Are you saying my grandma was a monkey!?!

After looking at the model of evolution in biology for the HSC and also now in university biology, I've come to think of this model and the theories in it as a reasonable interpretation of the evidence that has been discovered and uncovered... and while I'm certain that what the Bible teaches is true, and I have no substantial reason to not believe the things commonly recognised as good long standing theories. I'm still having trouble reconciling the two. It can be difficult to know what in the Bible is real in the way we think of things real, the kind of things we see and know are tangible, and what is story, where the main message is not knowledge of the world but knowledge of God.
Specifically Genesis, the stor(y/ies) of Adam and Eve can more easily taken as allegory in respect to the creation of the world, man and man's disobedience towards God than other stories like Noah and the Ark, or Abraham, but I suspect that because of the way the New Testament refers to Genesis - in Romans, Paul talks about Abraham, as does James in his letter to other Christians and also in the genealogies found in Matthew 1 and Luke 3 and I'm sure there are many other references - this language would suggest that they believed these people to be real people and their stories to be real also...
So why is it that there seems to be no evidence of a world wide flood as in the story of Noah? What archaeological evidence might a flood leave anyway? Would many fossils of dead animals be the only tell-tale sign? There are periods in fossil records where there appears to be an influx of fossil life - however these are generally considered to be pre-human evolution, as far as I know.
So I don't know - when a friend said to me that she thinks the answer to whether Adam and Eve existed, is the same as the answer to whether Noah existed, I didn't think so at all, but now I think that she is correct, and that it makes perfect sense that they be the same answers, but what is the answer?
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Just as a note - I hate when ignorant people, just to be a pain in the bum during a discussion say "so, are you trying to tell me that my granparents, or my parents were gorillas?"
The answer is "no, stupid! did it sound like that was what I was saying?!"
I do like the situation that was described in one of the Gens lectures though...

"The famous encounter happened on 30 June 1860 when, during an address to the British Association, the Bishop asked Thomas Huxley whether he thought of himself as having descended from an ape on his grandfather’s or on his grandmother’s side. Huxley’s reply that he would rather have an ape for an ancestor than a bishop was so shocking that it is reported that one lady fainted and had to be carried out."