so i did! and that was that.
goodnight from italy.
eLi
p.s. enjoy the pics

Munich

Hold your beer cups up and toast one to Munich.... it kicked my ass. we had a great time in the beer halls of this city. everyone in our group got into the munich spirit, especialy my new friend john from australia. i drank 4 steins of beer or 4 liters for you guys. had a little competition against a south african guy named korbus and i won but lost later that night to the toilet. i spent about 225 dollars on a beer mug, jaja. its been alot of fun lately, getting to know people that have travelled around the world as well. the girls are starting to come around, lots of australias and asian. its one big family and im loving it. cant say i miss thing here except maybe my parents because i would enjoy this trip that much more. until soon
eLi

Amsterdam/St. Goar

Well today we finished visiting amsterdam. Started off this morning with visiting the anne frank house. i can't describe the feeling of being in such a famous house plus walking through the rooms where she hide for soooo long was just amazing. Next we got our first taxi in europe, a mercedes-benz that took us to the van gogh museum. it was a quick visit because we were on a time pressured visit. grabbed a few van gogh prints and took off to germany. we are currently in st. goar in the rhine valley. this is the place where they make the famous german wine of rielsing. anyone that knows me knows that i'm a big rielsing fan, sooo i feel quite honored to be here. tonight we will go wine tasting which should be loads of fun. tomorrow it's off to munich, can't wait!!!
st. goar is such a quaint town, nice for retired folks.
until tomorrow where i will be drinking lots and lots of beer, hopefully i can type, jaja.
eLi

Amsterdam

I Amsterdam.
Today we arrived in amsterdam. what can i say? i'm not really for this kind of liberal thinking? we crossed the english cannel this morning in a ferry. oh did i mention we almost missed this tour. turns out everyone was freaked about about my passport situation that when we arrived at our hotel on friday we but them in a safe. but they failed to mention it was a time locked safe and that it opened at 9am. our tour departed today at 7am and we didn't have our passport. after alot of praying some how they opened the safe and we were able to leave with our tour. otherwise our options was to go to the airport and fly to amsterdam, all costing a pretty penny.
so now in amsterdam we did a cannel tour. we toured the red light district.....hmmmm interesting, very interesting ;) anyways i'm with my sisters sooooo things are limited in what i can do/what they want to do. our group is ok, we are 31 of us. i wish we were a little more dynamic but we still have many days to see what happens.... no eye candy on the tour bus though :(
welllllllll tomorrow we will finish seeing amsterdam. until then.... i'll be smoking one of all of us.
eLi

just chillin'

today was a less hectic day... we went to the british museum, ate a hot dog outside of the musuem, then we went to victoria station to buy our bus tickets to birmingham and book a hotel for monday the 25th. came back to the hotel which took an hour and a half because of the rerouting and the bombings, saw two july 7th memorials and now chillin in the basement of contiki tours. although we chilled we walked a ton inside the british museum, damn it's huge, eye opening and educational.
well that's it....damn internet is costing me 8 bucks for an hour.
eLi

Backpack Shuts down Subway for 45 mins

damn i hate these english computers, just finished this post and it erased...now i have to rewrite it, forgive me if i'm not as thorough as i was on the first time around....

The most exciting thing that happened on friday was that my backpack was found on the subway - underground and returned to me. got a phone call from the green park supervisor saying that they had found my backpack and that it had shut down the subway for 45 mins on wednesday. i'm an internation menace now. sorry london! we are staying at a new place, and it was an adventure getting to this new hotel with 7 pieces of luggage, having to drag them clear across down.
i believe we are bus experts now. i can't even count on how many bus lines we have been on, but more than 20 for sure. We went to go see STOMP yesterday, a funny and entertaining show, must see for sure. We had dinner in our room, can't afford to eat out anymore, jaja. but we did have our cheapest lunch yesterday in china town. not as big as in san fransisco but still very chinese, jaja..... jeff your ppl are everywhere, may i suggest a tv set? we slept in the middle of london in a park for about 45 mins, we walked about 4 miles yesterday and we did get on the bus for another 10 i would say. So you can imagine the 4 of us, with these american size luggages on the bus. i was laughing soooo hard, we barely fit inside the double decker buses. one thing i am hating about london, but not really london's fault is all the rerouting of the bus lines. because of last weeks attacks, many bus lines have been rerouted and do not go to their destination. this is particulary hard of us because we have a map and get on a bus only to find ourselves lost in the middle of london. our new hotel location has been very hard on us because no buses go to russell square. there was a bombing right next to russell square sooo everything has been shut down as far as the buses go. so things continue to be on the up and up, we leave tomorrow to amsterdam, should be excited. i'm heading off to the british museum.... see you tomorrow if i can...
eLi
p.s. just a quick list of all the bus lines we have been on....
6, 11, 68, 188, 148, RV1, 15, 59, 7, 94, 390, 91, 78, 8, 94... that's all that i can think of right now...

On the up and up

London..... wow what can i say about a city with sooo much history. Today i woke up at 11am....nice and early, what can i say? i'm a morning person, jaja. To begin with london is crazy expensive and i'm not talking about clothes, housing and cars but food. today i ate a polish burger for 10 US dollars!?!?! wtf, i mean it was good but 10 bucks. We decided to discovery the city on the big red bus today. We've have been on the bus since 11am to 11pm. First stop was the westminster abby. WOW, i could not believe i was visiting the tombs of soooo many people i had read in my english lit. classes throughout the years. The church inside was amazing itself as well. Although i think they should call it the westminster cementary, i can't even remember how many dead ppl are in there. next was a stop at big ben and parliment. the song that i played as a little boy in my piano recitals kept going through my head, Big Ben.
We walked about 100 miles to the london bridge because my sister wanted to see it, and of course it was this crap bridge she was mistaking for the tower bridge. Then we ate lunch at the polish cafe, it was delicious and they filmed some of the new harry potter movie there. next we went to check out some details about our tour we will begin on sunday with destination to amsterdam. since i lost all my tour vouchers we wanted to make sure what need to be done. everything is cool with that. also we booked our hotel for one night at a hotel and man is it expensive. 400 bucks for 4 ppl in a regular non luxious room. oh well, we made the phone call to our mom to send more money, jaja. 2 days, 200 bucks spent just on food, buses, subway, and our stay until friday, not included the 400 bucks for friday night. Next we went to a pub, of course, we had to hit it up. my sister's got a apple cider beer and the other one a pale ale. Eli get's dark beer, yeah baby, that's the way to go. we started getting really happy in the pub and were the loudest in there. good times. next we went to the london eye, which was spectacular. nice view of the city. i can't complain so far about being in london with my sisters, everything is cool, everyone brings something different to the adventure.
i didn't write about our welcome to london party yesterday. since i have 3 hot sisters, we got invited to go to Hyde Park which is in front of the place where we are staying. anyways, it was about 12 of us, mostly spaniards, a polish guy, kenyan, a french girl and us. the guys from spain had their guitars and a drum. we jumped over the hyde park wall because it was closed, it was around 12:00am. we were there until 2am, just talking and getting to know ppl. it's good to meet ppl from around the world and observe their points of view. of course the ladies loved it because they had a spaniard singing to them. Tomorrow is another day. We will be going to see "Stomp" and going to museums... this is the artsy day, my oldest sister's favorite day. she's a culture buff. well goodnight from london....to be continued
eLi

The Drop Continues

Well i arrived in london today after a long trip of delays at the airports. I was ready to have a trip of a lifetime but that dream was or is momentarily on hold. you see, we arrived at the airport in london and had to take the 'underground' subway to get to our hotel. we made 3 transfers and in all the confusion of finding the right train, carrying our luggage and just being new to the place, i missed placed my backpack. We went to the 'underground' subway offices calling all the stations we had stop and made transfers but with no success. We call the police and filed a police report. The subway supervisor told us that leaving a backpack on the subway after last week has become a hazard to everyone, and shuting down the metro would not help any. So if you ask me what i did today, on my first day in london, well i would have to say that i spent it on the subway, in the supervisor's office and the US embassay getting a new passport. Oh yeah, so my passport was in my backpack, ain't i a smart one.
Lost items in Backpack:
passport
european tour tickets
iPod
pillow
Shampoo/Conditioner
Hair Gel
Toothpaste/Toothbrush
cologne
phone charger
digital camera charger
outlet converter
book
socks
electric shaver
verace sunglasses case
....more things to be added later when i discover they are missing


scene of the lost backpack.....it's 'underground' somewhere

So the bottom end of the low point of my trip does not seem to be in sight nor was it a flat tire in dallas. The good thing is that i was able to get a new passport in 2 hours.
The place we are staying is nice and everyone here seems to be very helpful and friendly.
We have yet to explore london is my sister and i were at the embassy and my other 2 sisters went to sleep while we fixed my passport situation. Then we decided to rest as well and now are up and about in an internet cafe. my first meal in london was lamb shawrma, pretty good, they had some hot sauce and my sister's and i were tearing it up with that. hopefully things look up from now on but i jinx myself yesterday by saying that sooooooo maybe you guys will get another exciting adventure tomorrow.
peace out from london.....
eLi

Just getting to Dallas

I finally arrived in Dallas last night after a long day of traveling. It's very interesting traveling with 3 sisters. I'm not sure how I'm going to survive in Europe for a month with them but I know it's going to challenge. About 30 miles before arriving to Dallas, we had the fortunate event of a flat tire. My sister's said that I should be in a nascar pit crew but we all know that I belong on the track if anything with my driving skills. So I changed the tire in 5 minutes flat but took me another 10 just to get the flat tire on the back door where the spare goes. I was able to meet Shyam last night and had a couple of drinks with that guy, man he's a character. I also saw Alma, Dan, Amy and Emir in Austin at where else, the best Thai restaurant in Austin, Thai Kitchen. So a 6 hour drive turned into a 11 hour drive with stops in San Antonio where my sisters decided today would be the best time to shop, and with my pit stop in Austin to see the gang. Not to mention our good luck with our flat tire. All I hope is that the flat tire is the low point in this whole trip. See you from England,
eLi

Before I leave

Well peeps,
it's been a while since i last posted. What can i say, I'm a busy guy. Anyways since graduation i have been traveling every weekend and sometimes during the week too. I'm "working" during the week so i try to stay in eagle pass but that's not always the case. I'm just getting back to the state today from Mexico where i went to my family's annual family reunion. I've been to monterrey about 3 times this month, plus Mcallen, Brownsville, Matamoros, South Padre Island (all twice). I've been to San Antonio at least 7 times, i lost count after the 4th trip. Anyways, the reason for this post is that my blog is about to get interesting. I'm leaving tomorrow for Europe and i will be posting as often as i find a internet cafe or a computer. I'll be there until August 5th and I will be having several concerts in Birmingham England from July 26th to July 30th. So, i guess i should start packing. If anyone wants a little souvenir, well let me know by posting a comment or an email. later, see you from europe!
eLi